Blogging as it should be done?

Since we're staying on a luxurious campsite (Camping Le Capeyrou, Beynac) with wifi on tap, we can tell it as it happens.  Tomorrow we head back to the kiwi farm, where there's no wifi on tap (or even a tap) so we may go quiet again for a while.  The staff at Le Capeyrou have spent today cleaning the furniture on the terrace, ready to pack up for the winter, they close tomorrow.  Finding campsites is going to become more and more difficult.

We woke today to chilly mist, which was gradually burnt off by the sun, the temperature rising rapidly until Scooby was sitting melting in a sunbeam, his favourite thing.  The castle on the crag overlooking the site suddenly appeared in the middle of the sky, very dramatically.  I'm not used to my horizons being that far above me.

We drove into Sarlat for market day.  It is a fabulous old mediaeval city and a fabulous market, with lots of Perigord duck and goose products, truffles and walnuts, but also proper gnarly vegetables and good fish.  We bought a chunk of pumpkin and some other veg, then miscalculated and spent a fortune on a block of cheese.  Half the voices in the market were English or American, this region is something of a theme park.

Caught up on chores, did some washing, took advantage of the wifi to do some emailing, some administration and finally submit my tax return.  Unfortunately, the day we have wifi is the day when the least interesting stuff happens!

Further south ... red wine country

Real trouble keeping up with the blog … technology has been getting in the way and things keep happening!  To have any chance of catching up we'll have to skip over our meander down through the Vendee and Charente, and jump straight to Blaye.

In 2007 we'd made our second, more determined attempt to get to Bordeaux and find out what all the fuss was about.  By a happy accident we stayed in the Villa Saint Simon in Blaye – where we had a fantastic welcome from the oenophile South African proprietor, Les Kellen.  He introduced us to his favourite local chateaux, the sort of places that make the wine that the region is famous for, at a reasonable price (and which seems to all be swallowed up by the domestic French market, leaving the dross and the £40 clarets for the Brits, who naturally turn to the Hunter Valley instead).

Blaye is a small town dominated by a spectacular seventeenth century fort, built by the famous (in France anyway) military architect Vauban on the orders of King Louis the Fourteenth.  It was intended to keep the British out, but these days everyone is welcome to squeeze in through a series of granite gateways and stay on the municipal campsite right inside the battlements.

Big, beautiful, blue, but not too big, not quite

We arrived on 20th, and once we'd checked in and found ourselves a plot with a fabulous view over the Gironde estuary we walked back into Blaye to say 'Hi' to Les.  A quick visit became a long evening of drinking wine and catching up with his many projects; wine tours, wine dealing, a new art gallery in the street behind Villa Saint Simon, a share in a vineyard and a derelict kiwi fruit farm which he plans to turn into an eco-resort.

On 22nd we moved to the kiwi farm for a couple of days of solitude next to the lake amongst the overgrown kiwi fruit vines, enjoying the company of the friendly resident geese and the coypu family and reading a MBA thesis on the eco-village project.

On 24th we headed off again to have a look at the Dordogne, making our way to Perigeaux, Brive Le Galliarde and Rocamadour. 

This post does our travels no justice, but is dedicated to everyone to whom we gave promises to tell them what we were doing! To bring it right up to date, it's 28th September and we're having a delicious lunch in the WiFi equipped La Table du Marais restaurant overlooking the lake in Groléjac (Scooby is sleeping underneath the table - when we ask if we can bring him into a restaurant we are usually met with a surprised expression and 'Bien sur, pas de probleme!').

Pushing south, wine country

13th September 2010
After a couple of days at 'Les Vikings' (a holiday park in Barneville-Cartaret) we headed down the coast towards Granville, where we'd stayed in the hot summer of 2003, and which we remembered fondly.  When we eventually found the aire at Pointe De Roc it was completely full, so we headed off down the coast to find another place to stay.

As we passed the youth hostel by the port we saw a dozen motorhomes parked up in a free carpark, so turned in and joined them.  In addition to the aires and France Passion sites, camping caristes in France also seem to benefit from the French instinct that if something's not expressly forbidden it's allowed, and if it is expressly forbidden it's probably allowed anyway, or ought to be.

We settled in, filled up with water from the free tap and walked to the port to eat on the terrace at La Phare, where we'd eaten last time.  In the morning, as we returned from another trip into town to buy fish, we met the Police Municipal whowere going from van to van politely asking people to move on.  They'd even been considerate enough to leave it until almost mid day to start the evictions.

14th September 2010
Leaving Granville a little damp and breezy, we set off for a 180km push south on the autoroutes, looking for the sun.  As we approached Nantes we saw fields of sunflowers and vineyards for the first time, the sun began to shine strongly and there was a  real feeling of having crossed a threshold.  This felt like The South.

Tonight's stop was another France Passion site, the Domaine de la Pichonière in Haute Goulaine, where the vendage was in full swing.  Here Isabelle and Michel Olivier grow muscadet and gamay grapes which go to make the muscadet sur lie that the area is best known for, but also, red, rosé and mousseux wine.

The vendage was in full swing, with trailer loads of grapes pulling into the farmyard.  The grape presses were throbbing and the air was heavy with the sweet syrupy smell of fermenting fruit.  Inspite of all the activity Mme Olivier took the time to welcome us and led us on her bike to a plot of grass at the front of the house where we could camp.  Once we'd settled in, she showed us her products and treated us to some generous samples.  Inevitably we left with our arms full.

 At the far end of the vineyard top-heavy tractors, tall and spindly like Salvador Dali elephants, were harvesting the grapes which hung in full heavy bunches on the vines. 

Back in the camping car we filleted and fried our Granville gurnard with boiled potatoes and green beans, and ate outside in the  late evening sunshine.

First week on the road

Quite a lot to catch up with, as we've not had much access to the internet...

4 September 2010
First stop Camping Mont Des Bruyères, Saint Amand-les-Eaux.  A beautiful quiet site set in acres of beechwood, an ideal spot to catch our breath and repack (we weren't as well prepared as we might have been).

It's situated in Nord Pas De Calais, not far from the Belgian border, an unfashionable corner of France that Britons tend to pass through on their way to somewhere more sunny, and French people tend to overlook.  The stereotypical view of this area in France seems to be that it's a cold, grey, dark place where it always rains, inhabited by people (called Chi'tis) with peculiar accents who live on beer, chips, iron and coal.  Somewhere, in other words, where a Welshman might feel at home!

Unlike Wales, it's flat; on the same flat plain as Jacques Brel's 'Plat Pays'.  The Mont Des Bruyères is the tallest thing for miles, but not tall enough to get good TV reception or to show above the treetops. Unlike Wales, they eat mussels with their chips and spell saveloy 'cervelau'. It also has towns full of beautiful seventeenth century gabled buildings, endless beaches of fine pale sand and huge silent forests of beech, oak and hazel.

Recently there seems to have been something of a good-humoured 'Chi'ti Pride' movement.  There's Chi'ti beer, Chi'ti postcards and in 2009 a hit film 'Bienvenue Chez Les Chi'tis'.  We watched the film on DVD while we were there.  It was good fun, but as much a defence or advertisement of the region as anything else.  I've got mixed feelings about their attempts to encourage tourism, it is a great place just as it is.

… and another thought... Calais was English until the reign of Mary Tudor.  How much of the surrounding territory was ruled by the Tudors?  Was it culturally English or culturally French? Could the Chi'tis be descended from Britons stranded by the French reconquest of the region?  Does that history explain any of their distinctive language or accent?  For example their local word 'bray' means 'to cry'.  English donkeys still bray, but it's not unimaginable that it might be a surviving scrap of Tudor slang.  If anyone reads this blog, does anyone know?

7 December 2010
Second stop, Camping Les Praries, Le Crotoy, on the bay of the Somme.  Another region with an image problem; “We went camping, it was like the Somme”.

In our experience, 'like the Somme' means gentle hills and wooded valleys, low painted houses, some half timbered, pear and apple orchards with neat rows of tiny trees heavy with fruit.  On the other hand, it did start to rain heavily during our first night and intermittently during the next day.  It wouldn't have taken much artillery fire to turn the whole landscape into mud.

Le Crotoy is a genteel seaside town.  The town centre is ancient (Joan of Arc spent some time in prison here) but much of the town seems to have been built in the early years of the twentieth century – a lot of ornate seaside villas with turrets and coloured tiles.  It faces the broad muddy bay of the Somme estuary, a rich environment for shellfish and birds. 

Like all French seaside resorts they make the most of their local produce, every restaurant proudly sells D.O.C. Saltmarsh (pré saleé) lamb, local mussels (moules), whelks (bulots), brown shrimp (crevettes grises), samphire (salicornes) and various fish.  Try finding a menu like that in Crofty.

The esplanade area, since last April, has been plastered in signs banning dogs from the beach, and is also closed to motorhomes, so not a great welcome for us.  We took local advice and headed to the seaward end where Scooby could run free and no-one seemed to mind.

While we were on the beach, a parade of tractors appeared heading inland, trailers laden with sacks of cockles, cockle pickers and bicycles.  A year sitting opposite the Environment Agency Wales fisheries  team has given me a keen interest in the cockle industry, and I'm pretty confident that bikes have not been incorporated into the harvesting system in Wales.

On the evening of 7th we celebrated Stella's birthday with a delicious meal in Restaurant Mado, on the waterfront overlooking the port.  After the meal I mentioned to the waiter that I'd seen the cockle pickers and was surprised that cockles didn't feature on the menus.  He explained that the artisan collectors sell the cockles directly to the public from their doorsteps.  An unlikely story, given the quantities we'd seen landed.  My suspicious were confirmed as we left the town, when we saw a fleet of Galician trucks parked up by the cockle pickers' tractors.  The Spanish appreciate cockles more than the French and will pay higher prices, but still it's surprising that they aren't in the restaurants locally.

9 September 2010
France has an extensive network of free or cheap places where people can stay the night in a motorhome.  These areas aren't available for people in tents or caravans, but due to a happy accident of history, or clumsy drafting of legislation, sleeping in your motorhome is treated the same, legally, as dozing off in your car.  Local authorities, hoping to bring in some tourism revenue, make a real effort to be welcoming, and often provide a place to empty waste water and refill freshwater tanks, sometimes even a place to plug in and recharge batteries.

Our first 'Aire de stationment' was at Honfleur, and what an aire it was.  Motorhomes of all nations (except Bhutan, obviously) stretched as far as we could see.  There must have been well over a hundred.  Honfleur charges 9 euros a night, but for that you get waste disposal, fresh water and free electricity.  It's not a luxurious environment, but it's good value.

 ... it helps to have a blue one.

We walked a few minutes into Honfleur, where smart shops surround the old harbour basin, and smart people parade around looking at the smart yachts.  We found a sunny table and bought a couple of beers which ate up all the money we'd saved by staying on the aire.  Still good value.

10 September 2010
If free aires de stationment weren't enough, in France the campingcariste is also treated to the France Passion scheme, under which landowners let motorhome owners stay on their land for free.  They hope to sell some of their produce to the visitors, but there's no obligation to buy.

We headed  for Les Vergers de Ducy, an organic cider farm near Bayeux, expecting something a bit rustic and Worzel-ish.  What we found was an immaculate farm yard surrounded by beautiful old buildings where a visiting Belgian coach party was tasting the produce.  The ambience was much more like a wine chateau than a normal farm. In addition to several grades of cider, they make several grades of calvados (we bought some of the ten year old), apple jelly, honey, creme de calvados, pommeau (calvados and apple juice aperitif). I can't imagine anyone leaves empty handed.

We parked up on the edge of the orchard; a glorious quiet location, surrounded by this year's crop (to be harvested next month).  The apples were surprisingly imperfect, but presumably the aesthtic qualities don't matter when you're going to mash them up for the juice.  Certainly the product couldn't be faulted; clear, sparkling with a complex appley flavour.  A world away from Cripple Cock.