More adventures in France Episode 12

Feeling confident that we would not be likely to run into another snowstorm this week, we again ventured into the mountains for a day out. This time we were aiming for Pic du Midi de Bigorre, one of the higher peaks in the Pyrenees. We also checked on the weather in that part of the country before leaving, hence the reason for our confidence. There is again a cableway up to the highest point, but it is really quite expensive at 25 euros per person and before we left home we decided that we would only ride on it if the weather was very, very clear. Which turned out to be quite a good decision in the end, as the cableway section only opens to the public on the 30th April! We had also thought that if we didn’t go on the cableway, we would continue on the road into the mountains which would then take us up and over the Col de Tourmalet (those of you who follow the Tour de France will recognise the name), and bring us back down again further along the range. However, that idea didn’t quite work out either as the road to the Col was closed to traffic because of the heavy snow in the area! But even if our ideas didn’t quite work out as planned, we had a wonderful day out. The little town at the end of the road to the Pic du Midi is called La Mongie and is principally a ski-resort. It is not an attractive town by any stretch of the imagination, as it appears to have been purpose-built. There are no pretty little mountain chalets, but instead large solid blocks of holiday flats and equally large and solid hotels line the road and climb up the hillside. Ski-lifts and cableways stretch out in all directions like massive spider legs, and in season I can imagine it being alive with hundreds of people wearing skis and colourful ski outfits. The day we were there though, it was very quiet. There were some people around, and a few families with small children were having fun tobogganing on a small patch of snow not far away. The shops were all closed, probably taking a welcome break after the winter season and before the summer season starts, but we found one café open that served coffee and sandwiches. Needless to say, he was doing a roaring trade! Somehow we do not seem to have great success with our trips to the mountains.
Coming back from shopping a few days back, we happened to pass the old barn which I took a picture of at the beginning of our holiday. The enormous oak tree next to it was quite bare and brown at the time, so I took another picture of it to compare the winter and the spring view. With the tree in full leaf, the old barn looks almost attractive and not quite so derelict!
Interestingly enough, although I had always considered Europe to be predominantly Catholic, Easter is not celebrated with a holiday weekend in France. Friday was business as usual at all shops and businesses, but Monday may well be a half-day holiday. All of the supermarkets have huge stocks of Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies, but there are no hot cross buns and no ‘Easter specials’. In fact, it is a complete non-event. We are quite amazed. As I so often say, ‘One learns something new every day’.

More adventures in France Episode 11

Another relatively quiet week for us. Things got done, like polishing the car and thoroughly cleaning the house before some dinner guests arrived, but there were no outstanding scenic trips this time. Although, even as I write that, I know that every time we take the car out, if only to buy groceries, we admire the scenery all around us. The wooded areas between the fields, which were all bare, brown and dry when we arrived are already wonderfully green and inviting, while the vines which were pruned back to what looked like dark-grey arms sticking out of the ground topped by a clenched fist, now have a healthy growth of greenery. There seem to be very few really private roads, apart from those which go directly to a farmhouse, and when we are not in any hurry, which is often, we frequently venture off the track and are rewarded with scenes like the ones I have included of the forest near here.
The birdlife too, seems to have increased as the food has become more plentiful. We become aware of the incessant chattering as soon as it begins to get light in the morning, and which continues all day. We have discovered a completely new bird (for us) which is also quite exciting. We kept hearing this strange sound – rather like someone shaking one of those rattle-type instruments sometimes used to accompany South American music. At first we thought it was field-mice rootling around at the base of some bamboo plants, but it was too loud for that. Then I thought that it was the neighbour’s chickens, that sometimes make their way into our garden, scratching amongst the dead leaves in the hedge, but the sound kept moving and seemed to really be coming from quite high up in the trees. Finally we identified it as a Mistle Thrush, so called because apart from insects and other berries, it loves to feed on mistletoe. It has a pleasant fluting song, but when alarmed makes this extraordinary rattling sound, which of course, is why we always heard the noise when we went outside. I’m sure they must all be enormously fat as there is so much mistletoe growing everywhere. It is a parasitic plant and it is that which I saw earlier on, forming large balls around the branches of some of the trees.
Behind the house stands an enormous Horse Chestnut tree which is now in full flower. I have heard that one can make a tea from the flowers and that it can be used as alternative medicine for certain conditions, but quite honestly, I will just enjoy looking at it! The birds and the bees also seem to enjoy it and going too close could definitely be harmful to one’s health! French bees look more like South African wasps and I’ve been told that they have a really nasty sting. As for the birds, well…………they do what birds do and nothing would persuade me to stand under the tree in the daytime! It is, however, a beautiful tree.
We are hoping to be able to venture into the mountains again next week. As the weather seems to have become more stable now, we are unlikely to run into another snowstorm, but then………..you never know!

More adventures in France Episode 10

Our main outing this last week took us to Mielan, about sixty kilometres south of where we are, to visit the very pleasant young lady who cuts my hair. Quite a long way to go for a haircut, I can hear you all saying, but I got to know her early last year and as she cuts my hair well; speaks English and, because she works from home, charges about a third less than any of the local hairdressers, we make the effort to get there. It is a lovely drive and we have enjoyed seeing the restoration of their home progressing each time we have visited. Interestingly, what they bought initially was a house with a large barn attached to the one side. What they have done is to convert the barn into a charming and very attractive house for themselves, and turned the original house in to beautifully appointed and equipped self-catering cottage, known here as a ‘gite’. There is now also a pool, horses and splendid views. It would make a wonderful base for anyone wanting to discover more of rural Gascony. Needless to say, the fact that it was a simply glorious sunny day, probably did make everything look even more attractive.
On the way back home, we had chosen to stop off in Tillac which is a sweet little mediaeval village, and the one we had been to a week ago to visit the market and the floral fair, when the weather had been so unfair and gloomy. We wanted to have another look at it without the market stalls up and down the main road, and had noticed a rather nice-looking little restaurant where we thought we may be able to get a reasonable lunch. It was not to be though! In spite of a notice in the restaurant window announcing that they are open every midday, it was as though the whole village had died! Not a soul was to be seen on the streets; all the shutters were closed and there was no sound of radio or television from behind those closed shutters. Admittedly it was during those two hours of the day when the whole of France closes down for lunch and a siesta, and it was also very hot – about 28 degrees but the closed restaurant was a disappointment. Still, it was not the end of the world, and we still had to go past Marciac which we know well and where we consoled ourselves with delicious grilled duck breast and ‘frites’. Goody! No need for me to cook that night!
All along the route we had chosen, we saw vast fields of brilliant yellow rape-seed which I am almost sure is the same thing as the canola which grows in the Overberg. The fields are so bright and make a wonderful splash of colour in amongst the rest of the lush greenness.
The rest of the week was taken up with all sorts of chores around the house. Apart from the usual house-hold chores of cleaning, washing and ironing, the grass got cut, some overgrown bushes were trimmed and a broken shutter was repaired – a job which entailed using quick-setting cement. We now know what those nasty Mafia guys made the ‘concrete boots’ out of for their victims! This cement is positively scary as it sets rock hard in just five minutes, or less if the day is very hot. As that particular day had been very hot indeed, we waited until well after 7 pm to do the work and even then it set almost immediately. We learn something new every day!

More advenures in France Episode 9

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!