Travelling again Part 11

My goodness! What a difference! Are we still in the same country?! But I am getting ahead of myself. The week started in the same dreary fashion, weather-wise, as the past week, but we were not too concerned as we were busy packing up and cleaning the house in preparation for our change of accommodation. Packing was quite a problem as we had checked the forecast for the area we were going to – the Alpes-Maritime – and had seen that a lovely sun was going to shine and the temperatures were set to rise. But being the eternal pessimist, I put in quite a few warm clothes anyway. More about that later. We managed to leave nearly on time with our destination for the night about 350 kilometers ahead of us at Vergéze, just short of Nimes. Nimes, of course, is where denim originated. Back in the mists of time, cotton was imported from Egypt, and was spun and woven into a sturdy fabric used to make clothes for the local workers. This value-for-money fabric soon spread to the whole of Europe and the clothes were known as ‘articles de Nimes’. Quite soon the word had spread to America and a trouser factory which specialised in hard-wearing garments snapped it up and ‘denim’ was born. However, we were not stopping in Nimes, but in Vergéze which has its own claim to fame. Perrier water is bottled there and nowhere else in the world, so if you are a fan of sparkling Perrier, you can always be sure that it is the real thing. That day’s drive was uneventful although the road was rather busy. We had again opted to drive the motorway route and this time the motorway was the direct road to Italy, and to Marseilles, for part of the route, which meant a huge number of giant trucks on the road with us. Our car felt very small alongside them. The day was grey, but ideal for travelling and we made very good time. The lush rolling countryside of the Gers slowly gave way to the harsher and more arid areas of the Aude. As we approached Carcassone, it looked every bit the medieval city that it is, but we have explored it before so did not detour any closer. We have always had faith in ‘Jane’ our navigator, but we both looked at each other as she directed us down ever smaller streets, once we arrived in Vergéze, a small town of once-elegant homes and narrow cobbled streets. However, she was correct again and when she announced that we had ‘reached our destination’, our overnight stop was indeed right in front of us. What was once a farmhouse and stabling for donkeys has been turned into a delightful country inn, with its own restaurant and a charming outdoor area between the two where we could just imagine the patrons enjoying a glass or two of something nice, in the heat of summer. It was too cool for us to do that, but we did enjoy a delicious meal, served by our host. The following day we set off again, but had been persuaded by our host to make an enormous detour to visit the ‘Pont du Gard’ which is a World Heritage Site. The ‘Gard’ is the river which the bridge spans and its purpose was to bring water to Nimes from the source of the Eure River, fifty kilometres away. It is, in fact, an aqueduct and is remarkable because it was built by the Romans in about the first century AD. Built in three tiers of arches, it is 48 meters high and is 490 meters at its widest point. It is a quite remarkable piece of engineering and one wonders if anything built today will still be standing in 2000 years, in spite of the ravages of time and weather. It was definitely worth the visit and in the end, did not add too much to our total journey as we just replanned the route, which now took us through Avignon which, of course, has its own famous ‘Pont’. We were now heading toward the coast again and not just any coast but the famous ‘Côte d’Azur’. After a making a quick stop at a motorway service station, someone was thrilled to bits to find a gleaming scarlet Ferrari parked next to our beat-up little car. I wanted to take a picture of the two vehicles next to each other but hadn’t the nerve as the owners were still sitting in the Ferrari. I also thought of offering to swop cars but didn’t do that either! In any case, the car had a Russian registration and my Russian is hopeless! This was to be the first of a series of super-luxury vehicles that went swooping past us from time to time, no doubt heading for places like St-Tropez, Monte Carlo and Monaco, the playgrounds of the super-rich. There are obviously plenty of those people as the skyscraper apartment blocks and hotels are mind-boggling. Firstly, they are so high and secondly there are so many of them. From a view site high above, we could look down on all of this ‘concrete jungle’ and could only be amazed. On and on we went, on a wonderful road with numerous tunnels along the way,until the road took us right into Italy where we turned and went inland. All the while, the weather had been getting warmer and warmer and the once-grey sky was now a clear, cloudless blue. Our road got narrower and narrower and once again, we were so glad to have a tiny car. It twisted and turned; now this way, then that, until finally we rounded a bend in the road and we had arrived. A most charming, very busy little town on the edge of a lake and a river. We had luckily been shown a video of the town and the apartment, so we were quickly able to get our bearings, find a parking place and unpack ourselves and our luggage into the new accommodation. A slight hitch occurred when our key wouldn’t open the ground-floor entry door, but we had also been given the name of the lady who looks after the apartment, so we trotted off to her house which is close by. Unfortunately she was out, but we were then given the name of the local butcher, who lives in another apartment in the same building in the hope that he could let us in. He could, of course, and was so kind that he even left his shop and came with us to make sure that we were all right. We quickly brought everything in and went straight out again for a walk around the town before the sun disappeared. It was now so hot that we had discarded our jerseys and were walking around in short sleeves. The key was sorted out early the next day and caused us no problems – instead it helped us meet some new people. The next day the driver had a day off from driving and instead we walked through the town. It is a crazy jumble of tall old buildings separated by narrow passage ways which they call ‘ruelles’. The mountain sits just behind the town and looms over it and the houses climb up its side. Houses on the mountain side of the road have steep stairs leading up to a front door which is in fact on the first floor level, while houses on the lower side have stairs which drop away into seemingly dark caverns. There are no pavements, gutters run down the centre of the road and doors open straight on to the road. It has a distinctly medieval feel to it, but fortunately not the smells to match! One of the windows to ‘our’ apartment looks out over the main square, and provides plenty of entertainment. There was a definite air of busy-ness, perhaps because it was Saturday, with people all bustling about doing their shopping, chatting, children running about and the church bells chiming the hour (and sometimes in between, which we haven’t quite worked out yet), cars coming and going and the odd dog barking. After being in the solitude of the countryside for some time, it has almost re-energised us. Meanwhile, the temperature has continued to rise and by midday today the automatic sign above the chemist shop told us that it was 23 degrees – easily the warmest we’ve been since we arrived in France, with perhaps the exception of the day spent in St Emillion when we nearly got sunburnt. Unfortunately, an old man we met on our walk shook his head gloomily and promised a storm very soon. I hoped he was wrong. I should have known better though. The locals are generally correct when it comes to the weather in their area. However, the storm was a very quiet one with no dramatics but quite a lot of water which washed all the streets nicely and in the morning when we awoke, just the tips of the mountains were cloud-covered but the town was sparkling clean. Not wanting to waste a moment, we hopped into the car and set off for Saorge about 20 kilometers north of here. The road was not too narrow which was very good as it was so spectacular that the driver had to take time off concentrating on the road every now and again, to admire the mountains and gorges we were traversing. We took a turning that said Saorge East which was very narrow and winding and suddenly we rounded a corner and there in front of us was this fantastic little village clinging to the side of the mountain. It looked for all the world like a picture one would expect to find as a jigsaw puzzle, with masses of tall narrow houses crammed as close together as they could get. We drove further until threatened with a dead end, at which we turned the car and parked, walking the rest of the way into town. As is so often the case, the whole is more interesting than its separate parts and once in the town one was no longer aware of its precarious position, although the narrow houses and cobbled streets were still attractive. A restaurant in the centre of town was open and we could look right through the building and out of the front windows which had a view looking down in to the gorge we had just driven through. Later as we left the town, we stopped to identify which building it was and decided that it was the one that was one storey high in the main street of the town, but six more floors supported it against the mountain side! Leaving Saorge, we carried on north for a while and had just decide to turn back and were looking for a suitable turning place when we saw ahead of us yet another village clinging to the side of the mountain. This was Tende, but where Saorge had all the magical qualities of a jigsaw picture, Tende just looked neglected and rather sad. What a shame! So we backtracked for a short distance and then turned towards Sospel, a road which would take us over the Col de Brouis at a maximum height of 879 meters. This road was quite a different story to the one leading to Saorge – and was definitely not for the faint-hearted. We hair-pinned our way to the top and then hair-pinned our way down again to find Sospel lying at the bottom of the valley on either side of a river. It looked pleasant but very ordinary until we walked into the centre of town where we were surprised to find an enormous cathedral with a Grecian type of exterior decoration. It was so huge when compared to the houses around it, and the interior was so lavishly decorated – all in pale blue and silver – with Michaelangelo-style paintings covering the entire vaulted ceiling, that it was in actual fact a bit obscene. Apart from this, we saw nothing more of interest although we were sure that during the week, the town would be buzzing as there are a number of shops of all sorts, and even more cafes, bars and restaurants. Our road home was also of the wiggly variety with the views first on my side and then on his, and we took our time over it until we met up with the main road to Breil from Ventimiglia and found where all the traffic had been all day!