Malevolent Beings

Sometimes you get the feeling that there is 'something' out there. We decided see if this 'something' is naughty or nice. Or neither.
After one aborted attempt, we finally set out in our new rig. The new rig being a combination of our now ancient camper van with renewed electrics, towing the new 3-wheeled scooter on a trailer.

The cunning plan being to find a quiet camp site to use as base camp, then go in search of our goal on scoot-back. Yes, we have gone over to the dark side...

And so, we ended up in a town called Mazamet, at the foot of the Black Mountains in the South of France. The town itself can be described as 'nice' in that it has lots of possibility, but doesn't quite pull it off. It was built after the original town, called Hautpoul, was destroyed by the last crusade in search of the Cathar, that race of peace loving Christians that were so hated by other Christians because of their overwhelming smugness. They were just too 'nice' I guess. If there is evidence of a 'higher power', surely it would be here...
So we pootled on up to this hillside village, part renovated, to see why the Catholics thought it so obnoxious.

It turned out to be quite pleasant. Sitting there looking at the vista below I got the feeling that the ancient inhabitants must have been a little pissed off when being raped and pillaged at the whim of the Pope.

If there is 'something out there' here was evidence that it wasn't something nice. As a monument to this butchery, the Catholics built a giant statue of some virgin woman with a baby (yeah, I've heard that one before. Toilet seat was it?) looking down on the town below making sure everyone does as they are told.

All this time, the sun was beating down, and the humidity levels were in the 'high sticky' region. Any physical activity led to drowning by perspiration. Not too pleasant. After a fulfilling meal in the local foodery, we set off back to base camp to spend a night sweltering.
The next day was no cooler, so we set off north. We were looking for rocks.

Well, we found some, not surprisingly as this region is renowned for them. Big granite boulders lay all about as if placed there randomly by some malevolent super being.
The crowning glory of these rocks is the mahousive 'Peyro Clabado',

a crazy lump of rock teetering on a small pivot.

From this view it looks like our super being has a sense of humour after all. Although, on second look, it actually closely resembles Napolean's hat...
After concluding that there IS something out there, and it's name is Random, we headed home.
As one final twist, our non-existent super being had one final trick up it's non-existent sleeve. On parking up, he (it) gently flicked my scooter off the trailer and left it lying forlorn on its side, completely pillaged.
I blame it on the Pope.