11th to 13th May - Ceret

Saturday. Market day. We don't have many more markets up our sleeve so we want to make the most of them. We enjoyed cruising our usual stalls e.g. olives, meaty tomatoes etc, but strawberries, melons and cherries have also come into season. The prices are still a little high but they will come down. Cherries are currently around 9 Euro/kg, but will reduce to perhaps 6-7E/kg. 

John keen to experiment with some new cheese

While sitting at Le Comptoir supping our habitual coffee we were joined by an English couple who have just arrived in town from England. They've become good friends over the years and were very disappointed to hear that we've put our apartment on the market. We ended up chatting for ages and didn't make it home for lunch until 1.30pm. 

The afternoon was given over to chores - John worked on the bike box packaging for our paintings. He managed to put on some secure handles which will allow us to more easily transport it between here and Barcelona airport, let alone help the baggage handlers chucking it between planes. I spent the afternoon sweeping and then mopping the stairwell. The English couple who own the apartment immediately below us have two dogs. They've very recently returned home, but I'm sure they don't realise they left half a dog behind. Or at least that's how it seems given the amount of dog hair that had accumulated on the stairs. 

At 6pm it was time for drinks at Le Comptoir. It's the first time we've been since we arrived over a week ago. The gathering was mostly of English, and it was nice to catch up with some faces we haven't seen since last year. 

We declared Sunday a rest day. John was very keen to repeat the walk we'd done with our friends from Montpellier on Wednesday, aiming to find a new return link which avoided the bush-bashing. He'd done his research online and had a few options to try out. In the end we didn't get away until 11am because a friend emailed us at 9am to say he had an American friend who would be interested in buying my bike. She was departing for home the next day so we needed to retrieve my bike from its storage spot in the cellar of another friend. It has been there for the past eight years or so. Remarkably it had only the odd patch of fungus clinging to it, however we spent a good while giving it a good clean. Thankfully the tyres pumped up from zero to full, and everything seemed to work fine when I took the bike for a short spin. We'd arranged for a viewing of it after lunch.

Being nearly lunchtime, and with perhaps an 8km walk ahead of us, we popped into a nearby patisserie for a pastry to munch en route. It was also Mother's Day, so a decadent treat was obligatory. Lovely Mother's Day wishes had arrived from Bella and Alastair by the time I woke up in the morning, so that was the best start to the day. 

My Mother's Day treat

We both thoroughly enjoyed our walk. John was chuffed to find a new link track, and we found ourselves walking through a very picturesque rural area on the outskirts of Ceret and also through the fancy residential area of Haut de Ceret (Heights of Ceret). It really was a very attractive area to walk through and we're keen to do it again before we leave. It's a pity we haven't known about it for the last 12 years!

At 2pm an older American couple range our bell. They have a holiday home in a nearby town and fly out twice a year from New York. The guy already has a bike while the woman preferred to run, however she has recently decided that a bike might be a good idea. She was immediately taken by my bright yellow bike, and gave it the thumbs up virtually straight away. She is much the same height as me so it was the perfect size. They also bought the pannier bags and were keen on the hatchback-mounted bike rack too but unfortunately it didn't quite fit their car. It was a little sad to see my bike go, but I haven't used it much in recent years because our preference has been to go hiking in the hills. There is also no way I can take the bike back to NZ. Another friend has been using John's bike for years and he's keen to now buy it so that it all sorted too. We are definitely getting things ticked off our To Do list. It's heartening because we've been feeling under the pump for the fortnight we have been here.

Monday was an important day. Our real estate agent had an American couple (different from the ones who had bought my bike) lined up to view our apartment at 3pm. The mezzanine area needed tidying up after all our work on the bike box, plus we had the big storage cabinet to go through. All manner of tools, accessories and bits and pieces are tucked away in the various shelves and drawers. We sifted through them to decide which things to leave with the apartment, those to give away to friends and stuff for the rubbish. It took a while!

A coffee break late morning saw us catch up with yet another English couple. If you site at Le Comptoir long enough there will always be someone you know who similarly turns up for a refreshment. This pair have been coming to Ceret for 38 years. At 90 and 83 years, they're determined to keep coming for as long was possible and will pass on their holiday home to their children rather than sell it when the time comes. Another friend also joined us for coffee. We've known her for a number of years, part of which when she moved to Wellington to live nearer to one of her sons. She has been back living in Ceret for a few years now and is unfortunately struggling with the onset of dementia. It was a little difficult to hold a conversation with her but she was thrilled to see us, and clearly remembered who we were. It was very nice to see her too. She says she's toying with the idea of relocating back to NZ but it's not going to happen. Thankfully she has a son who lives here in Ceret and he is keeping a close eye on her.

With a final once-over of the apartment after lunch, it was looking in very good order for the viewing at 3pm. When the American couple arrived with Valerie, our real estate agent, we were a little bemused to find they were all speaking fluent French with each other. We soon found out that the husband was born in France and his wife is from French Guiana. They were very nice and we chatted for quite a while. After they'd left John and I had no real idea how they felt about the apartment. They are in fact renting for a week or so on the opposite side of Place des Neuf Jets! I guess we will receive some feedback from Valerie some time soon. They are travelling around the region during the next week and are then returning to Ceret. 

Not much later we received an email  from Valerie, our agent, telling us that they were "very keen", and would like to come back for a second viewing in the morning. So off we went to bed hoping things had gone really well.