We woke up to clear, sunny skies and got ready to check out a couple bastides (hill towns) in the region as part of a scenic drive to our next destination. Our farm camping was definitely rustic with a washroom that could have used some paint and some maintenance but it was clean and most importantly, it had an insulated door. As an added bonus, the shower had a wonderful spray and the water was scalding hot. As I write this, I realize how silly it may sound to be excited about such small things but when you're camping, it makes all the difference. We got off to a late start but since we were only wandering around towns and not going into any sights, it wasn’t a problem. Our first stop was Cordes-sur-ciel ("in the sky") and it is a medieval town, with steep cobblestoned streets and half-timbered houses that is densely packed onto a hill. It is hard to spot the walls of the fortified town as distinctly as you can in Carcassonne but we walked through a couple of the old gates into the town and you could see where the drawbridge and portcullis would have been. We picked up a map from the TI and then wandered the streets for about an hour. It was a very pretty little town that was clearly well maintained. We were glad to be back in small towns after visiting so many large cities in the past few weeks. There were only a few other tourists around and we pretty much had the town to ourselves. The narrow, steep, cobblestoned streets are mostly lined with restaurants and local artisan shops. We poked our heads into one shop where a lady was hand stitching attractive purses and handbags. Most of the shops were closed though so it made our wander through town a lot quicker. We got a nice viewpoint from the highest point in town overlooking the valley below and you could see why it would have been a strategic location to build a town.

On our way back to the car, we picked up a baguette and a couple pain-aux-raisins (spiral shaped dough studded with raisins) for lunch. We drove through the valley, alongside the Lot river for the majority of the drive, towards the town of Bruniquel. We stopped for a quick lunch in the van before wandering up into the tiny village. It was smaller than Cordes and since we there during lunch time, there was almost no one in the streets. There were not nearly as many tourist shops as in Cordes so you got the sense that this was definitely a bit more off the beaten track. The town was capped by a small château and accompanying gardens, perched on the top of a cliff, overlooking the valley and river below. The castle was closed so we walked through the gardens for a bit, got a nice view over the valley below, and then made our way back to the car. We wished that the town had been a bit livelier but it was still worth a quick wander around. We drove off towards Payrac, our next campsite on the way to the Dordogne. Throughout the day, we had seen a couple signs announcing that we were in a new department of France and when we tallied it up, we realized that we had driven less than 200 km that day but had been in the Aude, Tarn, Tarn-et-Garonne, and the Lot. We got to camp in the late afternoon and were greeted by a black labrador and some chickens pecking their way across the road in front of us. A little further ahead of us, we could see horses grazing freely around the campsite. We immediately liked the look of this campsite and the best thing was that the washrooms were heated! We settled in for the evening with a cup of tea as we wrote postcards, enjoyed the warmth of the late afternoon sun and watched the horses grazing lazily.