Celebrating White Beans

Santa Pau is a village in the volcanic region of (South) Catalonia which is well know for its white dried beans so needless to say, there's an annual festival to honour them! Of course they are very expensive, 8.50€/kg so they are not the ones that go into your tin of Heinz.
Again it was another warm and sunny day so we set off with Jean and Françoise in good spirits. There was a market where Jean bought a big piece of parmesan which came to more than he had thought it would (you'd think that he'd know by now that 'artisan' products cost twice as much as supermarket stuff) so he sold half of it to us. Have to say that it's very good and it went down well with the apéritif that we had in a local bar. The streets were crowded, there was a very noisy drum and whistle band (I'm sure they have a proper name but I don't know what it is. Can anyone enlighten me?) and the main square was full of people queueing to buy a plate beans. We weren't able to get close enough to see what else they were served with. We had a walk around this medieval village, vowing to come back and visit when there are less people and rather than join the scrum for something to eat, we drove on to Banyoles and found a restaurant overlooking the lake. As you can see, it was warm enough to sit out. Françoise and I went for a walk along the side of the lake up to the church in Porqueres and posed for a photo with an unknown man along the way. Before there's too much speculation, I'd offered to take a photo of him and I presume, his daughter as they had been taking photos of each other ... you know how it is ... never a joint photo unless someone helps out and this man who didn't speak any French or English, wanted one of us in return .... well, we might both be pensioners and not in the super model league but we're not that bad!