The end of it all

The last week of our five and a half month holiday was spent preparing ourselves to return to amore normal way of life.
Neels and I borrowed Pieter’s car and drove down to Maastricht to leave all the odds and ends that Carol had lent us, with Steve’s family. After having spent so long trundling along at a maximum speed of 90 kilometres per hour, it was almost frightening to be able to do 120, to say nothing of actually overtaking other vehicles! And where we would have considered Oss to Maastricht a pretty good day’s drive in the van, we went there and back in a little over a morning.
We also returned the van to the company who sold it to us, and sold it back to them for the prearranged sum. This is quite definitely the most economical way to do any long-term touring. According to the research that we did prior to the holiday, rental for the same period, in the size of van that we had, would have been almost double the cost.
The weather that had played such a big part in our daily lives, for so long, had deteriorated and there were strong signs that Autumn was approaching. We did have a couple of really brilliant days though, which we thoroughly enjoyed.
All too soon it was time to be taken to Dusseldorf to catch our return flight, this time a night-time flight via Munich. Our fears of being flung into jail for outstaying our visa in Europe were not realised although we did spend an anxious three-quarters of an hour in the Gendarmerie while they decided what to do about that. In the end we got a tap on the wrist and were sent on our way.
Before boarding the plane, we bought an English newspaper. I took out the puzzle pages and handed the rest over to Neels to read. My section also had the star signs in it and according to my particular forecast, this week was one in which a decision had to be made – a creative project with which I was involved, should either be shelved or should have far more effort applied to it. I took this to mean that this was the right moment to end this blog. The holiday was a fun adventure, not without its scary moments, but mostly fun, and writing the blog has helped me to remember where we have been and what we have done, but now we are home again the time has come to get back to normal, which is mainly very boring, so the story will end here.
To all of you who have been reading our saga, thank you for your interest. Now it is someone else’s turn to entertain us. Goodbye, and God bless you all.

Closing the circle

From our last stopover at Phalsbourg, we set ‘Jane’ to take us to Metz, some way north. As she kept trying to put us on to the motorway, which we didn’t want, we had to keep resetting ‘her’ from village to village until we reached a very quiet and scenic road along the side of the Moselle River. The weather was unbelievably hot, and we wondered how much longer it could last as we had already had reports that the weather in Holland was grey and cold. When we finally reached our campsite it seemed as if the whole of Holland and Belgium was there too! In fact over the past two weeks we have had so many Dutch camping companions that I am really beginning to wonder if there was anyone left to keep the businesses going! However, they all started pulling out very early the next morning and by evening both countries would have been re-populated again.

Our route to Oss in Holland was always going to be pretty much due north, and by now we were quite keen to get on and arrive there. However, we made a few detours along the way. The first was to Rodemack, which advertises itself as the ‘Carcassonne of Lorraine’, but it turned out to be a poor imitation. Quite quaint though, as most walled mediaeval towns are, and we had to give the citizens at least a nine out of ten for effort. This little place is way off the tourist route, but they still had lovely flowerboxes, and little plaques to tell visitors about the town. For me, probably the most fascinating part was the old ‘medicinal garden’ just outside the town walls which has been re-established; the herbs identified and their uses listed. The plaques there made very interesting reading.

After a night spent near Luxembourg, we had to set off, putting all our faith in ‘Jane’ as we discovered that we had no maps of either Belgium or Holland. Her first choice of route took us straight on to the motorway so at the first opportunity, we turned off and she willingly re-calculated our route. We were actually aiming for a campsite near Spa in Belgium, and stopped along the way to visit Stavelot. Having found parking near the centre of town we made a bee-line for the Tourist Information Centre to find out what we should see and where everything was. By now the weather had changed from a few days earlier and it was darkly overcast with the occasional spot of rain. Having collected a fistful of leaflets, we were about to leave when I asked one of the ladies why there were so many cars parked along the side of the road leading to the town. She looked at me a bit pityingly and said ‘Oh, don’t you know? It is the Belgian Grand Prix this weekend and people are already starting to arrive’. She also assured us that there was simply no chance of us being able to just arrive at a local campsite and expect to get space in it, and offered to phone around for us. However, we decided not to even try. We gave Stavelot a miss (it was raining by now, anyway) and drove on for another 50 kms and found ourselves a pleasant overnight spot near Maastricht.

The next day’s drive was going to be the last real day ’on the road’, so we decided that it would definitely be a ‘no motorway’ day. However, we were still without maps, and ‘Janes’ first choice of route looked alarmingly direct and was certainly a motorway, so we asked for an alternative route. That looked more interesting, so off we went. Oh dear! Within minutes she had directed us on to a road not much wider than the van, which had a really low bridge over it. The van is three metres high and this bridge was 2.8 metres, so there was no chance. As luck would have it, as soon as we stopped, three cars arrived behind us, but waited patiently while Neels executed a 99-point turn! To make things even more interesting, there was an electric cattle fence right on the edge of the road which he didn’t dare touch, but eventually he got us turned around. Back we went to the road we had turned out of and at the very next intersection ‘Jane’ instructed us to turn right again and once again found ourselves in an impossible road – very narrow and with cars parked on the side. As soon as we could, we turned back to the road we had been on previously and thought that if we just kept going north, she would eventually find a way to get us to Oss. So that is what we did, but in the end she won. She put us on a road that did a massive detour through part of Germany and then on to a motorway, but we didn’t dare to object any more. As our route started to turn westwards into the Dutch lowlands, we could see the countryside flattening out and canals started appearing and by mid-afternoon we were pulling up outside Pieter’s house in Oss.

The next two days were spent clearing out the van and getting it as spick and span as possible. It is difficult to believe that most of what came out of the van arrived in two suitcases five months ago and I really doubt if I will manage to get it all back into two suitcases to return home.

On Sunday Pieter had a surprise for Neels in the form of tickets for the Belgian Grand Prix, but he had only managed to get two of them so I did not go. Instead, I had a lovely day chatting to my cousin from Thailand, who had made time, during his precious annual leave, to come and see us on the way to visiting someone else in Holland. I think I got a good deal. My day was relaxing and quiet, spent indoors out of the cold grey weather while Pieter and Neels’ day was anything but that!

During this next week, we will take the van back to the company we bought it from and sell it back to them and then probably spend the last few days trying to work out how to squash everything back into the suitcases. We arrive back in South Africa in the early hours of Monday 15th September, and can’t wait to see all our friends again. To those of you who have read each week’s episode of our travels, I hope you have enjoyed ‘traveling’ with us as much as I have enjoyed telling you about it all.
Love to you all and looking forward to being able to speak to you all again soon.

Approaching the last lap

Leaving Masevaux, we traveled along a stupendous mountain road called the Route de Cretes (the Road of the Crests). This route was built as a strategic road during World War 1 to prevent the Germans from observing French troop movements. The entire route is 83 kms long and hugs the western side of the Vosges range, much of it through dense woodland. Every now and again, though, there are spectacular views out over Lorraine, especially from the tops of the mountain crests. Although it was a little hazy, we were lucky as this road is often shrouded in mist from end to end. The highest points of the mountains, in this area, are known as ‘ballons’, perhaps because their rounded tops resemble balloons, and the highest of them, The Grand Ballon, was on our route. When we stopped to admire the view and take a picture of the sign giving the height (1424 m), we were delighted to find a herd of chocolatey brown cattle sporting cow bells of different sizes. What a lovely sound as they moved around, grazing or shaking their heads.

Eventually we had to come down from the mountain tops and spent a night in a place with the extraordinary name of Xonrupt-Longemer beside a lake which was so still that it looked as if one could walk across it. It also had that ice-green tinge to it, so we didn’t try!

The town with the strange name is very close to Gerardmer, which suffered very badly in 1944. It was almost totally destroyed by the Germans and their ‘scorched earth’ policy, so we went along to see what had been saved and how they had recovered. All we found was a completely modern town and not even an attractive one at that, so we moved quickly on and picked up the Alsace Wine Route just south of Riquewihr. Now this is more like it!! I know we had said ‘No more mediaeval villages’, but if you could see them, you would know why we can’t resist them. This village is mostly 1500’s and is beautifully preserved. People actually live there and must surely curse the tourists who clog up the roads with their cars, and the pavements with their slow ambling, but perhaps they just accept it.

We couldn’t be on a wine route and not taste some wine, which in Alsace would have to be white, although they do produce some red too. And having tasted, we just had to buy some, of course. We also went into a Christmas Shop, which was quite magical. Every item on display had something to do with Christmas and the shop was a mass of winking, twinkling lights, silvery decorations twisting slowly in the air currents and sparkling tinsel. There were tree decorations by the hundred, made out of paper, plastic, wood, glass and crystal; Santa Claus’ in a dozen different shapes, sizes and materials; tinsel in every imaginable colour (and a few you wouldn’t dream of), and every thickness from pencil thin to as thick as a feather boa. And I haven’t even started on the table decorations – mats, serviettes, table cloths, crockery and cutlery and glasses! I have never seen anything like it and could have spent hours in there. In fact I couldn’t even come away with a photograph as it wasn’t allowed.
Dragging ourselves away at last, we drove on a little way and stopped for the night at the next village, Ribeauville. To our delight, the caravan park has a resident European Stork, which (dare I say this) stalks around the camp each evening inspecting some of the campers’ supper tables, hoping for a hand-out.

Ribeauville is yet another pretty village with masses of flowers. If that is beginning to sound blasé, it isn’t meant to, it just means that we are running out of superlatives. We have come to the conclusion that the wonderful displays of flowers are a massive team effort, with every house owner religiously picking off dead heads and leaves as soon as they appear, in their own flower-boxes and those around town. How else could they possibly keep everything looking so perfect. While in Ribeauville we had lunch at a small restaurant and what better item to choose off the menu that Quiche Lorraine and a French Salad!

Continuing along the wine route, we passed Otschwiller, Schenwiller, Blienschwiller, Goxwiller, Bernardswiller and Rosenwiller, but the only one we would have liked to stop in was Itterswiller. France has a system of grading participating villages according to their floral displays, Known as the Ville Fleuri grading, inspectors award stars which are then displayed at the entrance to the village with great pride. Most of the villages we have visited so far have been three-star, but Itterswiller is the only five-star village we have come across and we were totally unprepared for the sight that greeted us as we entered the town. It’s hard to make this little place sound so much better than what we have already seen, but it definitely was. The abundance of flower-boxes; the brilliance of the colours, the variety of blooms all contributed to the overall effect, and the finishing touch was creepers which had been trained along wires strung high above the road. If we were impressed, so were several hundred other people and there was no space to squeeze a large van into until we were well out of town again, and even then we couldn’t stop as the road had no ‘shoulders’. We considered looking for a place in which to turn and go back through the town again, but decided against it, and added it to the list for next time. And I didn’t even get a picture of it all from the van, I was just too amazed to think of picking up my camera!

We arrived at our selected campsite in Saverne, and for only the third time on this trip, took one look at it and drove away again. It was very crowded, but more than that, it just didn’t ‘feel’ right or nice. Instead we made for another site close by at Phalsbourg, where we found a beautiful site with only one other van there. We should have come to realize by now that if a campsite is ‘within easy walking distance’ of the nearest town, it is often very crowded and often has permanent campers i.e. itinerant workers which is unpleasant.

Our holiday is now rapidly coming to an end. We want to be back in Oss by the 3rd September, and ‘Jane’ tells us that we are about 470 kms away by the fastest route. ‘She’ has been a real boon and I doubt whether our travels would have been as pleasant without her. There would certainly have been far more tension about navigating through some of the bigger places we have been to. The down side is that she makes us terribly lazy about knowing where we are. Neels drives, watches the road and looks at the scenery while I gaze around at everything until we suddenly realize that we have no idea where we are on the map! But what a way to travel! Hassle-free and tension-free.

We spot the German influence

After leaving Vezelay and its hilltop basilica, we went still further east and a bit north to the small town of Montbard, which is not far from Dijon. We chose it as our stop-over point because it is very close to Fontenay Abbey which we were keen to visit. It is the oldest surviving Cistercian Abbey in France and we were eager to discover what the Cistercians thought were the important facts of life. In theory, they believed in poverty and solitude, although poverty is always a very relative thing and as far as we could make out, they lived extremely well. The Abbey was completely self-sufficient, with a well-run farm to supply all their food requirements, including grain for bread; an innovative water-wheel driven forge where they smelted ore mined on the property and made all their own tools and hardware; a bakery which first ground the wheat into flour using the same water power as the forge, and then baked sufficient bread to feed 200 monks every day; and a large trout pond in order to vary their diet. They did not believe in unnecessary decoration, which they saw as distraction, so the buildings are quite plain, almost austere, but the clean lines add to the beauty of the whole layout. The Abbey was built in 1118 and survived until the French Revolution, when it was sold and turned into a paper mill. Fortunately for us, it was bought by a private buyer in 1906 who restored it to its original appearance and the same family still manages it today.

The next couple of days were spent as much on our own as possible, as the few spots that Neels had noticed on his tummy and chest turned into what looked suspiciously like German measles. When we thought back a few days, it was pretty obvious that he had had all the usual symptoms, culminating in the appearance of the spots. So we stayed out of everyone’s way until he felt a bit better a couple of days later. Really! It’s just not fair! We haven’t even been to Germany!

However, once he felt well enough again, we backtracked a little to go to Beaune. Everyone had told us about the fantastic enameled roof tiles that are traditional in Burgundy, and as Beaune is supposed to have the finest examples, we had to go and see. The tiles in question are on the roof of L’Hotel Dieu, which was in fact a hospital started in the 1400’s as a hospital for the poor. Wealthy people were nursed at home, of course, but until then no provision had been made for the homeless or poverty-stricken. In the main hall or ward, the walls are lined with four-poster beds, 26 down each side, each one sporting scarlet blankets and deep red drapes. The overall impression is one of very grand elegance and not at all like a hospital for the poor!. Although the whole building is a masterpiece of art and architecture, it is the roof tiles which draw people here and they can only be seen from the inner courtyard. They are, quite literally amazing. Each tile is about half the size of a normal roof tile, and the section which is exposed once they have been laid, is enameled. Numerous colours are used and the different coloured tiles are arranged in patterns forming a style which is quite unique. Seeing the Hotel Dieu was definitely worth going out of our way for, and although we saw other examples of enameled tiles, mainly on church steeples, none were as fine as those of the buildings in Beaune.

Two quick stop-overs later found us at Masevaux which is right on the border of Alsace. We had decided to give up mediaeval villages and old churches for a while and head into the mountains again. Masevaux was perfect – it certainly gets my vote for France’s prettiest village. I know that I have gone on and on about the flowers that we have seen everywhere, but they really are stunning and it is not only private gardens, where one can imagine the odd enthusiast making a special effort, nor is only the municipal gardens where some employee has been ordered to make a good display, but just everywhere. Every bridge has flowerboxes strung along the railings simply overflowing with colourful blooms; every house has window boxes of geraniums and sometimes a garden too; lamp-posts have hanging baskets which surround the pole half way up; and balconies which jut over the pavement often have baskets suspended from the corners too. The overall effect is one of endless and brilliant colour. Geraniums and petunias seem to be the favourites, with a lot of ageratums thrown in for a bit of blue. I wonder just how long any thing like this would last in South Africa!

Just driving through Masevaux made us want to see more of it, so once we had checked in to our campsite, we walked back into town where we wandered around for an hour or more, before deciding that we would look for a meal somewhere and walk back afterwards. The following morning, though, we were back in town again to take some photographs, after which we went for a drive along one of those roads we call ‘toothpaste roads’. (On the map they look rather like the after effect of treading on a tube of toothpaste – a mass of squiggles). It wasn’t as bad as the map made it out to be and was a wonderful drive up into the mountains through pine plantations and dense forest. On the other side of the mountain was the town of Thann and although we had sworn off churches for a while this was so elaborately decorated that we couldn’t resist.

The town itself has very strong Germanic influences in the building style and even the signboards and notices are in French and German. The church roof, not content with one design in enameled tiles had a different design for each section of the roof, each section also having a different main colour. The steeple was a fretwork of stone carving that gave it a delicate and lacy effect; while every corner or projection seemed to sprout two or sometimes even four stone carved statues. The arch over the main entrance doors was remarkable for the intricacy and detail of the carvings. It was quite over-whelming! And it didn’t stop there. The interior was just as highly-decorated, but with wood rather than stone carvings. Sadly the interior was very dark and even with my flash, I could not get good photos of the myriad little creatures decorating the choir stalls. I think it was worth changing our minds to go and see it!

We came back via the same road which gave us a good chance to see the views we had missed on the way up, then had about an hour for a quick change of clothes before going off to an organ recital in the Masevaux church. For some reason, when the church was built in the 1700’s it was equipped with two organs which were the pride of the town. Unfortunately a fire destroyed the entire church in 1966, but it was rebuilt in the same style and later two organs were installed as they had been in the original. Since 1977 the town has hosted an International Organ Festival every year, and we were lucky enough to catch the final recital. It was excellent, even if Bach is not my favourite composer, but the pieces were chosen to demonstrate the virtuosity of the instrument, and that they certainly did. It was a fitting end to our stay there.

Time out to remember

After leaving the marshes of the Marais Poitevin, we went north and came to a place with the unlikely name of Airvault! It was very grey and a bit rainy, and seeing that we had to both fill the drinking water tank and empty the other one, we decided to stop at a caravan park. It happened to be run by an English family and it was nice to be able to chat to them without having to think twice about what you were going to say, and how, but it was extremely expensive and apart from being full of whingeing children, it was really rather dirty. I’m sorry, folks, but we have now had quite a few months experience of campers and their children and have decided that the French are the best behaved. The Dutch are the noisiest and don’t put their children to bed until the adults want to go to sleep; the Germans shout a lot but are silent from early evening on, and the English children whine and fight, all the time! However, in spite of all the bad things we thought and have said about the place, we did manage to get a huge load of washing done and dried which was a relief.
The next morning after checking out, we had a quick walk around Airvault which is quite quaint, and has a wonderful old Romanesque church with lots of special features. We had planned to go further East, but after picking up a pamphlet in the Tourist Office, we drove South instead, to a small campsite near a tiny village called Cognac la Foret. The weather which had been threatening all day, broke that night and the next day we awoke to pouring rain. We cancelled all plans for the day and spent it reading in our cosy home. That night, because we had thought that we would have been out all day, we had booked a meal in the camp restaurant, so at the appointed time we presented ourselves and were seated at a long table with 18 other people, most of whom were Dutch. When they discovered that we were South African, we were bombarded with all sorts of questions, and offered all sorts of advice on traveling in Europe. It ended up being a very jolly evening with lots of laughs as we tried to understand their Dutch, while they tried to understand our Afrikaans.
The next morning was still a bit grey, but we left anyway and went a few kilometers to Oradour sur Glane. This little village was the scene of an absolutely ghastly and senseless massacre on the 10th June 1944, and the entire population was wiped out. Since then, the whole village has been left as a memorial. No-one is quite sure what prompted the massacre, but at about the same time, two German officers were caught by Resistance fighters. They were taken prisoner, but one later escaped and it was possibly this officer who informed the SS that the village of Oradour sur Glane was involved. On the morning of the 10th June, German troops surrounded the village while other soldiers rounded up the villagers. They separated men from women and herded them into various locations. The men went into a large barn and a garage workshop, while the women and children were taken to the church. At a command, the soldiers began firing into the crowd until no-one was left standing, then they set fire to each and every building in the village, so that those who were wounded but not dead were burnt alive. The next day, they returned and collected up as much as they could of the charred remains and tipped everything into a mass grave. 642 people perished, all of them civilians. Today the village stands as it was after the fires went out. There are notices asking one to walk the streets in silence and effect is very eerie and very sobering. I’m glad we took the trouble to make the detour, but was quite a sad visit.
On again, and this time going eastwards, we passed through Limoges and stopped at a small village on the outskirts of the town where a warehouse advertised itself as selling Limoges porcelain direct to the public at factory prices. We spent about an hour just ooh-ing and aah-ing at the beautiful things, but even factory prices are way beyond our budget so we came away empty-handed. Anyway we were headed for Nevers, which also has a porcelain heritage, so we thought we might look there instead.
At Nevers, we had a wonderful campsite with a view across the river (Loire) to the town. In the morning, it was raining again, but the weather forecast had promised the day would clear so we walked into town anyway and even took pictures in the rain. The whole town is just filled with beautiful old buildings, some from the 13th century, beautifully decorated and, as ever, with spectacular displays of flowers. Eventually, tired of puddling around in the rainy, cobbled streets, we turned for home and were about halfway across the massive bridge over the Loire, when the clouds suddenly cleared and the sun came out! Oh, and I forgot to say that it was only late the previous evening that we discovered that the following day was a Public Holiday, so during our walk around town, all the shops were closed. But we did see some Nevers porcelain in a shop window and didn’t mind that the shop was closed. If anything, it was even more expensive than the Limoges china and not nearly as fine.
Still going eastwards and a little north, we headed for Vezelay, a hilltop town dominated by the 12th century Basilica St. Madeleine. As the countryside roundabout is relatively flat and very forested, the first sight of the town comes as quite a surprise. I’m sure that the folk of mediaeval times must have felt rather over-awed by the size of the church, but I imagine that was part of the reason for building it so enormous. It wasn’t an optical illusion either – the building is quite massive, but enhanced by the fact that the buildings around are not big at all and it is on the top of quite a steep hill. The buildings which border the narrow twisting street up to the church are almost all occupied by artists, with a few shops and restaurants in between. However, the whole commercial angle has been kept very low-key, with no obtrusive signs or advertisements and one gets the feeling of walking through a pleasant mediaeval town – with modern conveniences!
When we had climbed the cobbled street right to the top, we found that a service in the church was nearing its conclusion, so we quietly let ourselves in at the back. The priest was so far away up at the altar that we could hardly see him, but the acoustics were perfectl (Yes! Yes! I know he had a microphone) and we sat and enjoyed the music played on a real pipe-organ while the collection was taken, before the people filed out and we could wander around at will. While the organ was playing, the double main doors were opened by a young monk and we were amazed at the size of them – at least 5 metres high, but then, the nave is a soaring 18 metres high with a wonderful airiness filled with golden light. As we have so often found, these buildings may well be centuries old but the designers and builders of the time knew a great deal about making the best use of available light.

On the road again

To all of you who have been reading our blog, my apologies for the silence. After finding a very kind caravan park owner near Montguyon who allowed us to send the last episode out, we have not been able to access the Internet at all. How strange it is that, having been literally dragged into the 21st century with all it’s technological wonders, we now feel quite deprived when we are expected to do without them. However, we survived admirably and in fact, enjoyed a peaceful and mostly event-free week. Have we ever had a totally event-free week, I wonder! Some months back, while negotiating a really tight, steep turn, we gave the waste water drain a slight tap, after which it was never really the same again and developed a constant drip. This is grey water, so-called, and from washing hands, dishes etc. We didn’t worry too much about it as the drip was very slow, and as long as were parked on a suitably grassy patch, no-one was any the wiser and the grass as all the better for it! Then when we left Aignan Caravan park, while trying to manoevre the van close enough to the tap to fill our drinking water tank, we gave it another whack on the somewhat uneven ground and the drip became a little more insistant. Not wanting to lose the thing altogether, Neels then made a suitably South African plan and tied it on to the chassis with a piece of wire, and we tried not to use water too much until we got to Montguyon. Then, when he had recovered some of his strength, he took the whole contraption to pieces and then rebuilt it, sealing all the joints with the sealing paste we had bought so long ago in L’Argentieres. Perfect, we thought. Good as new! Certainly good enough to last out the next month or so. Well, it wasn’t, because four days later we discovered that we had knocked the whole thing off completely! Neels thought it was when we turned in the entrance to a field, after having taken a wrong road; I was of the opinion that we had knocked it off while bumping over the pavement into the town parking. It didn’t make much difference, the whole drain and tap was now gone and we had to start from scratch concocting another, and if we thought our French was inadequate for medical matters, try buying a ball valve, elbow and nipple! Needless to say, it took us hours of hunting through the hardware shop on our own, to save ourselves the embarrassment of having to ask. Finally it was done, and a far more efficient drain is now in place.
Also during the week, we managed to set off the smoke alarm twice which was a bit disconcerting. The first time was when we had decided to treat ourselves to a pizza, so bought a ready-to-bake one. Not being used to the oven in the house, I set it to the required temperature and popped the pizza in when that temperature was reached. Within minutes, there was this unearthly shrieking, whistling sound. I flung open windows and switched on the extractor fan while Neels grabbed a chair, stood on it and blew into the sensor. By the time we had stopped the noise, the pizza was well charred around the edges. The following evening we drove out to a pizza parlour and had a real one!
When Neels left hospital, he had been given a letter to say that he should have a final test done within the following two weeks, so we took advantage of the fact that we had semi-permanent accommodation and had his test done, the results of which gave him an ‘All clear’. I think we are both very relieved.
Once that was over, we could think about leaving Montguyon and continuing with our trip so as soon as possible, we got ourselves organized and took off for Saintes. What a charming city! It is very old, having started as the Roman city of Mediolanum Santonum. Then, during the Middle Ages, it became a stopover point for pilgrims on the Compostela route and several large monasteries and convents were built. Later still, it was a frontier town during the 100 years war before enjoying a more prosperous period during the 17th and 18th centuries. It is a lovely city to walk around in as the buildings have been wonderfully restored and the gardens are simply superb. An almost white stone is the main building material and this together with the brilliant gardens leave one with the impression of light and colour.
From Saintes we took a bit of a detour to Brouage, a fortified town in the Poitevin Marshes, but we were very disappointed in it. It has been over-restored to the point that everything appears to be brand new, and every available useful space has been put to commercial use. I’m almost surprised that we didn’t find an ice-cream vendor in each of the little guard house/ lookout points along the ramparts!
The Marais Poitevin, or Poitevin Marshes, cover an enormous area with the part north and south of the Sevre River estuary having been drained, for agricultural use, for the past thousand years. Further upstream, in the area known as the Venice Vert, or Green Venice, a maze of canals criss-crosses the land, and although there are small villages here and there, built on higher ground, most of this area is a national park. One can hire flat-bottomed boats and paddle along for miles, or be taken on a guided tour in one by a batelier who will do the paddling for you. As it is similar to Les Hortillonages in Amiens, but on a vast scale, we walked around some of the villages instead.
After Brouage, we visited Rochefort specifically to visit the dockyard where a replica of the 18th century frigate, the ‘Hermione’ is being built. At 65 metres long and 12 metres high she is not really very big at all, especially when one considers that she accommodated 300 men. She is being built in the style of the period as far as possible, but using modern tools and equipment, and they hope to launch her in the not too distant future. As well as seeing the progress made in building the hull, one can also vist the workshops of all the alied crafts such as the carpenters shop, the blacksmiths shop and so on. It it quite fascinating to see chain links being made by hand in a forge. The nearly three hours we spent there flew past, and there was still so much to see.
After a quick lunch we moved on to the Corderie Royale, the Royal Rope Works where all the ropes were made for Louis XV’s Navy. To achieve the lengths of rope that were needed, using the methods of the time, a building was needed that could accommodate a 300 metre length. This amazing building, battered, bruised and finally burnt by the Germans in the Second World War, is still standing albeit largely restored. And what makes it even more amazing is that the whole enormous construction is standing on a wooden raft sunk into the marshland. Not bad for something built in 1670! Another fascinating few hours flew past as we learnt about ropes and rope-making, and all to soon it was time to move on.
This time we had booked into a park in the Venice Vert and on our one full day in the area we had a drive around to see what we could see. What we saw was that fences are to stop people falling in to the canals, while cattle are surrounded by water with gates at the bridges off each little island. Not much is inhabited but the overall effect is of one vast parkland with huge shady trees and lush grass beneath. Here and there, Blond Aquitaine cattle pose sleepily having eaten their fill of the juicy grasses. In Coulon, a main visitor centre, the water is alive with boats some being rather more professionally paddled than others. We didn’t go to see it but I believe the ugliest fish in the world can be seen in Coulon Aquarium. Something called a sheat-fish. I intend to look it up when I have a chance.

Escape to the Charante

The events and dramas of the past three weeks had left everyone feeling mildly traumatized and quite exhausted. We had turned Nicky’s relatively quiet rural life completely on its head with our endless need for phone calls or a ‘taxi service’, but she really came up trumps! Thanks to her insistence, Neels is now well again and keen to continue with the holiday after a short recuperative break.

So, having said our very inadequate ‘thank you’s, we finally left Aignan on Thursday of last week and made our way to Montguyon, where some friends from England have a house which they have kindly lent to us for a week or so. Before we left the area around Aignan, known as the Gers, I made sure to get a photograph of the wonderful sunflowers which are just now coming into flower. What a spectacular sight!

Montguyon is a smallish town due south of Angouleme and a little bit east and north of Bordeaux in the area known as the Charante. We spent a night here on the way south with Jenny, and it was then that this very kind offer was made, which at the time, we could not know we would appreciate so much. The house, which was fairly recently built, stands back a bit on its plot beside a quiet road, on a slight rise. From the front verandah, which is covered, one gets a lovely view over fields and trees and it is where we have had all our meals so far. Apart from the occasional car, the only sounds are birds calling and the barking of dogs some way off. It is very definitely just what the doctor would have ordered had he known about it!

On Friday, Pieter came down to spend the weekend with us. How thrilled we were to have one of the children with us. I know that Neels has felt the separation from the family keenly, and has really needed some sort of contact after his trials and tribulations, so he was probably even more thrilled to see Pieter than I was. The weekend’s activities were hardly of the order to make the jet-set drool, but we did manage a trip to Blaye and a visit to the ancient citadel there. Blaye is a little north of Bordeaux, but whereas Bordeaux is on the Garonne Estuary, Blaye is on the Dordogne Estuary and the two estuaries merge before joining the Atlantic Ocean. The site of the citadel was a mediaeval fort, but during the reign of Louis XIV, there were fears that Bordeaux would be attacked by the British and the architect Vauban was commissioned to design fortifications to protect the city. So he built a citadel on the old fort at Blaye; another fort on an island in the river, which he called Fort Paté; then another on the far bank of the River Dordogne which he called Fort Medoc. I haven’t yet been able to establish whether the English were even interested in attacking, but it certainly kept the stone-masons busy for quite some time!

On Saturday night, Pieter wanted to take us out to dinner, and although we would have happily settled for the local pizza parlour, he wanted something with a little more class, so after getting recommendations from our absentee hosts, we set off for the village of Chalais and for Chateau Chalais in particular. What a simply majestic place! The restaurant is inside the chateau, which one enters over an ancient but still-working draw-bridge. From the courtyard, where a drink can be enjoyed before the meal, one goes through into a relatively small room with arched windows and a low vaulted ceiling. There were eight tables the night that we were there (although two of them had been set to accommodate eight people) and the restaurant was full. As we were to discover, this is silver service at its very best. I have no idea how many people were slaving away in the kitchens out of sight, but in the dining area were only the owner and one waitress. They were obviously being rushed off their feet, but still remained pleasant and smiling, unobtrusively checking on their guests and making sure that plates were removed at the right time; glasses refilled and dropped table napkins whisked away after being replaced with clean ones. Small toasty nibbles were served before our starters arrived; palate-cleansing sorbet between the courses and cheese with fruit mince before the dessert. The food was delicious and beautifully served. In fact the overall effect was make each and every diner feel like a king or queen, and we haven’t had that in a long while.

All too soon the weekend was over and we had to put Pieter back on the train. Fortunately the TGV (the very fast French train) to Paris stops at a station not far away, but it was real wrench to have to say goodbye again so soon. However, we will see him again in a little over a month, so we won’t grieve too much.

A quiet week

The week started on a fairly upbeat note. The medication prescribed for Neels seemed to be having the desired effect and we were full of hope that the twice-daily injections would be the end of the story. However, when the District Nurse came to give the last injection she also took some blood which was sent off for analysis. The results were back the same afternoon and we got a phone call from the doctor saying that Neels should go to hospital immediately and that she was sending an ambulance/taxi to take him to Briancon, 30 kms away. When I asked how he would get back again, she assured me that the taxi would also return him safely.
The following day, after he had been x-rayed, ultra-sound scanned, poked, prodded and injected with a cocktail of medications, they said he could come home again, but unfortunately there was not an ambulance/taxi to bring him back, so could he please ask a friend to fetch him. This was a bit of a shock after the local doctor’s assurances, but all I could do was to go and ask someone to organize a regular taxi for us. Mr Barberoux Jnr wouldn’t hear of it and volunteered to take me through to Briancon himself, to fetch Neels. This family was amazingly kind, and their kindness had seemingly no limits.
There were more prescriptions to be filled, but this time, Neels felt fit enough to drive the short distance into town, although he waited in the car while I did some shopping. A strange aspect of prescribed medicines here, is that no dosage instructions are put onto the individual boxes. Instead, a copy of the prescription is returned to the patient. This seems just a little hit-or-miss to us, being used to a clear label which tells one to ‘Take two tablets with water after meals three times a day’. How many people, I wonder, take the wrong dosages because they don’t understand the doctor’s shorthand, or can’t read his writing. Ooh! Scary!
By now, although neither of us had seen anything much of what appeared to be a delightful little town, or the surroundings, we were both keen to get away. Neels was feeling stronger now and thought we should go straight across country back to Aignan and the security of having my cousin and her fluent French close at hand. So, on Saturday the 12th July, we set off. We had been told that Monday was a holiday, making this a long weekend, but somehow, stupidly, we failed to realize the significance of this. Of course, Monday was Bastille Day, France’s National Day and the biggest and most important holiday on the calendar. To celebrate this, it seemed that every French family had decided to be somewhere else and the roads were really busy. However, we chugged along at our 80 kms per hour quite steadily and the distance lessened at a reasonable rate. Although some people say that French drivers are terrible, we found them to be well-disciplined and courteous, with no evidence of the road rage which is so prevalent in South Africa.
Our aim was to break the back of the 700 odd kilometers that we intended to drive and with this in mind, we aimed for a tiny place called Homps, not far from Lezignan-Corbieres, on the banks of the Canal du Midi. When we pulled in there in the late afternoon, we both heaved a sigh of relief that the long drive had gone so smoothly. It had not been a leisurely sight-seeing drive, but along the way we had had some quite unusual views. The beautiful lake Serre-Poncon with it’s strange blue-green water; extraordinary rock formations near a place called Les Mees which looked just like a row of nuns walking along; the wild flowers which are still blooming well and in such abundance and then, further west, the fields of sunflowers more brilliantly yellow than the fields of rape which we had seen earlier in the holiday.
Finally we reached Aignan and a lovely campsite on the side of the hill at the edge of town, which is run by warm, friendly Dutch people. It is very peaceful and is a perfect place for Neels to recuperate.

Ancient rocks and modern stones

Having decided to confine ourselves to the pleasures of France, and not to visit Italy after all, we turned southwards from Bourg d’Oisans to a little place called Les Vigneaux just south of Briancon. This was quite a hard decision to make as we both wanted to see Italy, or at least part of it, but the problem was where to go and where not to go. Once on the road, it is very difficult to say ’So far and no further’, because the view from the top of the next hill is always beckoning. But the distances are great, and we are now starting to look at just how far it is to get back to our starting point. So far we have covered about 7000 kilometres which is a fair amount of countryside!

So there we were, on the way to Les Vigneaux. First, though we had to negotiate the mountain pass of Col du Lautaret. This rises up to 2058 metres above sea level and one is certainly aware of the thinness of the air when walking around there. Just to make us realise how weak and unfit we are, a group of cyclists appeared just as I was taking o photograph of the notice board giving the height of the pass!

Further along the way, we stopped at Briancon as we had read that the ‘Old Town’, dating from the time of Louis XIV, was pretty much still intact. And so it is, with it’s lovely tall, old-fashioned houses cosily leaning towards each other like children sharing secrets. A stream still runs down the centre of the very steep main street, but is a lot cleaner than it probably was in time gone by. The street is so steep, that there are notices posted at the entrance to the town advising against running. No doubt a tumble could end up as a crumpled heap at the bottom of the hill! But for all its age, the little town was not particularly picturesque, and we felt that possibly more could have been made of it. But perhaps we are being too critical. Possibly villages in the Middle Ages were drab, dark and dank and it is only the modern tourist who demands flower boxes bright with geraniums to liven the scene.

On leaving our campsite the following morning, we stopped in a tiny town called L’Argentieres, where silver was mined many centuries ago, to buy a tube of silicon sealer. We had discovered that our ‘grey water’ tank (the one that holds washing-up and hand-basin water) was leaking and needed to fix it. However ‘silicon sealer’ is not the sort of phrase one finds in a tourist phrase book, but, armed only with self-confidence we went into this tiny hardware shop. Well, tiny it may have been, but the amount of stock would have made any giant hardware chain-store proud. It was packed so tight one could hardly get to the shelves. There was already one person in the shop and with the two of us and the owner behind the counter, it was really full! The other person turned out to be a supplier’s representative and readily joined in the conversation, supplying odd words here and there when our French failed us and the owner’s English couldn’t keep up. It took about half an hour but when we left, having been first mistaken for English and then being welcomed with open arms because we are South African (you know – rugby, Mandela and ‘Le Cap’), not only did we have something which we think may work but we also had made some new friends.

Our next adventure was not of the pleasant variety and is certainly one which I wouldn’t want to repeat in a hurry. Neels suddenly developed agonising pain in his lower back and nothing that we had available was helping. By now we had realised that the campsite that we were now in had only French-speakers in it, including the management, except for one young fellow who was sometimes on duty in reception. Aware that we would have to summon a doctor, and fairly quickly too, I went to reception and was thankful to discover that the one English speaker was on duty. That’s not to say he is fluent, but between his English and my French, I managed to get the message across. However, when he asked what I thought the problem was, I was completely stumped but eventually came out with ‘un Pierre du rien’ (a rock of the kidney). He quickly translated that into more acceptable French and passed the message on. A doctor was soon on the scene, but seemed unable or unwilling to make up mind as to what the problem was, gave Neels an injection and left again, with the traditional doctor’s maxim of ‘If it isn’t better in three days call me again’. Well, it certainly wasn’t better and after a very disturbed night, I returned to reception to ask them to call the doctor again. Perhaps it was a good thing that his offices were closed and the campsite owner, who had now also got into the act, called her own doctor, bundled us into her car and rushed us into town. There a very pleasant and efficient lady doctor did a number of rapid tests and confirmed that it was, indeed, a ‘rock in the kidney’ and gave Neels another injection. This one, though had an almost instantaneous effect and within hours he was more comfortable. Meanwhile, the owner continued to go out of her way to help us. She later drove me back into town to fetch the medicines which had been prescribed; she phoned the District Nurse and arranged for her to come and give the rest of the course of injections over the next two days; and took me to the supermarket to get some much needed groceries, insisting that it was something she also needed to do, although I noticed that all she bought was some bread and a box of tissues! They have all been kindness itself and we are immensely grateful to them. Having a serious health problem is never fun but having it when you are almost unable to communicate is extremely stressful. They say though that every cloud has a silver lining and how right they are. I have a whole lot more words to add to my French vocabulary including the word for ‘kidney stone’!

The Ups and Downs of the French Alps

After leaving the goat farm last week, we decided to head east and so found ourselves in an ancient volcanic area. The Romans obviously knew about it as can be deduced by the names Cyssac, Coysac Polignac etc. Polignac, in fact is a very strange looking place as half of it is built up on the top of volcanic plugs, while the rest sits at the bottom of the bowl. Le Puy en Veley, on the other hand, spreads all over the base of a huge bowl and was terribly hot while we were there. Luckily, they have one of the many little tourist trains which trundle around the area and show you the main attractions, so we hopped on to that and were pleased that we did as the sights are quite far apart. Le Puy is also renowned as a lace-making centre and we saw numerous women sitting outside souvenir shops with their cushions and bobbins. Another feature of Le Puy is that a few of the landmarks are built on the top of extinct volcanic vents, the three major ones being a church to St Michael, built, apparently in 962 AD, which stands at the top of an 80 metre pinnacle, and is only reached by 268 large steps; the statue of St Joseph, which is itself 22 metres high, but stands on a lump of rock which looks as if it is also 22 metres high; and the Statue of Notre Dame de France, also 22 metres high, but standing on a plinth, the whole lot mounted on a hillock of 110 metres. It really is quite impressive when driving down into Le Puy to see these three landmarks sticking out way above anything else.
After our ride on the little train, we decided to move on as the heat was unbearable, especially down in the valley of the town. So we found a camp-site on a hill-top near a little town called Anneyron, which is a bit south of Chambery. We hadn’t gained much though as it was still very humid and everyone in the park was lazing around trying to fnd the slightest movement of air.
Finally, after three days, and when we realized that the weather forecast wasn’t going to change much from the 29’ and 30’ we had been having, we dragged ourselves away. We had wanted to drive into Vienne on the way as it seems to be a really interesting place, but it was a frightening experience. We are not sure why the town was so busy, as it was a Thursday and what we would consider mid-week, or why the road signage was so appalling as up to now it has been first class. Whatever the reason, we found ourselves in the centre of a town full of one-way streets that were never intended to accommodate vehicles of over 2 metres wide; absolutely no parking, and every one of the town’s 60 000 inhabitants out on the street. Suddenly a right-hand turn spewed us out onto a main road, so we decided to leave Vienne for another time and to continue on. It must have taken several minutes for two hearts to slow down to normal rhythm again!
However, all was not lost or in vain. Some time later we came across a farm stall so we stopped to buy some fruit – mainly more cherries – and by the time we left, the very persuasive sales lady had managed to convince us to buy a melon as well, to say nothing of the six bottles of wine to go into the van’s cellar. Actually, we came away with eight bottles, as she gaily announced that as we had bought two bottles of each of three types, that constituted a box and every box sold was entitled to two free bottles of rose! And No! We are not becoming alcoholics!
Our next objective was the French Alps so we asked ‘Jane’ to take us to a place called Bourg d’Oisans which in the foothills. We had read a glowing write-up of a park within walking distance of the town, which sounded fantastic, but when we got there we were met by an extraordinarily grumpy lady and exorbitant rates, so we went off to look for somewhere else and found a truly delightful place about a kilometer down the road.
In fact it is also on the road to Alpe d’Huez, an Alpine village known to cyclists the world over. One could almost say that for the cyclist, doing the climb to Alpe d’Huez is as climbing Everest is to mountaineers. So, naturally, we had to go and see what it was all about.
The road starts in the valley at Bourg d’Oisans at about 700 metres above sea level. The height at the top of the ride is 1850 metres. And the road with its 21 hairpin bends, is 13 kms long. The average gradient is about 10% and it is a steady, relentless climb. I am very pleased to be able to report that the old lady managed to get all the way to the top without missing a beat – the van, that is. But we are filled with admiration for the people who do the ride, and there are hundreds of them – all the time, not just during the Tour de France or other big races. There are notices all the way up and down the road exhorting motorists to beware of cyclists, and cyclists to keep to the side of the road. In fact on the way down, we were overtaken several times by fellows on two wheels going at least 30 or 40 kms faster than we were!
Up at the top of the hill, in the village of Alpe d’Huez, there is an almost festive air. Everyone who crosses the line is a winner and there is even a permanent winners podium for those who want their pictures taken by family or friends, against a suitable background.
For us, though, the drive with it’s spectacular scenery was prize enough. The road to the top is an engineering masterpiece as anyone who has watched the helicopter shots of the Tour de France will agree. Driving it is great fun and as it is not one of the skinny roads we have had to contend with in the past, it is also a pleasure.
For our next trick, we thought we would try another mountain pass road and so, having first found out if there could be problems in attempting it with our large lady, we set off for La Berarde, 30 kms into the mountains. Once again we were accompanied by dozens of cyclists. We had armed ourselves with pamphlets and leaflets of all sorts, so that we would know exactly where to go and what to look for along the way. Even so, when we stopped to admire the view at one spot, we asked again and were told there would be no problem. So on we went, higher and higher, bend after bend, the views becoming ever more breath-taking.
We stopped at a tiny village to inspect their market, but bought nothing. It was all very colourful though. Amplifiers were blaring out ‘Alpen music’ and there were flags everywhere. Everyone seemed to know each other and they all seemed to be doing a lot of talking to each other and very little else, but they were obviously having fun.
At about lunch-time we reached Saint Christophe en Oisan, and as one of our guidebooks had recommended that one should stop at La Cordee for a meal or at least a coffee, we decided to do just that. We walked into the front part of the shop, which is minute and crammed with goods like an old-fashioned general dealers store and as I was in front, asked in my halting French if we could have a meal there. With a beaming smile we were shown through to the back of the building which opened out to accommodate about six tables. We ordered something cold to drink, and a few minutes after they had arrived, plates were put down on the table. Over the next twenty minutes or so, the table was slowly laid around us, in between serving people at the other tables,or in the shop. Eventually we were asked if we wanted a salad or cold meats as a starter. We chose the salad, and some time later a large bowlful arrived. It was quite delicious and had some unusual ingredients like artichoke hearts and something that could have been anchovies. The bread was home made and crusty and just perfect for mopping up the sauce from our second course which was a choice of veal, beef or……..but she couldn’t remember the English word and neither of us could recognize the French one. Thank goodness, as the third choice was lamb shank, which looked divine, but would have been far too much for either of us. In several ways it was a memorable meal, not least because we were eating a traditional meal, in a restaurant that had no airs or graces. It was truly delicious, and we were having this meal in a village clinging to the side of a mountain.
Shortly after we left our lunch stop, still on our way to La Berarde, we came to one of Neels’ favourite signs. It is always in a red triangle; is painted black on white and means ‘Road Narrows’. It is generally at this point that we meet a tourist bus or a tractor with vicious-looking agricultural attachments! However, there was also a sign forbidding anything over 10 metres long, which ruled out the tourist bus, and had a height restriction of 4.5 metres. At this point, I’m afraid we chickened out. Our greatest fear is of getting to a point beyond which we cannot go and finding there is nowhere to turn around. So we laboriously turned in a handy parking area and had just got ourselves facing back down the hill again when a GI-NORMOUS campervan came sailing around the corner from the direction we were too scared to attempt. Oh Phooey! Never mind, that will have to go on the list for next time too!

Those Gorgeous Gorges

When Carol and Steve left last week we were sure they had taken the good weather with them as they had hardly gone when it started raining. Not hard, but just off and on and annoyingly, especially as we had numerous chores to get through that would have been simpler with a sunny dry day. However, we managed.
When we finally left the house on Tuesday morning, I think we were both quite nervous of that final act of throwing the door keys back in through the letterbox and hearing them clunk on to the floor, but I think we managed to get away without leaving anything behind. We took a scenic route north east via Lunas and Lodeve to Millau, the town of the now famous viaduct. At Millau, the Tarn River is joined by the Dourbie and a little further away by the Jonte. Our campsite was at the junction of the Tarn and the Dourbie and was beautifully lush and green.
The following day we woke to a most beautiful morning. We had been told by the caravan site owner that it would be market day in old Millau which was only 15 minutes walk away. So off we went! I really should have known better. What he meant was ’15 minutes if you really step on it” which equates to a near run. Needless to say, it took us closer to half and hour, and then we took a wrong turn with added on a bit. But the market was, as usual, fun and cheap and we came back with a cooked chicken, some farm fresh vine tomatoes and a load of photographs. Cooked roast chickens are a real treat for us as, with only a two-burner hob, my cooking seldom gets very imaginative. Almost every fresh produce stall in the market was selling cherries but we looked at them and thought,’ Well, we can get those at home, and we have even been to the pick-your-own place, so perhaps we won’t bother’. They look very spectacular though – all glossy and scarlet.
Some of the Millau streets are really tiny. I have a picure of Neels sanding in oone that is about one metre wide at ground level but which gets less as the building rises. Again there were passages which went underneath the first floor level of other buildings and low arches between miniscule squares. It would be quite easy to get lost in there I should think especially at night.
That afternoon, not wanting to waste the lovely weather, we drove along the Dourbie River Gorge. Most of the road is at river level and the towering rock faces on each side can become quite overpowering. We saw some ancient troglodytic dwellings at the base of the cliffs in one place and tiny villages built right up against the rock in others. All around were weird rock formations, so we let our imaginations run wild and ‘saw’ a fairytale castle, a ruined fortress, a row of nosy meerkats and several faces. At the end of the road, for us anyway we drove up to a tiny village which was clinging to the tip and sides of an impossible rock. We found a safe place to leave the van and walked the rest, and were then amazed to discover just how many houses there were perched up there. Not what I would call a child-friendly town, I don’t think. Quite a lot of the properties hang out over space and the end of the garden really is the end of the property! There was even a restaurant, so we sat and had a Coke but the proprietor was too busy with his other customers to come and talk to us. I would have loved to have found out where their water comes from and where their drainage goes to. There was a posting box in the village centre, so presumably the postman visits sometimes. And all this several hundred feet up an impossible mountain.
Not having had enough of gorges, the following day we did a long circular dive which took in the Gorge du Tarn and the Gorge de la Jonte, but this was quite a different story. In these two gorges, the road is about midway between the top of the mountains and the river below. The French don’t really seem to think Armco Barrier is a necessity and only on very sharp downhill bends do they erect a wooden railing. Otherwise a row of stones does the trick. We have a family saying about being ‘on the side with the rhino gore mark’ which means being on the side of the car perceived as being more dangerous. Well, it was my luck to have the rhino gore mark on my side for an awful lot of the day, but I wouldn’t have missed a moment of it. Not even when we came to tunnels through the rock which could only accommodate us if we drove in the very middle of the road; not even when our van with it’s more-than-two-metre width occupied the whole road; and not even when we met a bus coming in the other direction on one of those stretches which don’t have a line down the middle (because the road is too narrow to do so) With the bus driver desperately trying to avoid the rock face on his side and Neels trying desperately to avoid the bus, and me trying desperately not to look at the sheer drop below us, we finally past each other with only millimeters to spare, but in the effort we ran over one of the rocks marking the edge of the road. Neels was fed up as we dented the van (not badly) but I was just so pleased, as a wheel on the wrong side of the stone could have been us over the edge! But hey! With hindsight it was all part of the adventure. What I do know though, is that this is not supposed to be busy yet. If we are ever lucky enough to come here again, I’m going to hire a scooter!
The further into Spring/Summer we go, the more spectacular are the displays of flowers both wild and cultivated. The poppies are still making wonderful shows with great fields of them all over. There are also some mauve flowers which bloom in profusion so that one will get the impression of a mauve haze over a field. Closer to the road are numerous daisy types in yellow, pink, blue, white and purple. It is a very beautiful sight.
On the way home from the two Gorges drive, we succumbed and stopped at a roadside stall to buy some cherries. The biggest, fattest, juiciest, sweetest cherries we’ve ever had. I’m sorry guys, but they knock the South African cherries into a cocked hat! We bought a kilo, then wondered if we had been a bit over-ambitious, but apparently not as two days later they were all finished. The last few we ate with some fromage frais bought from the goat farm we stayed on, along with some really delicious cheese, which is also not going to last long.
Someone has asked me what sort of food we eat, and do we eat out a lot. Well, the short answer to the second part is ‘No’. Eating out is expensive, as it is everywhere, and an average main course will cost about 14 euros. Of course there are any number of restaurants that offer a set menu for that price too (plat du jour), but one will more than likely end up with a tissue thin steak, chips (frites) and salad as the main course. We have eaten out though. We have tried regional delicacies along the way:- mussels and frites in Honfleur, sitting next to a statue dedicated to the mussel-pickers of yesteryear; Galettes in St Malo, a type of thick pancake made with brown flour with either savoury or sweet fillings; crepes, on a farm in Brittany; cassoulet, in a number of places, either made with duck or sausage, or both; cheeses from all over and wine ditto. Our standard lunch is a fresh loaf of local bread with some local cheese, fresh tomatoes, radishes and lettuce.
We do buy some fresh meat at the supermarkets, but our fridge is not too reliable, so we generally only buy fresh to cook that same night. Otherwise we have found tinned meals to be of a high standard and very tasty. Now that it is getting hotter ( and today is a scorcher) we tend to eat a lot of salads and cheese, which I’m sure must be doing us good! It probably balances out the amount of wine we drink!!

The end of an episode

We were sad to say goodbye to Karen and Bruce last Monday, when they left to return to Spain for a few days before flying back to South Africa. We later got a call from them to say that their return train ride to Barcelona had been uneventful, which was good news to us after their rather traumatic trip from Barcelona to Lezignan.
The rest of the week was spent roaming around the area around Carcassonne, Lezignan and Narbonne, which has so much to offer that one could easily spend weeks here. We are in the heart of the Cathar country and there is evidence of it all around. The Cathars were a religious sect who broke away from Catholicism in the 12 th Century and gained great popularity in the south-east of France. Eventually the Pope decided that their popularity posed a threat to the Catholic Church and declared them to be heretics. The result was a crusade against them and the mission was to exterminate all the Cathars and their followers. Enter Simon de Montfort, one of the most energetic and colourful leaders of the crusade. It is alleged that well over a million Cathars were killed by him and his troops. While some of the crusade leaders hesitated to murder all and sundry, the spiritual leader of the crusade is reported to have instructed them ‘Kill them all, God will know his own”. It is a horrifying story, but thanks to Simon and his Merry Men, and the Cathars they were fighting, there are today wonderful castles (some in ruins) and fortified towns all around here. Being fairly rugged country, one is often quite unaware of a spectacular village perched on top of a rocky outcrop just around the corner or over the hill.
Just such a place was Minerve. Balanced on a plug of rock in a bend of the river, in a deep gorge, the village was easily defended from direct attack, but our friend Simon mounted a siege and within seven weeks had gained access to the town. His final act of terror was to burn 140 Cathars at the stake. However, a few had been smuggled out , probably at night, and took refuge in caves and other troglodytic shelters in the walls of the gorge.
Minerve, though, is just one of the more complete fortified towns and there are far too many more that we have either visited or seen in the distance to mention them all. In each instance, we were always quite amazed at the constructional prowess of these ancient people. Without the aid of front-end-loaders, diggers or high-rise cranes they managed to build whole villages in impossible locations - because they had to! I wonder if we could achieve the same results today.

The other local attraction which we found quite irresistible is the Canal du Midi. Each little village along it’s length has established a ‘port’ and it would seem that they vie with each other to be more colourful, more attractive or have more restaurants than the next. Whatever their claim, they are all enchanting, and as Ratty, I think, commented in ‘The Wind in the Willows’ (to misquote him completely), there is no greater fun than messing about in boats. Or indeed, in watching other people doing it.
The Canal is no longer used by large commercial barges, but is very busy accommodating all the tourist traffic. One can sit outside a café for an hour or more and the stream of boats, although not continuous, will trickle past in a pleasant succession providing a never-ending source of entertainment. Sometimes it is easy to tell the complete amateurs, the first timers, from those who either own their own boats or who have done this type of holiday before by the way they handle the ropes, or the way they hop on and off their craft, but mostly one just enjoys the gentle gliding parade.
Finally the lure of the Canal got too much for all of us, so we took a two-hour cruise there and back, which started at Homps, a little town which I mentioned before. At a maximum speed of 4 knots, which is about 8 kilometres an hour, we didn’t travel very far, but in that distance we managed to learn a lot about the building of the canal; we went through a lock and we went over an aqueduct. It was very sedate, very calm and very pleasant. I think I could have enjoyed a holiday like that.
To round off our visits to things watery, we took a drive along to Beziers to see if we could find the flight of eight locks. We did find it, and what fun it was. All French lock-keepers have a lunch hour from 12.30 to 1.30, and by the time we arrived at the locks, lunch was nearly over and the boats were queueing up in both directions. When the top gates opened, four smallish boats managed to get in together; when they were in the third one down, another three came in at the top; when they were in the third lock down, two big boats jostled each other in. At one stage there must have been almost ten vessels coming down the ‘stairs’ together, each lot separated by an empty lock. With each boat there would be one or two people ashore hanging on to ropes or catching them to wind around bollards, so there was plenty of action all around. And masses of people just standing around watching all that was going on. Apparently the boat lock was invented by Leonardo da Vinci. I wonder if that clever fellow ever imagined he would provide entertainment for so many people when he was figuring out how to get boats, and water, to go up hills.

On Saturday, Carol and Steve packed up their belongings and headed off to Carcassonne and their flight back to England. Once more, we were alone in the house. Not for long though, as we will be moving on early next week. Where? Well, we’re not sure. We’ll have a look at the map and then decide.

A rather busy week

On Monday we awoke full of excitement to think that Karen and Bruce would be joining us later that day. First though, we had to hang around the house waiting for DHL to deliver a document to us which they had said would happen in the morning. However their mornings are long at DHL and it was after 3pm when they finally arrived. Meanwhile, we were not entirely sure of Karen and Bruce’s arrival time as I had misread her last email, but we thought it was somewhere around 5 o’clock. We had a couple of chores to do in Narbonne (where we were due to collect them), so we hopped in the car and took off. Our chores were managed in far less time than we had thought it would take, but we went and found parking at the station anyway and tried to contact Karen. She replied that they had missed their train because it took too long to get from the airport to the station, so they were now on another train due to reach us at about 7.30! WE went for a walk around town to while away some minutes but as it was by now about 5.30, everything was closing uup for the day. Suddenly the phone rang. It was Karen. Not in any sort of panic, but just calmly telling us that they had been under the impression that the train that they were on was a through train to Narbonne, so were not concerned when it stopped at a station, most people got out and a few got in. But they were concerned when it started going back the way they had come. We told them to get off at the first stop and see if they catch another train back to what turned out to be Perpignan, and we would fetch them from there. Which is what we did, and two very relieved people were waiting for us when we got there. It was only 65 kms away and a drive that we hadn’t yet done, to a town we hadn’t yet seen, so it was fun for us. Not so much fun for them though, as they had been traveling since the previous night. Anyway it was wonderful to see them and it has been more wonderful to have them here and to show them around.
The next day, Carol and Steve flew in from England to Carcassonne where they hired a car, and then drove the rest of the way here. So then we were six in the house. Lots and lots of chatter from every room as people caught up with each other after years of being in different countries!
The following day was the quarterly market in Lezignan, so everyone was up bright and early for the experience. We had thought that the previous week’s market was big, but this one was three times the size! Apart from more clothing and more plasticky kitchen-ware stuff, there was this time a fellow making giant paella’s, there were stands selling cooked chickens; the vegetable and fruit stalls seemed endless, and all the cheese sellers wanted one to taste their cheese. We came home laden with strawberries, cheese, chicken, ready to eat shrimps, bread and a whole range of salad ingredients. Mmm! Delicious!
Along the way, we had met Andy, Liz’s friend, who then came back and had lunch with us before taking us on a guided tour of a village close by called Lagresse. I think it easily falls into the ‘prettiest village’ category. Old buildings of warm pinkish stone, with flowers in glowing colours highlighting the flowerboxes and pavements. Ancient woodwork, grey with age abd bending under the stresses of hundreds of years. Gargoyles and other stone carvings peeping out of unexpected corners.. What a treasure.
Not yet having had enough of old bastide cities, we decided that the next day we should all go to Carcassonne which is one of the few towns which is still entire. I don’t like it much as I think it very over-commercialised, but it is one of those places one really should visit. The height of the walls, at nine metres in places, is quite mind-boggling when one considers that it was built in the 1100’s and 1200’s, although there are parts which go right back to Roman times before Christ. Once more, there were just too many people there but one can get a good idea of what an old city must have looked like. We had a wonderful duck cassoulet for lunch and then decided to start home along a different route. Happily this brought us out along the Canal du Midi and at a funny little place called Homps, we stopped and had a look at all the river craft moored there. Someone off one of the boats, when asked, told us there a set of lock-gates about 500 metres up stream so we set off, to walk off the cassoulet and to find a lock so that Karen could see how they work. As it turned out, we got there just before three boats came down and crowded into the lock. It was quite a sight, with the lady holding the front boat in place by pulling on the rope with all her might to stop the inflowing water from pushing the boat backwards, while the one at the back which had had to get in almost sideways to avaiod being squashed by the gates, had to keep fendng off the walls as well as the other boats. Finally the lock filled, the gates opened and they all spilled out into the canal again. And just at that moment, another boat appeared from the opposite direction, so we watched again as it manouvered in, tied up but this time had to let rope out as the water level sank, then glided out again.
All the past few days activities had been made in the campervan, but on Friday we picked up a small hire car and set off in two cars to do a round of tiny villages in the vicinity. Oh my goodness! Talk about stress-free! There is nothing better than attempting to drive up skinny roads in a skinny car! What a pleasure. By doing this, we found that we covered so much more ground, obviously, as we didn’t have to walk it, and could explore side roads that we wouldn’t have bothered with on foot. And that was how we found Pavares and a delightful old wine cellar. It said ‘Ring the bell” on the door, so we did, and some huge gates creaked open an inch or two and someone said ‘J’arrive’ (I’m coming). Then the door of this colossal barn started to slide open until we could see rows of barrels inside and ‘Madame’ waiting to greet us. She invited us to have a look around while she fetched some clean glasses and that was when we discovered that the far end of the barn had been converted into a mini-museum of wine-growing equipment. Some of the implements were really primitive which made us realize just how long wine-making has been around. The wine she offered was delicious and we left with a box to enjoy at home.
On Saturday we had a long-standing date with cousin Nicky, so we started very early to be able to accomplish the 300 kms in time for lunch. Not a problem as our little hirecar, apart from being skinny, was also speedy and seemed to enjoy the autoroutes, flying along at 120 kms per hour. Nicky was obviously pleased to see us, and we were glad we had had the opportunity to show Bruce and Karen another area of France. The area we are in now, the Languedoc-Roussillon is very like the Western Cape with it’s almost harsh light, gravelly soil and grey-green scrubby vegetation. The Gers, on the other hand, is softer. Rolling hills of lush green pastures alternate with dense copses of darker green trees, while the ploughed lands appear almost chocolate coloured.
Our final day with Karen and Bruce was spent exploring the coast from Narbonne eastwards. We found a much more vibrant atmosphere here than we had encountered so far. Each town has a marina simply stuffed with boats of all sorts, while all around are low-rise apartment blocks painted in the warm Mediterranean colours of cream, beige, apricot, yellow and orange. One is constantly aware of the twanging of halyards against masts, the brilliant blue of the sea and the bright, harsh siunlight. The beaches are unbelievably clean and are sandy beaches not pebble, and believe it or not, there were even some people swimming! Judging by the size of some of the boats, there are a lot of people with a lot of spare money around here.
Then suddenly, the week was over and we were on our way to Narbonne again to put Karen and Bruce on the train for Barcelona. What a wonderful time we’ve had with them; we just hope they have enjoyed it as much. Soon we will be losing Steve and Carol as well, which means we will very soon be leaving this very comfortable little house and moving on again.

Our arrival at the right place in Lezignan-Corbieres was more a matter of good luck rather than good judgement! It was going to be a more difficult task than usual, and one which we could not entrust to the Tom-tom because there are two underpasses in the town which we had to avoid at all costs. The one is only 2.3 metres high and as we are 3 .1 metres the consequences of trying to go that way don’t need explaining. We had been given detailed instructions on how to get to the house, on the assumption that we would be coming from Carcassonne, but we had been zig-zagging all over the place and instead of arriving from the West, we came in from the North. So we thought we would just head for the centre of town, find a parking place and phone for help. Ah, but we had reckoned without the roads department, who just that very day had decided to resurface the main road into town, diverting all traffic to goodness knows where. Plan B swung into action. Liz, the owner of the house we were due to borrow for a while, had told us that when we came in from the direction of Carcassonne, we would pass a large supermarket and if we had any doubts about getting to her house unaided, we should just pull in there and give her a call. So we looked for a road going to Carcassonne and started off along it looking for the supermarket. When we had gone far enough to convince ourselves that we were now so far out of town that no self-respecting supermarket could possibly be around, we turned back and found ourselves heading for ‘Centre Ville’. Suddenly we saw a sign that read ‘Free Parking 130 places’ and which pointed in the direction we were going. At this point, I should perhaps say that Lezignan has some of the narrowest streets we had yet attempted and a tense silence filled the cab as we trundled through the traffic following the signs. Finally we turned into a tiny street which opened out into the promised free parking. We both heaved a sigh of relief and I pulled out the cell phone to ring Liz to ask her to come and rescue us. “Do you know where you are?” she asked, to which I could only reply that we were in the free parking for 130 cars and to get there we had come down a tiny street past the Athletic Club. There was a silence while she thought about this and then she asked what the parking area looked like. So I described the blocks of flats on one side and the very old-looking wall around two sides, at which she gave a bit of a giggle and told us to sit tight and she would come and get us. The next minute two women walked into the parking area from a different angle, who turned out to be Liz and her friend, Val, to tell us that we had made it to the correct parking place after all and that her house was just around the corner. As I said, more good luck than good judgement.
For the rest of that day and the following one, the rain alternated between pouring and drizzling but seemed disinclined to stop completely. We occupied some of the time sitting in a launderette watching our washing going round, first in the washer and then in the drier. We had declined Liz’s offer of her machine as she has no drier, and we were seriously running out of clothes.
On Wednesday, though, the sun made a half-hearted effort which was enough for the stall-holders to set up their weekly market. We couldn’t let that go past without inspection, so off we all went, agreeing to meet back at the house for an early lunch before Liz and Val left to catch their plane back to Britain. What a weird and wonderful assortment of goods on offer. Everything from hardware to clothing, from fresh fruit and vegetables to meat and fish; from spices and olives to breads and cheeses. One could spend a fortune but luckily it isn’t necessary to buy, to find out what the products taste like. The traders seem only too happy to let you taste even if there is no chance of a sale.
After Liz and Val had left, and Andy, another friend who lives locally, had gone off back to his home, the house seemed very empty but we were quite pleased to have some time in a comfortable environment, completely on our own. It also felt quite grand to have free run of this three-storey town house, with it’s four bedrooms. We retired to bed that night feeling quite the Lord and Lady of the Manor! Our peace was not to last, though. It was still pitch-dark when we were both awakened by a man’s hoarse voice shouting and a crackling sound. Neels jumped up and opened the shutters to see what was happening, noticing as he did so that it was 3.30 in the morning. I mumbled something about telling them to shut up, thinking it was the garbage collectors, then Neels said, “Quick, come and see – there’s a car on fire out here”. I needed no second invitation but was up in flash, grabbing my camera as I went. The man was still shouting although we couldn’t make out what he was saying, then a woman’s voice called that she had rung the Pompiers. By now, flames were gushing out of the little van’s windows, and a stream of flaming diesel was slowly making it’s way along the street gutter. Being a vey narrow street, the van was, of necessity, parked right up against the wall of the house, outside one window so by the time the Fire Brigade arrived, the wall was badly scorched and the window frame completely burnt away. Whether the fire had actually spread to the inside of the house, we don’t know, but the firemen certainly sprayed water in through the broken window. What a truly horrible thing to happen to anyone, to have their car burn out right in front of the house, but what a truly scary thing to see, at such close quarters.
The rest of the week has been spent getting to know our new surroundings. Simple things like finding the way to the supermarket and back without getting totally lost in both directions, take on new menace when there is a very real chance of finding oneself at the head of a string of traffic, faced with an underpass one can’t possibly pass under. It certainly adds a small thrill to an otherwise mundane task. We have also discovered that one can add a little zing to life just by standing outside an automatically opening door, for a few minutes, until a passerby pointed out that the sign above the door was Sortie (Exit) and that the Entrée was around the corner. Or by walking confidently up to a door and pulling on the handle rather than pushing it inwards, only to realize a split second later that siesta time has started and the door is in any case locked!
While we wait for Karen, Bruce, Steve and Carol to arrive on Monday evening and Tuesday morning respectively, we are earning our keep by doing a few small repairs around the house. Well, Neels is. I, of course, am far too busy keeping in touch with all of you.
On Sunday we were supposed to go to something called a Vide Grenier which roughly translates as Empty Loft, or as we would say, a car boot sale. We have decided that there is a special design of door knocker which we just can’t live without, and that this would be the place to find one, but when we awoke on Sunday morning it was once again teeming with rain. We did go out to the little town where the sale should have been held, but there was simply nothing going on, so we came ‘home’, went to the shop for an English Sunday paper and spent all day reading the paper. Boring!! Let’s hope it clears before the family arrives.