Well, would you believe it?! By Monday it was time to cut
the grass again! No wonder everything around here is so green and lush – it never
stops growing at great speed. My guilty conscience pricked me into pulling some
more weeds out of the vegetable-patch-to-be, but it is really hard work. It hasn’t
rained now for about two weeks and the clay soil has dried out and is starting
to crack. Getting a fork into it to lift the weeds is like trying to dig into
concrete and if I stand on the fork for a bit of added leverage, I am in danger
of falling flat on my face or on my behind, depending which way the fork
wobbles. However, I dutifully did a bit then gave up and spent most of the rest
of the day doing my embroidery, which was far more satisfying. Meanwhile, Neels
roared up and down the lawn and ended up doing both front and back. It
certainly looks wonderful when just done – a bit like the cricket pitch at
Lords with its dark and light stripes.
It’s never-ending though and will have to be done again in a week’s time,
and even then it will be about three days overdue.
After all that exertion, we gave ourselves a day off and
went to Niort to enjoy it. Niort is quite a major town to the west of us, about
an hour’s drive away. It was a beautiful sunny day with not too much traffic on
the road so we had a really pleasant trip. Our guide book had told us that
there was underground parking near the centre of town so we made straight for
that and found a place easily. In fact it would have been hard not to find a
place to park there as there are 400 spaces on seven levels. I think the
biggest problem is actually finding your car again when you want to leave. Woe
betide the driver who doesn’t take note of his parking space number!
When we emerged into the daylight, we were horrified to find
that the day had suddenly changed from a lovely clear sunny day into a somewhat
overcast one with a freezing wind blowing. Not very conducive to wandering
around sight-seeing, at all. However the town had been recommended to us as a worthwhile
place to visit so we set off to find out why. At first we were a little disappointed
to find some beautiful old streets full of ancient buildings which had been
spoilt by one or two of the facades having been replaced with plate glass, but
as we walked further into the town we came across more and more original shop
fronts that must surely date back to the 16th and 17th
century. In fact, after we had got over the shock of seeing the plate glass
fronted old buildings, we realised that the whole town is a mixture of old and
new, some of which works well and other which looks a bit incongruous. For
instance, the pedestrianized road which leads from the Place de la Breche, the
lawned square which covers the enormous parking garage, has two bronze serpents
which indicate the entrance to the street. To my mind, they look totally out of
place and would be far more at home on a Chinese pagoda, but then I am not an
artist. To find the real ‘old town’ we had to walk right down to the end of the
road but were rewarded for our persistence. The River Sevre Niortaise runs along the edge of the
town and on the one bank is a massive chunk of masonry which is all that
remains of a medieval castle built by Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitane.
The two towers, known as donjons, still look perfectly capable of keeping
marauding armies at bay. Nearby is the market hall, a glass and steel building where markets are held every day,
under cover. Not far from here one finds the inevitable cathedral of Notre Dame
and not too far away a building which is today an exhibition centre but was
built in the 1500’s as a town hall. Called Le Pilori, it was a reminder that
the mayor of the town was also the local judge. Two iron collars fixed into the
wall allowed the criminals to be pilloried, and had to wear a board on which
was written their crime. No doubt passers-by could throw tomatoes and rotten
eggs at them!
By now it was getting late and ever mindful of the fact that
we always have two hungry animals waiting for our return, we set off home again
but made two stops along the way. The first was to a small field of tulips
which are grown every year at this time by the Round Tablers of the area. One
can stop in there and buy 20 tulips for 10 Euros and all the proceeds go
towards cancer research. I think 50 Eurocents per bloom is quite expensive in
South African terms but it is an excellent way of raising money for a
worthwhile charity. The man in charge when we were there was quite upset that
the icy wind had all but destroyed the crop, but there were still enough blooms
for us to get an idea of how brilliant the colours must have been when they were
at their best. Our other stop was at a tiny village called Celles sur Belle
where there is a spectacular Royal Abbey (Abbaye Royale) with precise formal
gardens laid out below it.
We felt frightfully grand on Wednesday, when we stayed in,
and the hairdresser came to us. One of a number of English speaking
hairdressers in the area, she was recommended by the owner of the house we’re
in and we found her to be very good. Very business-like and efficient, she
breezed into the house and in no time had the carpet in the kitchen rolled up
and out of the way, her bits and pieces laid out on the table and was ready for
the first cut. Snip! Snip! And an hour later she was gone. Neels had his usual
cut while I had a cut and blow-dry, having washed my own hair while she was
cutting Neels’. We are both highly delighted with the results and we can see
why she is so busy.
Seeing that we were now respectable again, we thought that
we should take the next day off again and this time went north west to St.
Maixant l’Ecole. We had read a piece about the town which encouraged us to
visit it, but what a sad little place it turned out to be. In reality it is a
stunning little town with ancient buildings, cobbled streets and the expected
cathedral but more than half of the shops are empty, some for sale others just
completely neglected. When we spoke to a local shop owner about it, he said it
was due to the big supermarket just down the road. The population is just not
big enough to support both the little shops and the supermarket, and guess
whose prices are better? It’s a very sad situation, made worse by the fact that
there is a large secondary school in the town, which has an excellent
reputation but which will close down if people start leaving the town. Although
it sits in the centre of a tourist area –
the Sevres River valley – I doubt if that alone will be able to save it. What a
shame.
Friday was spent mainly getting the car ready for the
roadworthy test it was due for the next day. The old lady is now 17 years old
and has given us extremely good service over the four years that we have owned
her, but it was with a little trepidation that we went off on Saturday morning.
There was no real reason for this feeling, just a small worry that her age
might be beginning to count against her. Well, it was not unfounded as the
inspector said that although in the main, the car is in first class condition,
there is a part that has to be replaced before he will give us the certificate.
He must have seen our expressions of horror at the thought of expensive repairs
and after having given us a discount on the test itself, offered to do the
repair over next weekend. He is, after all, a qualified mechanic. Whatever we
decide, it has to be done by someone, and quite soon, as we only have another
three weeks at this house and then we have to face a journey right across France
to the eastern side of the country. At the moment we are driving more or less
illegally as we are not displaying a CT (Controle Technique) certificate on the
windscreen, so we are hoping that he will contact us on Tuesday to say that it
is ‘All systems go’ for the repair.
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