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.