Although Monday started off as rather a miserable day, we had to get to Auch as early as possible in order to deliver some documents, which had to go to South Africa by courier, before the cut-off time for same day collection. We made it in good time and then found ourselves with time on our hands and no real plans to do anything. Auch is only about a half hour drive away, so it is an easy run. On the several occasions that we have driven this route, we had noticed a tiny village perched on top of a hill overlooking the national road, with w the somewhat strange ame of Ordan-Larroque, so on the way home again, we turned in there to have a look. It is such a pretty and neat village that we promised ourselves that we would return on a sunny day. And the sunny day presented itself later in the week. We had arranged to go with Nicky to another town further north of us called Lectoure, which has plenty to see and is also the only place in the world where woad is still made in the traditional way. Naturally, it is no longer used by the Brits to paint their bodies and frighten their enemies, but it is now used extensively as a dye for fabrics, pastel crayons and even paint. The mediaeval technique was revived by a couple – Denise and Henri Lambert – who were fascinated by the unusual shade of blue paint on the shutters of the old tannery that they bought. After much research and a few lucky finds, they discovered the process of making blue woad from the woad plant leaves, and today there is a sizeable factory and research centre where colourants are produced for everything even plastics and ceramics. Sadly Henri passed away last year at the age of 54 and is obviously greatly missed.
The rest of the town was looking quite beautiful! The town gardeners have obviously been hard at work and every traffic island is a mass of glorious spring flowers. Although there was a market on in the main street of the town and people were milling around all over the place, there was not a speck of litter that we could see, and almost all of the buildings were looking as if they had been given a quick splash of paint along with the annual spring-clean. We had taken a picnic lunch which we enjoyed sitting on a bench at one end of the town, in a garden, making sure that we disposed of our lunch wrappers in the bins provided! We had picked up a leaflet at the Tourist Office that showed a walking tour around the town, so we did part of that before heading off again, and by the time we returned to the car we had all stripped off our jerseys and were strolling along in shirtsleeves. What a change!
As the day was still clear and sunny and the hour was not too late, we turned into Ordan-Larroque again and were rewarded with a sunny view of a really pretty village. It is almost too good to be true – every house is in excellent condition, all the shutters are painted and clean. Almost like a film set in the attention to detail, with every building appearing to have been built in the same period, although we are sure that some of them are really quite new. Again, everything looked fresh and clean, and even if the entire village only consists of about twenty houses, there is a church and community hall; a public library and a bakery. It is a dear little model village.
The week ended with us going down to Tillac which was combining a market and a floral fair, and where we had arranged to meet someone who may be going to help us with a project of a literary nature. The weather had changed drastically again which was a real shame as all the lovely flowers and seedlings of the floral fair were all under cover and I could not photograph them. On the way there, while barrelling along a long straight road, two deer leapt out into the road in front of us which gave us both a huge fright but luckily there was no other traffic and Neels was able to swerve to avoid the back one. On the way back from Tillac we came across someone who wasn’t so lucky. There were violent skid marks in the road and a car lying on its side in the ditch, and we are quite sure he was trying to avoid a deer. Later on, and nearer to home we saw another one standing all alone in the middle of a ploughed field, not far from the road. We have sighted deer in the past but never so many in one morning. Perhaps the cooler weather has brought them all out. We are due to dine out tonight with friends so will have to take great care getting there and back. We have no desire to also end up sideways in the ditch!
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