Today's first hour or so was rather frightening - short, fairly steep hills every 4 or 5 kilometers, follwed by steep descents.  It reminded me of similarly fatigueing terrain in Maine and southern Iowa.  This finally settled down though into a relaxed, pastoral route carrying us all the way to Mazamet.  By far the highlight of the day was our visit to the market at Rochmont, which we arrived at midmorning.  It was a wonderful market, overrunning the core of the city and offering everything imaginable including a family of performing gypsies.  In addition to a variety of edibles, Rachael also purchased a sunsuit.

On the way to Castres we lunched by the river in a park in Roquecourbe.  Afterwards we followed the shore of the Agout river on a very quiet road - the highlight of which was finding a hedgehog slowly crossing the road.  It curled into a ball when we approached, and stayed in its tucked position as I rolled it with my foot into the bushes for safekeeping.

At Castres we paused to visit the information center, where we obtained information for the coming night in Mazamet and also made a reservation for a room for the following night's stay in Carcassonne.  We arrived in Mazamet in the late afternoon and selected an inexpensive one star hotel from the few options available.  Later in the evening we ate at an Italian restauraunt, where Rachael enjoyed Roquefort pasta - one of the better meals of the tour so far.  This whole region of southern France has provided us great dining, with Roquefort embellishing seemingly every other dish.

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