Walking in Provence

Jen and I have done a few walks while we've been here, both with The Twins and without. The first was a walk around the Mine de Garonne, an old copper mine out to the southeast of here. In fact, I've since been running round that route most days, it's a very handy 5km-ish trip, with some fantastic views of the sea, lovely if harsh scenery and great smells of pine and other herby things. 

 

Trail map near Le Pradet

Here's the official trail maps posted at most of the entry points, this was taken on this morning's jaunt, just up the road from the house. The mine walk is the green ring, and I usually run along the red C30 trail and back to it. The boys did an amazing job walking around the green bit, it's very steep and the ground is alternately rocky, gravelly and sandy, so very hard work for everyone but especially them!

View from Round The Mine walk

Here's the first view you get to - it just explodes in front of you as you emerge from some trees to a sharp right hand bend in the path, where it's on your left.

Time for a pit stop!

The chaps plodded round wonderfully, holding onto hands and pointing out things they liked, and likewise having things pointed out to them! By the time we'd gone 2/3rds of the way round they were flagging, so time for a snack and a drink in the shade! They really enjoyed it though, and we did more later in the week.

Discovery trail map - the round the mine walk!

There are other walks too - I both ran and rode up the C29 red route to the top of the hill, and Jen and I came down that way yesterday when we walked the C30 north from the "You are here" and back down the C17 which ends up at the top of the C29. That was quite a good walk, again about 5km.

View from the top of C29

J&J walk yesterday up C30, C17, down C29

And today, possibly our last day, we did a variation on the Mine walk - basically, do the start of the Mine walk, then branch off on the Blue route, rejoining at the head of the C30. That was pretty "interesting" and challenging - the path is not so well made up, even broken completely in places, and there was a mistaken detour because of the dodgy signing of the route!

Modified Mine walk

You can see the detour - the spur on the western vertical, we were walking clockwise basically. The path ran out of steam fortunately, or we'd have ended up back on the route we'd come on. I really should use a compass to keep my bearings better!

Mysterious Macca pakka stone pile

Again, great views, and we had lunch in a small shaded car park just above the cliff - you can see the meanderings about in the bottom left hand corner! No pictures - hey, gotta be in that moment!

Black trees

I love the way the black-trunked trees stand out, like snakes emerging from grass, or whatever simile matches best. It would be pleasing to render this in some artistic medium sometime, as a reminder!

Apres Le Deluge, Moi

It rained today, having been threatening for a while. It was overcast when we got up to get Jen to mass, and getting darker and denser as I did some Taiji.

The clouds rolled in, the mountains were not at all visible, and the bay to the left scarcely there. It started to rain and got harder and harder, not helped by the guttering splashing lots of overflow onto the terrace outside the kitchen! Some lightning and nearby thunder... We had started to have breakfast outside under the porch but when the wind came up it was too wet for comfort.

And now it's clearing, again from the west. Quite an interesting morning given it's Sunday and nobody seems to be about much.

Leaving - or are we?

So time to leave... Liz, Kirsty and the guys are packed and off by 8.30 to Nice airport. We tidy the place up, finish our packing and jam everything in the car. The plan, given that France is in a bit of turmoil at the moment, is to go via Basel so we can a) ensure we get fuel by going home via Switzerland, Germany and Belgium b) drop a bunch of crap off with L&K so they don't have to carry it home. Hurray. GPs programmed... all set, off we roll about 10.

About 10km west of Toulon, 10.20-ish, we're doing a comfortable 110 kmh, the car engine stops totally with the diesel pre-ignition light lit up - again! It had come on previously on the way down, but shown no signs during the Baux de Provence trip of 300 km. Nothing happening... doesn't restart. Call the AA "in France" number, we have to call the 112 emergency and ask for motorway recovery - boo. But they're amazing, provide a translator, we give our location and 30 minutes later up rolls the man...

HPU ignominiously aloft...

He speaks to the magic AA guy, who tells him to take us to the nearest Honda dealer, which he does. I asked him if he'd drive us to Basel, but he didn't seem interested although he was amused by the idea! The car looks a bit forlorn at the dealer amongst all those bright shiny new ones, dusty and a bit over-stuffed, like a well-used sofa. At least the AA pays for the recovery, which is both unexpected and excellent!

We speak to Sandra, the apres-vente service manager, who manages to enter our and the car's details into their system, although the DVLA registration document is a bit of a newie to her! Apparently the technician can check it about 14.00 - it's currently 11.30-ish, and maybe we should allow a couple of hours for him to do that? And by the way, she can't call +44 UK numbers from her phone, because they're blocked, so we'll have to call her. So we slope off to the local mall, dominated by a whale of an Auchan hypermarket with shoals of suckerfish shoe, dress and phone shops. Fortunately there's cafes and restos too, because we're going to need to do something, which turns out to be coffee, lunch, people watching. Oh yes, and checking Booking.com for local places to stay, which there are - hurray! But let's see what happens first...

Trying to stay calm...

Eventually, we get to 15.00 and call, since an hour seems like enough, at which point neither Sandra nor I can understand each other really on the phone, although she does mention five-something. So we go back to the dealer, which is only 5 minutes walk away. Sandra ropes in the manager, who speaks reasonable English, and together we work out that

• The problem is the camshaft sensor which is failing consistently now owing to the higher temperatures
• A part is going to take 5 days to arrive at the earliest i.e. Tuesday next week!

Eek. I ask about how we rent a car... Monsieur says "we can find you one...", Madame says "I can't do that..." in French, he says "of course you can..." and she starts to get forms. Monsieur then says "it's free." They are giving us a courtesy car!! Amazing. And it turns out to be a Honda Jazz Hybrid, in bright red. Marv. We hurriedly (why hurriedly?? stupid - we actually have lots of time...) transfer cases and various useful or perishable items to the new wheels, which are smaller than the Civic, at least, with the back seats up.

Now all we need is somewhere nice to stay for five days at least - maybe... Maybe Henri and Katy will let us stay over some more if they don't have a follow-on booking?? I call Henri and leave a message. Then we drive back towards Le Pradet on the basis that we might as well be there as anywhere - but we've left the super-perishable stuff in the Civic! A quick battle with Toulon rush hour, and we've recovered it, everyone is so friendly it's ridiculous.

Never been so glad to see one of these...

And Henri is more than happy to let us stay over until Tuesday or Wednesday - they have people coming in the following weekend, but we're ok. What a result! And would we like to go to the street party tonight? Actually, thanks, but no, we're utterly shattered after all that, and calling so many people to set up next week...

• G-kids maternal g-mum to say they can't stay with us from Tuesday, probably the biggest deal
• John's physio appointment
• John's R1200GS MOT & service to reschedule - now the day before leaving for France (again!!)
• Jen's hearing aid appointment
• Milk delivery cancellation!!
• Move the Eurotunnel trip from Sunday night...

So it's down the road to the boulangerie-cum-takeout pizza spot - hurray - we get to try it! -  and ice cream and beer on the terrace before it all gets a bit overwhelming...

Wow, that was a long day!

Happy Days!

it's been a wonderful two weeks with the Twins, doing Toulon (strictly speaking, Le Pradet, slightly south east of Toulon). There's just too much to say really, and we've been busy doing it, so no posts! Here's some Twin-related activities...

We went to the post-wedding (next day!) brunch, with sandwiches, cake and beer at Plage de l'Argentiere, where Messrs Bobs and Bosh re-met the sea after a long break... They both took a lot of persuading, and Josh wouldn't walk on the sand with his socks on, but Oliver got the hang of walking and splashing in the edge of the waves...

Ultimate beach picture!

Joy!

Chasing each other around the terrace and thought he kitchen and living rom was a popular activity - sometimes it involved the rucksack dinosaurs also!

Terrace-asaur action

Jena and I had the guys to ourselves a couple of days, including the girls' visit to St Tropez...

Pre-bed chill with a drink!

Neither of the guys wanted to sit down in the paddling pool when it came out, no idea why! But it did provide a large source of water for wetting things...

Fairly restrained pool action

Living the Life

Every morning I go down two long flights of steps and an alley, a short cut to the main road, to the really local bakery. It looks more or less like a hole in the wall - I missed it the first time I walked past it!

Boulangerie

It's run by a couple, not sure who the baker is, but possibly it's the guy, who was there the first time I went. Since then, it's been his wife who's serving, and I've usually bought a couple of baguettes, some croissants and also some pretty deadly pain au chocolat... Marvellous! The other customers seem to be older guys - I wonder if it's Madame or the bread that's the draw?

They have a wood-fired takeaway pizza operation on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Maybe we'll try that sometime...

Carrieres et Lumières etc.

Jen and I went for the day to Baux-de-Provence, a hilltop castle and village near Arles, especially to see the "son et lumiere" put on in the old limestone quarry caves. The venue is utterly amazing, and we had no idea what it would be like so were taken completely aback. It's a vast space cut into the mountain, which was last used as an active quarry in 1937 I think, and in 1977 was adapted at the behest of Jean Cocteau as a display space for huge projections of photographs. It's since been leased to Culturespaces, a company that puts on amazing multimedia displays, and the current one is based on the work of Marc Chagall.

Quarry with the lights on

The picture shows something of the raw walls of the space with the lights on, as it were. I didn't get any really good pictures of the show in action, but here's one...

Show in progress

You can just about make out the people watching, the scale of the projections is enormous! Jena and I stood in the middle for best effect, and let the whole thing wash over us and envelop us. Amazing. So good, we watched it go round twice! However... the place is really really cold, being underground 'n' all, and we were chilled to the bone! Fortunately we'd taken some sleeved tops, which made it possible to stay as long as we did, but we were glad to get out into the sun!

View of some of quarry outside

After that, we headed over to the castle and village of Baux-de-Provence to check out the castle and a small exhibition of more Chagall stuff. It's built on top of a rock promontory, and totally dominates the surrounding area, making it ideal for castles and so on.

View from castle enclosure

The panorama shot shows the incredible view of vineyards and olives in the fields below. It's been like this for 000s of years! Of course, it was incredibly windy, with the Mistral blowing hard today and on a hilltop too.

We had a sandwich from a well-stocked epicerie, taken in a nice warm sheltered low-wind spot!

Highly ungroovy Brit lunch!

And then went to the Chagall exhibit, in the Yves Brayer museum - this was another guy we'd never heard of and his stuff was pretty interesting, he is a 20th century French artist known for portraying "realist" life and so on. Chagall stuff was from '77-ish, circus scenes and so on all filtered through his remarkable view of everything, he was 83 or so when he did it all, incredible to be working so hard and a lesson to us all!

Yves Brayer Musee

Great day, very inspiring!

TV In Extremis aka The FA Cup

Of course, Man U were playing in the FA Cup Final in the middle weekend... And we managed to find a video feed (check filmon.com). However, the most reliable wireless signal was on the terrace where it's pretty light for a laptop screen...

Mrs. G and the FA Cup Final

So Jen ended up sitting with a glass of wine and the laptop.... Fortunately Man U won after all that!