We enjoyed our three nights in Toulouse, but is was good to be on the road again this morning, heading north east, with a slight tailwind to help us along. Getting out of Toulouse was easier than expected - the morning traffic did not make it ‘easy’, however! We had to get around the rail yards and cross the main ring route. The map indicated that perhaps that these might be places where a lot of traffic might be funnelled, but on the ride these potential ‘choke points’ were relatively stress free to negotiate with our loaded bikes. It took a while but eventually we left the city and suburbs and we out in the rolling hills and farms of the French countryside. Lots of maize, sunflowers and grain (wheat probably), and we saw our first dairy cattle since the Pyrenees. We were following the Tarn, but rarely saw it today. We stopped for lunch at St Sulpice, a small bastide town that is rapidly developing into a larger satellite town of Toulouse, with lots of new houses and more being built on the outskirts - complete with supermarkets and the like. We concentrated on the old town, next to the Agoute River. An excellent Office de Tourisme also had a little mini museum beneath it, showcasing the art of brickmaking and bricklaying (important in this region since Roman times), brushmaking (brushes and brooms were made here from the late 1800s to early 1900s), and other interesting bits and pieces donated by townspeople. One item that intrigued was the town criers bicycle, complete with drum and a hand cranked device for operating a pair of drumsticks! We could have done a tour of the underground tunnels built under the castle (the castle itself was destroyed in the wars of Religion in the 1500s), which are quite extensive and the best remaining example in France, according to the blurb, but went for a walk to the ruins instead for a view over the river. The Tour de France is coming this way on the 17 July, and we saw some preparations getting under way for that at Montans - signage and a little bit of street art on the round-about. The town has an Archeosite, which showcases the Roman-Gallo history of the area, with particular emphasis on pottery. This town was famous for it pottery in Roman times. I am supposing that the abundance of clay, waterpower and wood for firing, its location close to the midpoint of the Atlantic and Mediterranean were all important factors too. We arrived at our accommodation way too early to check in, so continued past into Galliac, a lovely town with the imposing Abbey of St Michael at the town’s entrance. The Abbaye St Michel was founded by the Benedictines in 972, and built on the site of an old Roman villa. The monks developed the vineyards planted by the Romans and started a wine trade and built a port on the Tarn to service it. The Albigensian Crusade spared the town, but the wars of religion did not (a massacre of Protestants occurred in the town, with them being flung from the abbey, and any survivors being finished off by boatmen on the Tarn - this ended a long period of fighting between Catholics and Protestants that devastated the region). Turned over to the state during the French Revolution, since 1840 it has been a listed monument, undergoing restoration, so we couldn’t visit. A wine museum (this region has so many wine museums!) is operating from part of the complex, which was still operating though we didn’t visit it. We did go into the town, and did visit the Parc Foucould, a lovely park with a chateau built in the renaissance style overlooking the Tarn that now houses a Museum of Fine Arts. Owned now by the town, it is free to enter and wander around the grounds which are well kept. After that it was time to check in with our lovely hosts for the night Marie and Michel, and to have tea in the gardens of our B&B, and plan for the next day - we could do a tour of the pigeonnieres, the famous pigeon houses of the region (we saw our first at St Sulpice), a wine tour or a tour to take in some bastide towns and the Gorges d’Aveyron….