Progressing to Portugal

The drive from Spain to Portugal was one of the nicest we had been on in a while – lots of green eucalyptus trees and a great road. Our destination was a really pleasant surprise as well, Ponte de Lima. The little town is named after the multi-arched (31) medieval bridge that crosses the Lima river. The town displays a great deal of civic pride with lots of statues. Apart from the usual stamping and snorting bulls and mounted cavalrymen, there are large statutes of musicans and farming folk.

A French man parked next to us was doing repairs to an oops on his motorhome with man’s best friend – silver duct tape. Stuart offered him some of his white tape to cover up the silver and act as the ‘invisible mend’, he was effusive in thanks, standing back to admire his handiwork.

Ponte de Lima, Roman soldiers crossing river

Porto – the home of port wine is a ‘must see’, and we headed to the coast to a campsite at Vila Cha where we could catch the metro into the city. The campsite was in the low season and I don’t know why, but we were sent to the end furthest from reception (ie wifi) passing all the other motorhomes. Not only was it furthest away but the access was tree-lined and narrow, Stuart steered this way and that to avoid taking out a wing-mirror or corner of the truck. Our designated area seemed to be the home for stray cats and kittens and they were always on the lookout for an open motorhome door to jump into. I love cats but these didn’t look very healthy, poor wee things, I felt bad shooing them out.

In the morning we shared a taxi ride to the metro station with a French couple. The old Mercedes had a worn out suspension and bumped and rolled along the cobbled streets, but the driver was friendly and spoke English, he promised to meet us at 5pm for the return trip.

The highlight of Porto for me was the trip through Taylors port wine lodge established in 1692 with a tasting afterwards. We were offered a chilled white port, aperitif style and a late bottled vintage.

Port is made by stopping the grape juice fermenting after about 3.5 days by adding a colourless grape spirit. This preserves some of the natural sweetness of the grape in the finished wine. The oldest port houses are British. A ban on importing wine from France had caused merchants to look further afield to Spain and Portugal and to help the wine travel better, the ‘fortification’ process was invented.

The lodge (as they are called) was up a steep cobbled road from the Douro River. The lodges face the old area of Porto across the river, with its narrow colourful houses piled on top of one another, it is full of character. It is to the lodges that special vintages are bought to be processed into various types of port, they used to travel down the river in barrels on barges but are transported by road now.

Porto is undergoing renovations and old buildings are being revitalised, graffiti in Porto has been elevated to a form of art and is used in some places as decoration to disguise otherwise ugly features. Porto still has a long way to go though to become as elegant as its sister city Lisbon, but that is just my personal opinion.

We caught the metro back and there was our driver, as promised, waiting for us and we bumped and rattled back to the campsite where the staff are helpful and welcoming but with the grey weather and all those permanent caravans it is a bit depressing. I did a magazine swap however – a lovely new ‘English House and Garden’ for a photographic magazine, woo hoo, I miss seeing English books etc

Looking across Douro to Porto old town, wine barge in foreground

The weather is cooler and the way to warm weather is south and coastal but we are pressing on east and central. On our way east we stopped at Amarante, once again there are cobbled streets and narrow roads. I watched some small cars carefully thread themselves through a narrow difficult turn from a medieval bridge into a square. Then I looked from the other side of the turning and saw a sign bearing the graphic of a caravan and tent, pointing to the camping ground. Surely a mistake as there is no way a car towing a caravan could ever make the turn and other options looked hopeless as well. We continued to walk over the old bridge and saw an even bigger sign pointing in the direction of the difficult passage to the camping ground. A separate sign displayed the maximum length of a vehicle to be 5.5m, so if a Mini with a tent wanted to get to the campsite they would be ok. Such is the cruelty of satnavs and municipal officers.

We journeyed on to Peso da Regua, part of the way following the Douro river looking out at the vines turning gold and crimson on the narrow terraces that rise steeply from the river. The lines they make look like contours on a topo map. We continued to follow the Douro, passing steep fields of Chupa Chup grey/green olive trees and ended up in the Foz Cua valley that is famous for prehistoric rock drawings. Such is the demand to see the sites where archeologists are working that even in this low season we missed out. However we took advantage of the carpark outside the futuristic-styled archeology museum building and made ourselves at home for the night. The museum is perched on the edge of a cliff with a grand view over the river, precision-built drystone walls line the 2km access road and olive and almond trees cover the hills. We spent time inside the museum and came out not a lot wiser.

Overlooking terraces of vines above Cua, near Douro valley

The food in other countries is always interesting, I peruse the supermarket shelves picking up items and wondering what they are. Here, in the meat chiller there are long narrow packs of something called ‘enviserado’ - and they looked exactly like it too – the enviserated entrails of animal unknown. Portugal specialises in salt cod. This looks like a fish opened up, flattened out, dried, covered in salt and as stiff as cardboard. It is everywhere, especially on display outside shops. I had the misfortune to accidently order it in a restaurant after I thought I established that I was getting fresh cod.

Pastel de nata however is a different story - crispy pastry cases with creamy egg custard topped with a thin brulee finish. I buy two, one for me and one for Stuart – then eat both myself. Vinho Verde (green wine) is the Portugese equivalent of Beaujolais, a wine that is meant to be drunk while young and fresh. Stuart found a few of these and added them to the roaming cellar, along with a bottle of port.

Street kitten with incredible eyes, lots of street cats had Siamese traits

We have our sights set on Spain again as we have travelled in Southern Portugal before but Spain is much bigger and lots to see, so we have set the satnav to ‘allow tolls’ after swearing never to travel on Portugals minor roads again. The driver doesn’t see much and the passenger does some teeth sucking and wincing when the walls on either side of the road tower over the truck, the camber leans into some serious ditches and oncoming traffic doesn’t stay on their own side.

Cruising down the Spanish coast

Spanish Sunday lunch must be an institution. We have been trapped in a carpark surrounded by cars that parked where cars are not intended and nudged right up against us in their fervour to get off to a long Sunday lunch.

Glad to escape the melee, we set the satnav without checking the route. Herself in the satnav intended to add extra stress to our day by sending us over a steep, narrow mountain pass with Spanish lunch partakers out in force. The road seemed to go on and on, becoming narrower and steeper, Spain is a very mountainous country. Sundays in Spain are becoming our bete noir (or Spanish equivalent), but we finally popped out onto a motorway. A fog had settled in and as we travelled over massive viaducts we had no idea what the surrounding countryside looked like.

There was a steep descent down to the harbour where we parked right in front of the water in Cudillero, we glimpsing some brightly coloured wooden boats bobbing on the water when the fog opened for a minute or two. Dotted about the port walls were signs saying ‘no autocaravanas – E300 fine’. We didn’t like the idea of the fine but there were only 6 motorhomes at the port so when the local police did their rounds Stuart spoke to the Gardia about the parking and was told “it isn’t allowed - but I don’t have a problem”.

Senda de Oso cycleway

Before we had set off I loaded my washing machine (black plastic box) with warm water, a few clothes and detergent. The place we arrived at had no motorhome services for rinsing the washing and I carted my washing machine around to some fishing shacks and filled the machine from a tap attached to a fishing shack. I thought I was hidden, but an old Spanish lady, smartly dressed for lunch, wanted to see the pesche (fish) in my black washing box. My small bit of Spanish didn’t help so I showed her the washing. She nodded in understanding and walked away, probably disappointed.

Lonely Planet recommended a restaurant in Cudillero, it was expensive by local standards but something was lost in lost in translation and not what we expected. In Europe bars serve drinks and restaurants serve food; as we had arrived too early at our restaurant of choice we had to kill half an hour so we went to the bar next door. I asked for sidra but was offered a 750ml bottle only. I declined but was interested to see how the local flat cider is served . The bottle is inverted on a machine and the cider is sucked up by pump action and squirted into an angled glass. The customer only take a small amount at a time – the machine aerates the flat cider which is a bit like scrumpy. It does serve a medicinal purpose however, as I described to Tim – it has the effect of All Bran but doesn’t taste as nice.

The fog never really lifted totally so the next afternoon we headed to Teverga, the terminus of the Senda de Oso – cycleway/path of bears. The trip was easy on big main roads, a nice change from our previous difficult trip. The towns we passed through are shabby looking with litter and some graffiti. The footpaths etc are not maintained and it looks like a general lack of money is the reason. The aire at Teverga was not too bad and had a backdrop of white rock mountain and lots of trees.

Our plan was to cycle from the aire end of the cycleway and then back again. It was easy peasy lemon squeezy getting to the other end of the cycleway, I don’t think my feet turned the pedals at all. That is never a totally good feeling. We passed the enclosures of the brown Cantabrian bears and I saw 4 bears who happened to be close to the perimeter fence (lunch time for bears). They look quite docile with soft brown fur and are large. We cycled through some little villages and took photos of the traditional storehouses that are still used. The storehouses sit off the ground on stone pillars and have a large plinth on top of the pillar that the actual storehouse sits on – it looks rodent-proof. Of course the cycle back to the truck was all pedal-pedal for 20km, we went back through tunnels and underneath rock overhangs. The cycleway is a disused little railway track with lots of chestnut trees lining the route. The discarded cases of the chestnut are like little squashed hedgehogs. People were out collecting the chestnuts, examaining the green hedgehogs for any shiny brown nuts inside. Autumn colours were everywhere and I enjoyed cycling through big drifts of crisp brown leaves making a satisfiying crunch under Hildas wheels.

Storehouse

Foz was next on the list, a small town on the edge of the Atlantic. Once again we had a waterfront view and there were bars and restaurants close by. We are in the off-season now and it was quiet, turquoise water was rolling in breakers on the beach and harbour walls protected the boats. Other seaside towns on the coast have the same set up. The towns we have passed through have a lot more high rise apartments than we see at home, and in this quiet season the shutters are down and there is a deserted air about them. I keep thinking that the short European holiday time leaves such a waste of resource in all the empty hotels/apartments/etc

City life, we passed through a couple of large cities – Ferrol and A Corunna which just confirmed my idea that motorhomes and cities don’t really go together. We ended up parked for the night under the Tower of Hercules in A Corunna. It was a nice spot close to the water but also close to the football stadium. The Tower of Hercules is a lighthouse built by the Romans in 1 AD but re-clad much later on.

Pilgrims outside cathedral in Santiago

Compostela de Santiago is the end of the pilgrims‘ route, with a visit to the cathedral the purpose of their whole trek. We walked into town and followed the crowds to find the cathedral. A lot of gold was glittering in this church and it was undergoing extensive renovations. Crowds were mooching around in the large paved square in front of the church, people were carrying sticks and backpacks with the scallop shell (icon of the Camino de Santiago). I heard a lot of American accents. We walked around the charming old area of the town and along some streets with restaurants displaying incredible arrays of seafood and beef waiting to be cooked. It didn’t look like budget pilgrim food.

It was a short drive before we reached our place to stay for the night and whoo-hoo – a laundromat. The laundromat was next to a supermarket so we loaded up the machine, did the shopping and came back to transfer the washing to a dryer. Within 20 minutes the powerful dryer had my washing crisp and dry. Simple pimple, we didn’t even need laundry powder, it was all included in the price.

We are headed toward Portugal and made a random stop on the coast at a place called Arcade. Our site for the night is on the waterfront with a choice of restaurants to go to, but we didn’t – too hungry to wait for opening time at 8pm.

Arcade

I haven’t got into Spanish time, they stay up late, have long lunches and the shops don’t open in the afternoon until sometimes 5.30pm. By that time I am over the idea of shopping and flag the idea, I suppose it is a money saver.

We are not far off Portugal with a whole new language. Thank you is obrigada for me and obrigado for Stuart (we will see). Hello is still ola.

For clever dogs

Hola from Espagne

Village on Northern Spain Coast Lekeitio

 It is a big country with a variety of regions, a population about 46 million, but with very high unemployment. We have a few items on our list to tick off as the only place in Spain we have seen is Barcelona. Different words to get our heads used to, muchos gracious, adios, sidra, cerveza (cider and beer)

The Spanish Basque area - our first stop was San Sebastian, traffic everywhere but we found the aire with no hiccups, it was good and cheap at about $5 a night. A cycle path was close by so Howard and Hilda were unloaded to travel this dedicated cycleway with its own traffic lights and rubber lane separators to protect us from cars. Not too far from the aire we beheld the vista of a golden horseshoe of sand with people enjoying the promenade along the seafront. We continued into town and near the harbour with bright little fishing boats we chose a tapas bar for lunch. The bar was filled with noise from the bar staff shouting orders to the kitchen staff, steel troughs in the kick space in front of the bar held the empty shells of mussels discarded by patrons.. turnover was fast and furious and someone was kept busy clearing away the debris. The menu was limited and lucky for us there were illustrations on the wall of the menu items . Mussels steamed with lemon plus breadcrumbed calamari with deep fried small green capsicum, accompanied by slices of baguette made an excellent tummy filler.

Bilbao, view from bridge over Guggenheim

We filled in the time until the shops opened at 4pm by cycling around the beaches and waterfront and taking coffee in the sun - a cafe solo for Stuart and a cafe con leche (milk) for me. I spent a whole hour shopping. I was let loose on the understanding I would return to the church with the fancy crenelations on the spires to meet Stuart.

“Yes, yes, yes”, I said and headed straight to the 4 storey Zara, on the way back I checked out a couple of shoe shops then set off to the landmark of church spires. However ..... these had disappeared behind other buildings and I was lost. Panic set in – I would never be allowed off shopping again. I looked for someone who I thought would speak English and struck lucky – I was pointed in the right direction just in time to meet my deadline.

The next day was exactly the same, we all bought something at Zara, Chausson was treated to a couple of table mats from Zara Home. San Sebastian is one of the the most lovely cities I have visited. It is small, only about 200,000 which probably makes it more attractive. Elegant buildings in the town centre, a sweeping golden beach plus a surf beach. There are fashionably stylish people enjoying the promenades and parks, just sitting watching the world go by was a real pleasure.

We headed westward along the Atlantic coast, stopping at a campsite in Zumaia to re-charge the batteries (Chausson’s). The beach looked spectacular but it was blocked off due to filming of Game of Thrones. The next coastal stop was Lekeitio, a town described as a mini San-Sebastian, I will concede it had similar physical properties – harbour, two beaches .... but where were the elegant buildings/shops/clientele? The accommodation was free however and entirely satisfactory. There are cars everywhere as we make our way through small towns along the coast – more cars than people it seems, so that scotches any idea of parking Chausson and having a look-see.

Bilbao was next on the itinerary, and to get there we had to travel through Guernica, stopping to replenish stores at Lidl. A lot of people don’t like Lidl but I am a fan and always feel better returning to the truck with bags of goodies. The stores are small, easy to get around and don’t offer too many alternatives so my head doesn’t spin with all the options. Best of all they are well priced, I bought a replacement bottle of gin for about $6.50, not actually Bombay Sapphire but I am not very discerning.

The most interesting thing about Guernica was that Franco wanted it bombed and called on Hitler to help. It is believed that Guernica not only blocked Franco’s path to Bilbao but also had a strong symbolic value to the Basques (who were opposed to Franco and had their own autonomous government). Hitler obliged willingly and planes flew over conducting saturation bombing on 29 April 1937. Present day Guernica is a modern town that was built hastily to replace the ruins.

Picasso was moved to create a painting titled Guernica – the original hangs in Madrid while a copy is in the entrance hall at UN Headquarters.

The aire in Bilboa was high above the city with a fantastic view. We could just make out the Guggenheim. At night it looked even better and we kept the windscreen blinds open so we could enjoy the view. We took the bus into town and walked along the riverside and visited the exhibitions in the Guggenheim – not really my taste but I did like the massive steel sculptures. After the visit I was feeling under the weather with a cold and told Stuart I would make my own way back on the bus.

Spanish parking, and the #58 bus couldn’t get through. The bus driver was unconcerned and after some tooting he switched off the engine and got his lunch out. The other passengers disappeared and I was dying to get back and just lie down and hadn’t a clue how to get there. After my panic attack I figured another #58 bus would surely come along, and after quite a while one did.

The last night we spent in Bilbao there was a large bush fire on the opposite side of the valley, it spread as an ever increasing ring and it seemed to take a long time for the fire dept to get it under control.

On the road in the Picos Europa (mountain area)

Leaving the Basque area behind, I set the satnav to take us to an aire at Cabarceno. It was just beautiful with a small lake surrounded by trees already changed into their autumn colours. Not a total surprise, as I had read about it, was the very short walk to look at what was behind the aire. A herd of 13 elephants were scattered over a large grassy area in a disused quarry. Stuart saw the matriarch trumpet “meeting at the waterhole in five” and the rest of the herd came running.

Cable cars were spread across the park and we glided over elephants, hippos, baboons, zebras, antelopes, big cats, lots of brown native bears .... the park was beautifully set out, the animals had lovely large natural surroundings, there were 14km of roads for the paying public to drive on. I have never seen such a wonderful place for captive animals to spend their time. The bears had a huge area, some ponds to lie in and natural caves to hide in, the babies were enjoying play-fights and they were undisturbed by us gliding overhead in the safety of a cable car. We saw less than half the species the park kept.

View from campsite

The weather forecast was good which is important for a trip to the mountains, we are off to see the Picos de Europa, one of Lonely Planets ‘must see in Spain’. Winding very slowly through deep gorges we saw a few Mastif-type dogs with thick coats and large spiked collars watching their flocks. They all looked bored and probably dreaming about the luxury of chasing sticks and balls. One didn’t seem to care that one of his charges was sleeping on the road, “it is only a goat” he said, “the sheep are more valuable”. The spiked collars are H&S equipment against wolf attacks.

The Picos are dramatic spiny grey rocky mountains that look a little like the Dolomites in Italy. We are really lucky that the weather is warm (shorts out again) and the trees are ‘Arrowtown in autumn’ but on a bigger scale. We spent a night camped outside a monastery that houses the holy relic of a chunk of Christ’s cross and features the nailhole that passed through Christ’s left hand. It was actually a massive bus park, no one was at the monastery the morning we tried to look in, only someone selling lottery tickets (a back up option?). It must be the most unpopular aire we have stayed at, great view though.

At nearby pretty Potes there was a milk vending machine in the middle of the town. As I walked up to it an electronic voice instructed me IN ENGLISH how to use it. Spooky – it was like weighing tomatoes at a flash supermarket, the scales only showed red vegetables to choose from, did the scales colour-detect and the vending machine face-detect?

Moving along as we do we are leaving the mountains, last night we came down a torturous route from a fabulous spot to a small aire (4 places). The 4 places were full so we slunk to the other side of the carpark area to join about 50 Spanish motorhomes with the same idea as us.

Pyrennes and the Basque country

Chausson in the Pyrennes

There is a narrow area of land between Spain and France that stretches from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. The Atlantic side is home to the Basque people and the area is called Pays Basque (Basque country). The middle and Mediterranean part of this area is the Pyrenees. The Pyrenees are less developed than the Alps and really very beautiful with 3000m snow capped peaks, streams, lakes and forests.

The transition between the flat agricultural land we left behind in the Toulouse area and the beginning of the Pyrennes mountains was quite swift. We were soon driving through villages that looked as if they could have been in Wales, grey stone houses with grey slate roofs.

Cirque de Gavarnie

The forecast was good, and as promised the weather was clear and sunny when we left the pretty village of Arreau. The mountains were outlined clearly against a purple-blue sky and the peaks glowed orange in the sunrise. We set off early on hairpin bend roads via a couple of mountain passes before arriving at the Cirque de Gavarnie. My mouth opened and a word of shock was uttered when we rounded a corner and saw the Cirque – it was stupendous, too hard to photograph though. A giant wall of grey rock shaped in a semi-circle topped with a fresh dusting of snow from the night before hung before us. It is like a huge theatre curtain, dripping with melt water that feeds streams and waterfalls. The walk up to the cirque was brilliant. The soft light shone through the silver birch leaves that were taking on their autumn colours. The light breeze had the leaves shivering on the branches and little confetti-like bits were blowing around.

After spending a night in the mountains, we rattled and rolled the insides of Chausson on another hairpin bend road to Cauterets to see the Pont d’ Espagne. We didn’t know what the Pont was – a natural bridge or something? We passed alot of signs pointing the way and were looking forward to seeing the prize at the end of the bum clenching drive. We were greated by an enormous carpark (more expectation) but couldn’t see any of the advertised chairlifts running.

As the lifts were not running, we walked a 4WD road up and up to the Blue Lake. After 2 hrs we came back down a narrow stony path, it was then we saw signs to “Pont d’ Espagne”. The Pont was an old humpbacked stone bridge crossing a deep rock chasm. We could have walked right past without knowing. That sight ticked off, we hit the road again, and drove on yet more hairpin bends, some about 360 degrees on our way to Lourdes. We drove over Tour de France messages painted on the road as encouragement (?) to the competitors that had cycled the route some months previously.

Blue Lake near Cautarets

The campsite we stayed in set the scene for Lourdes itself with its down at heel appearance. Tacky souvenir shops lined the streets in Lourdes selling Madonna shaped bottles for you to fill with holy water. I did fancy one of these, you screwed the crown off the head for the opening, but value for money, the 15 litre plastic jerrycans would capture much more holy water. We went into the Sanctuaires Notre Dame de Lourdes, that had a large impressive church as its centrepiece. I eyed the vending machine inside the church selling medals for 2Es, but then my eye was caught by the very large candles for sale outside. I like candles. There were alot of people visiting on this rather drab day, ranging from some being wheeled in wheelchairs to large Chinese tour groups, however all nationalities seemed to be represented.

Enough of Lourdes, I had got the washing done in the campground with a short lived heart-in- mouth moment when the washing machine flashed all kinds of message to me, but none of a visionary nature. It settled down and did what it was supposed to after I tried pressing various buttons over and over. 

 It was a big drive to St Jean Pied du Port, we are really in Basque country now. Mountains and hills hove in the distance, some dusted with snow. St Jean PdP is a walled town that is the last stop in France for pilgrims headed for Santiago de Compostela in Spain. The river Nive cuts through the middle, and the town is surrounded by ramparts with a couple of historic ‘portes’ (gates).The scallop shell is the motif of the pilgrims and we saw this repeated lots of times through the town. There were backpacker type places where we could see bunk beds through the windows for pilgrims and cheap menus for pilgrims.

St Jean Pied du Port

We visited a few typical Basque villages, some had a fronton (an open concrete court where the national sport of pelota is played. Pelota involves hitting a hard leather covered ball against a high wall with either your bare hand, a bat or long basket attached to the hand. It can be really dangerous due to the speed of the ball. Beret wearing gentlemen, and signs in both French and Basque are other clues we are not in France-regular.

Pelota court in Basque village

We hovered on the Spanish/French border, unwilling to make the change in countries again. We had an unfortunate experience with blown fuses in the truck caused by a faulty laptop charger. Things started bad then got worse, the 12v outlets wouldn’t work, then we discovered the internal lights and bed motor wouldn’t work ..... after Stuart tried the logical remedies we contacted the Chausson owner group on Facebook and simultenously Stuart and a helpful member figured the fuse mystery out.

Off to Spain, the GPS was programmed with a destination in San Sebastian and an LPG station as a via point. Long story short – we went wrong, ended up on a toll road, then were headed back to France. (We forgot to cancel the LPG via point in the satnav). Luckily big distances weren’t involved and we found some LPG which runs our fridge, cooker, and hot water, phew – we were down to 2 litres.

Espagne, here we come.

Dordogne area – prehistoric man, caves and pate de foie gras

Perigord geese, in Sarlet en Caneda

Pate de fois gras – I am not keen on how the French produce this delicacy - the liver of force fed geese and ducks - but it is a treat with a bit of baguette tradionelle and a glass of Monbazillac (a dessert type white wine). We covered off both items this week.

It was Sunday afternoon when we arrived at Sarlet Le Caneda in the Dordogne region – luckily a few places were open. It is a lovely ancient town dominated by a huge church that dates back to the 9^th century. We stopped for an espresso and a cafe noisette (an espresso with a dab of frothy milk) at a bar in the mellow honey coloured, cobbled square. Everywhere foie gras was for sale – it is the town’s specialty. There was a bronze statue of three Perigord geese honouring their importance in the area. On the way to Sarlet we stopped to photograph some of these geese – probably destined to be pate - they seemed quite friendly, no hissing just a bit of honking as they rushed to and fro in their pleasant little field with a stunning backdrop of a chateau overlooking a silky river.

Roque Saint Christophe

We enjoyed travelling the Vezere Valley, it has an abundance of sites inhabited by early man dating back over 50,000 years, which makes New Zealands habitation look a bit like a baby. The remains are well preserved due to the limestone that is prevalent in the area. Neanderthal man and Cro-Magnon man both lived together here at one stage, until Neanderthal man died out there was a period of 10,000 years that they existed in parallel. Cro-Magnon man looks like modern man and was responsible for the artwork at Lascaux, Neanderthal was shorter, stockier and has a prominent brow-bone. The museums we visited discredited early theories that Neanderthal man was unintelligent, but had no explanation for their demise. 

Chateau built into cliff

The Lascaux caves are the “must see” in the area. We don’t get to see the original as the caves were shut 13 years after they were opened because the paintings were degrading quickly due to lichen and calcite formed by carbon dioxide exhaled by so many visitors. The reproduction cave is accurate in three dimensions to 1cm of the original cave. It took 20 artists over 20 years to recreate exactly what had been done 20,000 years ago. The paintings incorporated perpective and scaffolding had been used to paint on the ceilings. The paints were mineral based and had been applied by stamping and brushes and probably also by blow-tubes. It is thought some of the shapes had been created by stencils.

There was a depth to some of the paintings as the artists used the contours of the cave to depict relief in the paintings. Most of the pictures were bulls/cows and horses, lots of horses. Strangely, historians have found that 95% of the prey of Cro-Magnon man of the time was reindeer. They didn’t paint what they hunted.

Cliffside house above Dordogne river

The cliffs over the rivers in the Dordogne area have been inhabited for over 20,000 years. What started out as simple cave shelters evolved into dwellings that sometimes evolved into chateau. Roque Saint-Christophe was a fortified village carved out of the pre-existing caves used by early man and in the early middle ages further adapted to make a strategic defensive village. The limestone wall is 1km long and 80m high. It was inhabited until the Renaissance period, as we walked through it we found it hard to get our heads around the timescales involved. Just down the road was Maison Forte de Reignac, a chateau built into the cliff on the site previously inhabited by early man 20,000 years ago. The facade was built in the 15^th century, the chateau was occupied until the 20^th century, it looked all a bit too basic to me for a chateau.

Sarlet de Caneda

We headed deeper into the Dordogne area in search of a bottle of Monbazillac to accompany the foie gras. We found it on an aire in the village of Monbazillac. We were staying on a working vineyard, vines separated us from the other mohomes and we watched the pickers at work. We had a tasting of the different wines they produced and settled on a Sauvignon which was quite nice (for Sav) as well as the quite sweet golden Monbazillac. The tourist office gave us a sample of different Monbazillacs, some were sweeter than others, they were all great to me!

We have had some chilly nights so on the way to the interestingly named town of Condom, we stopped at a supermarket and treated ourselves to some fleece lined crocs! Stus are camo to match his new cap, mine are mens’, decorated with a US flag and motorbike. All about price!

Condom wins the prize for best aire this week – spacious, hardstands, picnic tables, nice outlook, and free. A walk along the riverbank took us into the town which was a lot livelier than some towns we have been to. There was an imposing, ornate old church and bronze statues of D’Artagnan and the three musketeers. The tourist office said that D’Artagnan had been born nearby.

It was raining lightly that evening and too late to change the menu of the day, so Stuart stood outside in his rain jacket holding a rainbow coloured golf umbrella over the barbecue while he barbecued pork chops. This device is connected to gas and slides out from the side of the truck and can be used as a regular cooktop also. The rain deterred any male on-lookers. Generally when we use the barbecue we get men coming to have a look at a gadget they haven’t seen before. Some return with their wives in tow, pointing out the ‘must have’ accessory.

The town of Condom, D'Artagnan and three musketeers

Sunny Spain beckons but we still have the Pyrenees mountains to explore, so you will have to wait for the next exciting installment to hear all about it.

 

Fortified towns and washing day blues

Cordes sur Ciel (Cordes on the sky)

Cycling canals has again featured in our days, we pass people walking their dogs and mostly all of them wish us ‘bonjour’. We started cycling the Midi canal at Agde on the Mediterrean cost – it seemed to be a neglected part of the canal with rutted clay tracks, however after an hour it improved. The canal is lined with plane trees – some had succumbed to the an incurable tree disease and had been removed, the others all have an individual numbered tag, so they are being monitored. The trees are just starting to change colour and there is an overall golden look to the leaves which reflects in the water. We moved camp and followed the canal further west to Castelnaudry which has an enormous canal basin, it is impressive with ancient houses cascading down to the canal edge. Dotted along the canal are houses for the people who operate the locks, all built to the same plan and using the same materials – gold coloured stone and pale green wooden trim.

Canal du Midi

 I had seen pictures of the stunning old part of Carcassone but was still moved when I looked up from the satnav’s screen to see the stunning La Cite. Surrounded by ramparts topped with conical witches hat roofs – it all looked too fairytale like. Inside was a different matter, shops selling stuff to tourists, places to stay and restaurants. It has been a fortress for nearly 2000 years, the battlements are in a zigzag fashion with two rings of walls, the site overlooks the slow moving, peaceful River Aude. As there wasn’t much too see we sat at a cafe where I had a Pastis and we shared a caramel glace (bowl of icecream). Carcassone itself (the lower town) was well preserved and an interesting place to visit.

Carcassone

Stuart cycling near canal

Hilltop towns with steep cobbled streets and usually an old castle are a feature in the Aveyron Valley. Chausson is left somewhere at the base of a town, and because the season has waned we don’t have any parking problems. The weather is warm in the late afternoon, around 26 celcius but without humidity and wandering around these really old hamlets and fortified towns is a total pleasure. We stayed a couple of nights at Cordes sur Ciel which is a picture as you approach the town – medieval houses stacked up the steep hill, surrounded by fields and trees at the bottom.

My favourite towns so far are Najac and St Antonin Noble Val. Each town we chose to stop at has very old narrow cobbled streets with houses dating back to the middle ages, beautifully kept with very clean streets and attractive public areas.

Cafe scene

We spent a couple of nights by the canal in Montauban, the Capitainere looks after both boats and motorhomes. I found a great stock of English books to exchange mine with, Stuart had his fill of wifi, and they had a washing machine. It was late in the day when I discovered the washing machine, paid my E5 for the key and put a load on. No problem, I used the incredibly slow condenser drier to dry the clothes. Then there was a delay while SOMEONE ELSE used the machine. I got my hands on it again very late and loaded the sheets in. Something went wrong and the machine wouldn’t spin, I managed to get it to release my linen and tried with a half load. The machine sat resolute, making a funny noise. The upshot is that the sheets got about 15 mins of wash and at 11pm I roped Stuart into helping me wring them by hand. He lashed up a washing line under our awing, the next motorhome was parked reasonably closely and they must have wondered what was going on with all the muttering and sheet-wringing. Into bed at 11.45.

The next morning the pure cotton sheets hadn’t dried much so the ever-resourceful Stuart zig-zagged some line above the dining area (actually the underneath of the raised bed) using rings attached to the ceiling. We slung the sheets across the lines then drove off – the windows in the cab wound down and the heater blasting. The sheets were flapping in the back while I supervised the towel and pillowcases on the dash. They were dry-as, quick-as.

For the first time I put my washing machine into action. It is a super sturdy clip-lock box with extra seals – idea from Ourbumble.com. In the box I put some warm water, detergent and my woollen Icebreaker clothes. As we drove along they were gently agitated. We stopped at an aire with fresh water, time for a rise and the laundry hung in the shower to drip dry. Good, but sheets are probably beyond its capability without a spinner.

We spent a night at the aire at Peyrusse Le Roc, we didn’t know what to expect as it was well out of the way, but a good price. There had been brown signs indicating an historical site and we pulled up to see single towers, one perched on a huge mass of rock pointing its finger up to the sky. The remains of another fortified village.

We explored the area the next morning – the present hamlet was totally deserted and so we picked our way through the abandoned medieval village ruins. There are some signs in French giving a clue as to what we were looking at. All a bit surreal really.

Rocamadour

Rocamadour, we ended up staying for 2 nights, meeting a couple from England – Lesley and Paul. They had chosen the same vehicle as us and we swapped notes. They demonstrated their Roman blinds with magnets for adjusting the height. I swore we had missed out until I looked closer – viola! we had the same, so I can throw away my big ribbon that holds the blind up so Stuart can see what is coming on his left hand side.

The main attraction at Rocamadour is the chateau and chapels that cling to a vertical cliff in a spectacular fashion. The valley below seems a long way down. To top it off there were hot air balloons taking flight over the chateau, their burners making a noise like waves breaking on a beach.

As the sun rose, it lit up the balloons as they drifted across the valley and around the chateau, except for one – there is always one – which headed in the opposite direction, probably to the disappointment of the passengers.

Jane at Carcassone, photo credit Stuart

Trucking on is the name of the game and so we will be.

Provence Post

The bridge at Avignon - only half of it left

Provence is in the middle of the grape harvest, grapes are being towed to cooperatives for pressing. Tractors of all sizes are hauling high sided steel trailers overflowing with grapes, Chausson did a bit of grape pressing himself as there were bunches of grapes on the road and he ended up with purple splatter up his white sides.

We have visited a few places recently, the more memorable are Uzes, Pont du Gard, Avignon and Arles. St Jean du Gard was only memorable for our visitors - a tiny fluffy tabby and an elderly clergyman who resided in a nearby retirement home – we were sitting ducks in the motorhomes for these two. The tiny tabby tried to endear herself by sitting in our kitchen; the elderly clergyman spoke excellent English and tried a little preaching to keep his hand in.

Palais du Papes - Avignon

 Uzes is a charming Provencal hilltop town that Peta Mathias featured in one of her cooking series. A Ducal palace holds central position, apparently still occupied after being in the same family for 1000 years. The inner square and surrounds were paved in a pale gold limestone that had turned shiny and marble-like underfoot. There were lots of art galleries/ateliers (workshops) and fabric shops. We drove past the Haribo (sweets) museum at Uzes but I didn’t mention it to Stuart after the binge at the Valrhona museum

Pont du Gard, a Roman aqueduct built in the first century AD carried water from a spring in the aforementioned Uzes to a city where Nimes now stands. It is a supreme example of engineering and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The volume of water transported by the aqueduct was more than needed, alot of it was used in fountains and pools as a show of wealth. We only wanted to see the bridge and not pay the E18 for the carpark attached to the seemingly compulsory museum so we backed up the truck from the ticket booth and parked down the road using Howard and Hilda to convey us to the spot.

 

Pont du Gard - photo credit Stuart

We stayed at Avignon in a motor camp for a couple of nights, it is beside the Rhone and looked across to the Palace of Popes which housed a succession of popes when Avignon was the seat of popes for a couple of hundred years. We visited a small art museum and saw a few paintings by French Impressionists, van Gogh and Degas spring to mind. Arles is my preferred town however, it had some seriously impressive Roman ruins including the cryptoportiques. To get to the cryptoportiques we went underneath the rather grand Hotel de Ville.   A bit spooky but incredible to think the Romans built this so long ago – it is thought it was the foundations for the forum (centre of commerce etc above) it contained huge arches and drainage systems.

Arles

With the money we saved from not visiting Roman ruins in Arles, we splashed out on an al fresco lunch in a square. Moules frites for me (really good – so much better than the Honfleur ones) small blue/black mussels with a creamy sauce and chips in a little wire chip basket. Stuart had (oh yes) – a hamburger

It was a short drive to Saintes Maries de la Mer in the CAMARGUE. All my boxes were ticked in short succession, I had seen the black camargue bulls unfortunately used in bull fights, white Camargue horses and pink flamingos sifting their beaks through saline marshland pools. I also saw rice that the area is known for producing, and the salt pans. It was a long drive to see the salt harvesting area as we had to skirt around the mouth of the Rhone – their salt production is huge and all used on the roads or in industry.

In Saintes Marie DLM, we looked at a few aires before going to a campsite that was big and busy. The office gave us a list of vacant sites and a map. We set off to find our way around and choose not one but also a back up site. We zigged zagged back and forth across the camp looking for empty sites that were in the yellow zone and also on the list of free places that they had printed out for us. People came up to us and offered to help and eventually we chose site 169. Back at the office they gave me a big block of yellow wood with 169 on it, an electronic swipe card so we could get out of the gate to the beach and a reference number for paying our account. Not sure what to do with 169 I put it in the windscreen, others I saw had hung it off wing mirrors, towbars, or number plates.

We took the swipe card and set off to find the beach, spotting a sandy track up over the dunes, we had found a shortcut – not to be, we were fenced in, we went up and down the camp roads and had a good gander at other camp accommodation like a couple of mice in a maze looking for the gate in the perimeter fence that led to la plage. It was during this second IQ test that I figured out the significance of the numbered block of wood – it deters people with yellow tags parking in the luxury red area.

The next day we took Howard and Hilda for a spin along a dike in the national park that stretches between the salt marshes and the Mediterrean, stopping at a lighthouse which is the midway point, at 13km from the town. The water and sky seemed to merge as one as we cycled along the low lying dike. We were not very high above the salt marshes where flamingos were busy sieving food from the lagoon. Ocassionally one would take flight showing the stunning colours under their wings – bright cerise tipped with black. They all refused to cooperate with Stuart for a photoshoot as did the white horses who also were more interested in their dinner than having a photo taken.

The Camargue area has a Spanish look, probably because it is not too far from the Spanish border. The traditional houses are small single storied and finished with white plaster, topped with a thatched roof that has a plaster coating along the roof ridgeline. They are supposed to be windowless but we saw windows.

   

Camargue horses

I have lost 70 photos since the last blog post, the lesson learned is to check the files have been transferred to a hard drive before re-formatting my memory card. I had to ask Stuart for a photo.

To cap this week – Stuart is on his third cap. The first cap is on a bus with his prescription sunnies in Italy, the second in a French church and the third is made of camoflague fabric. (Which makes him hard to find in a crowd). The cool dude that sold him the cap told him he was putting the caps on wrongly and gave him a lesson – only to say ‘plus grande tete’ (very big head). ‘Sir – how about this general’s cap?’ after Stuart discarded the a cap with bells on.

Lighthouse on dike

It has been a while since we cycled alongside a canal and the Canal du Midi is not far away so we will set ‘her inside’ the satnav to take us to a good place.

Flamingos