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!

Hurray, Holidays!!

A somewhat less inspiring view for taiji this morning, especially as it was on the verge of raining and very overcast...

Yeah well...

The innkeeper was clearly in the best tradition of innkeepers through the ages - lots of smiles and ingratiating noises, but when I proffered €150 for the €145 bill (ouch!! Pretty expensive, given previous experiences), he asked if he should bother to get the change!! Cheeky tosser. So I left him with the €150... More like the guy at the Prancing Pony than you'd like.

Lots of motorway today, down the A75, which is toll free most of the way, apart from a section across a new bridge that saves lots of time and is very cool... So we paid up and saved time! I have to say I was glad of the easy driving.

Shiny new toll bridge :-)

Now we were truly on holidays - sun shining, temperature going up, lovely! Roads not crowded at all, although some of the driving was a bit weird... Seems like the plan is to scream past, then a few km up the road be caught up with driving very slowly - what is that about?!

HPU resting...

Thanks to the perspicacity of Mrs G, we stopped off at a Lidl as we entered the Camargue (why is it so many French placenames are so resonant for Brits? Oh yes, they've been nicked for cars!), so were able to take lunch at a small roadside oasis. Strangely, someone had actually lifted the huge concrete slab off the top of one of the tables, and dumped it between the legs. Huh? And Jen got bitten by some insect, it being the first real opportunity for that to happen, so of course it did.

Eat and be eaten!

So things were going swimmingly... Now, should we cough up the extra for the tunnel to Toulon through Marseilles?? Good plan... except that involves disobeying Mrs. Siobhan Spanky, the GPS lady, so we screw up the turn and end up actually driving through the middle of Marseilles!! Not good. Chill time. Well, partly - Missy in the car next door just wound her window up following a "*ucky wucky tiddly ucky" outburst from yours truly, more in jest than jeopardy but maybe offensive!

The Marseilles Experience

But we finally found the tunnel, and whizzed happily towards Le Pradet. Not long to go now :-). A stop at a supermarket for critical items, like something for tonight's dinner, beer, wine, that kind of thing. Then up to Collet du Pastre, where Henri is waiting for us to arrive. Looks good, and we're pleased to be here! Horrible view, rubbish location, but hey, someone has to do it.

Hooray for holidays!

A Long Day

We slept well at Champagne Douard, possibly because of the champagne and wine consumed… The sun was out, blackbirds singing amongst the vines as I did 30 minutes of taiji overlooking the Champagne hills. Lovely. And there was even a Fiat Panda 4x4*, with supporting dog, driven by a young man who looked at me quizzically before continuing down the steep track and heading left. 

View across vineyards, down the Panda track

Eventually, after breakfast with the other guests, who’d visited Moet and Chandon the day before and seen their 10? 100? million bottles in leurs caves, we loaded up and drove away. Hopefully the additional weight won't make the rear mudguards rub on the tyres...

Doesn't look much, but hey, lunch was good

Lunch was a roadside stop and very welcome, especially as the cheese was as good as it had been the evening before. We shared the lay-by with a large truck, which left not long before us - the driver had looked curiously at my walking up and down and bending over to stretch my stiff left leg. 

Handy roadside cafe

A rapid reaction choice involving a swerve into parking across the road resulted in a welcome coffee stop. The locals were out in force, including a dodgy-looking chap, the local shouty man whom everyone knew, and owner of a docile seeming bulldog that watched the passing traffic very intently. That didn't stop madame knocking out a couple of big ones for us though.

We were heading for the Auvergne, but it seemed to be quite a long way away - 300+ miles from the start, and probably due to our reluctance to travel on toll roads, further than I'd have liked. But... the roads were uncrowded, the sun was shining, and if this is hard work, then more please! 

Finally, we found the Logis Auberge du Providence, tucked away in an obscure road in St. Flour. Right beside a fast-running stream, this has apparently been an inn since the days of the pilgrimages, and in the hands of the current owner's family for five generations, and in his since the 70s. Seems ok.

We headed into town to get something to eat - apparently St Flour isn't as well-appointed as it used to be, at least on the outskirts, where some places have no roof! 

Roofless in St Flour

It turns out that St Flour proper is on a massive hill, which we had started to walk up, using the "Chemin des chevres", a series of steep steps and narrow passageways winding up the side of the hill. 

Gate sculpture in St Flour

You'll note from the background of the fox sculpture above that it was pretty thundery, in fact, there were some big bangs and flashes some distance away during our walk, and our choice of possible food venue was looking a bit on the "with optional shower" side, not to speak of "includes mandatory cardio workout". So, both chickens and sloths, we headed back to the hotel which offered a local menu. Another time maybe...

The hotel was decorated in a very homely, traditional style - lots of wood panelling, odd stuffed animals, and a strange fossil-based table in the bar, where we enjoyed a paralysingly alcoholic local red beer. Maybe the wine didn't help either...

Ammonites embedded in furniture!!

Dinner was ok - duck for me with blueberry jus, Jen had steak, and I had the tartetatin (again blueberry!!) and Jen the creme brûlée with mysterious chocolate under-stratum. Not earth shattering, but we were hungry... Then bed time, and glad of it, it seemed like a very long day!

* James May, in the last of his short series “The Cars of the People” [check], posited that the European wine industry is entirely based on the bedrock that is the Fiat Panda 4x4, on the basis that without it, it would have become impossible to support so much with so few people. At least, that was my reading of it - perhaps he just wanted an excuse to consume wine on a car-based TV programme!

Now that's a holiday...

Argh, it's 4 'o' clock in the morning... Why why why do we have to leave at this time of day? We hates it...

Ear-shattering Audi

But it's not that bad driving against the tide of commuters and emergency vehicles to the Chunnel, took less than expected, to the extent that we got a train almost an hour earlier. Excellent, but for the fact that the guy parked in front of us (see Reading registered Audi above) had his alarm shatter our hearing moments after the off! Still, he came back from the loo pretty soon and it's only 25 minutes anyway...

Rain rain rain... At least we got an amazing view of the clouds across the plains of northern France - I love the expansive view and perspective, maybe the Canadian Prairies are a good place to be!

Lunch at Le St Vincent

Come coffee time, there was no coffee to be had, and that following an extensive search of Saint Quentin and a further scan of another town, T-something. So we settle for a proper lunch at lunchtime, with all the local bons gens. Crudités, veal stew with mash and a coffee, rather than dessert, to finish to reduce the likelihood of explosion! Lovely. Thanks Le Saint Vincent!

And now was the best time - rolling along empty roads, relaxed, getting that holiday feeling, if this is the best it gets then that's plenty good enough!

Chambres d'hôte...

But there's still Chambre d'hote and Champagne Douard to come, if we did but know it! Yes, we've booked to stay in a champagne winery tonight :). 

Champagne Douard!

Yes this is the place to be... We were worried that we'd miss the tour, because we'd popped over to Epernay and got held up in traffic ... It turned out to be good timing, they'd just finished cleaning up for Le Big Day tomorrow, when the bottlers arrive and put an entire year's harvest into the bottle in a single day! No pressure then (although it's champagne, so pressure is not only sufficient but necessary!).

To cut the sorry tale short, after a very interesting tour with Douard Fils, and three incredibly different and increasingly marvellous glasses of champagne, we're in for 24 bottles! Hopefully we'll get enough of them home at the end of the hols for everyone to try :).

Fortunately we'd planned to have bread and cheese in the room after the big lunch, because neither of us is driving anywhere...

G'night! >hic!<