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!!
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