Route of France trip, 2010

Au revoir Francais et Angleterre

Well, we made it to England without too many more dramas with fuel after queuing for an hour at a time. This is us in our last queue.

We had a couple of delightful days in Peterborough at a 5 star campground, then headed up to Cheshire to drop off our camping car. Rain, soggy damp, drizzle, mizzle and all the other issle's that Middle England is famous for live here. The poor middle-of-England folk think this is living. I feel for them.

We haven't cooked since we arrived in England, because, seriously, eating out in England is now cheaper than Australia. And we couldn't be bothered.

We've bought so many 'little things', too, we are having trouble packing them to fit into our luggage allowance. This doesn't usually happen with us. We usually have so little interest in 'things' that it comes as a surprise that we are interested in buying now. I think that everything has become so much cheaper here, that it would be stupid not to.

Which makes one wonder -- why is it all so expensive in Australia? Who is benefitting from the price hikes there?

We can get amazing meal deals, and product deals, here, that we cannot get, now, at home. A shame. I think we are being ripped off.

We will soon be home. November 2. Pete is excited. Bec: so-so. Me? Hey: I am happy to travel wherever and whenever I can. A great trip this year. We have loved every minute. (Don't we always?)

The air is chilled in England, about 6˚ C at night and 12˚ C in the day. The leaves are changing colour. The skies threaten. We will not escape without good winds, good rains, and dreary weather. How the English put up with it, beats me. Even so, I love it! I can live indoors as happily as out: and this country encourages that.

Home soon. Au Revoir Francais et Angleterre! Another wonderful trip.

Our last queue for fuel

Sunset on our last evening in France

Ice and honey

We are enroute to Calais. I have missed days in the telling, but that is because, since we left the Pyrennes, the Ice Age Cometh, and we are freezing. Wearing woolly socks to bed, and wearing them again during the day, covered with ordinary black socks, so they don’t look too ridiculous. But, our first priority is warmth: we need to stay rugged up in all that we have. Nights have been heavy frost. Days have been icy. We’re hoping that this too will pass.

Our second concern is fuel. We are about half of the way to Calais and have been turned away at the bowsers for Gazole (Diesel) all day. Tonight we have a half a tank. That will get us a few towns further on and then we might have to make the papers in order to get fuel. Tonight though, without hope of fuel for movement or sun for warmth, the moon is soggy white and distorted by clouds dripping what feels like ice, we are camped in one of our Invitation sites in Chezelles.

We are camped in a green grassy space, surrounded on all sides by high trees, in the very centre of a tiny village, most of which seems to be owned, run, or supervised, by the people who gave us the Invitation to this grassy site. So lovely. Especially after spending much of the day in Limoges. Limoges, like many places in France, needs a giant Gerni to pressure spray its homes, shops, restaurants, bars, and public buildings. It also needs an education program in hygienic disposal of dog poo.

The French love dogs. The French dogs poo. On the sidewalks, on the roads, on the footpaths, on the grass, on your feet -- if you stand still for too long. It really is disgusting. And as frequently as the dogs poo, Frenchmen piss. They use every corner of every building, brick, stone or wood, and every plant, tree and hollow as an opportunity to squirt a smelly arc. The paths and roads decorated in dog poo are revolting. Add to this the amniotic smell of the French male’s inner essence and places like Limoges become too ripe to bear.

Chezelles, though, the village where we’re parked tonight is run by honey producing folk. If you are a wealthy miel (honey) producer and distributor you could do worse than own your own village. I think they own much of the town. Their operations certainly occupy most of the centre.

To start with most of the homes in the village have a splash of paint wash, so they look cared for, clean. And the sidewalks are untainted, even pleasant. We walked at sunset from one end of the village to the other and didn’t once need a nose peg or a shoe brush. Thank you, honey folk of Chezelles, if you are the movers and shakers who keep this pretty village clean. It smells lovely, too.

Rugged up and moving

Chezelles

Our honey stopover

Limoge needs a genre

Postcards from our villages

There is snow on Canigou, just opposite, and a biting little chill nipping the air: so it is time for us to leave Eus. 

We are sad. We have come to love this little corner of the world. 

Each day we have crammed in repeat visits to little villages that are close enough for lunch and a drive.

Ceret: An arty town. Picasso was here. As were many contemporary artists through until the 1920s. They came, they stayed, they painted. Many buildings show medallions of where they rented homes for the duration. Trouble is, I pretty much lose interest in artists after Van Gogh, so I hardly know these folk. Nor do I understand their work.

We lunch right outside a very trendy modern art gallery, which we weren’t even tempted to enter. But lunch was fun, Catalan, served by a delightful character from the hippie era, wearing a long braid and an even longer red Indian cotton tie-died shirt. He played Cat Stevens and Dylan and we stayed longer because he played them for us.

Collioure: A very pretty coastal town, climbing around the bay. The harbour looks a little like Chania in Crete from above with ancient harbour walls curving like skinny stony arms out into the blue Mediterranean.

Molitg-les–Bains: A spa town. Probably the prettiest town in the region, as it has been decked out in stylish slim Cyprus pines, pretty lanterned gardens and water gushing down the mountain side.

Stylish spa pools and elegant hotels frequented by clients ‘taking the waters’ line the narrow streets. This is one of the few places where you still have to reserve to gain a table for lunch.

Vinca: Just up the road, this is another very unprepossessing town, with few shops, yet it has a delicious and inexpensive restaurant where we were served great Catalan fare with espresso to finish at only 90cents a demitasse: the most reasonable, yet, in France.

The town has “beaucoup” Englishmen, according to the Maitre D’ and when you walk the streets you can see their many homes renovated within an inch of their lives. Not much is left open in these parts now, given the chill in the air.

Villefranche-de-Conflent, the most touristy spot, was all but closed yesterday when we called in to say goodbye. The few people who were in the few bistrots open were foreigners: mostly English. Many tourist shops have even taken their merchandise out of the stores for the winter, swept the shop empty, and locked the door. Most places around here are moving indoors for the winter.

Two little boys live in our village. From now until May they will likely spend most of their time indoors. They don’t have gardens. There is no public park on this hill – or any of the towns in these parts. Nowhere green for the children to play.

Most houses don’t even own gardens in these hill communities. Actually, that is true in most of France. Only a very few do. It is odd, to us, from Australia – where the outdoors is always accessible, usable and available to use – to live seasons as separately as they do in France. The umbrellas have been folded, bistrot chairs stacked till next spring, signs dismantled, doors locked. That season is over. It is time to move on to the next.

We have now to wind our way back to Calais. Some 1300 kilometres of driving in the midst of a fuel strike. The centrist-right French government is attempting to push up the retirement age from 60 to 62 – I guess they have finally done their sums and realized they can’t afford to let people retire too early! – and the objecting hoards have come out in protest: one of their easiest bludgeons: the oil refineries, have been closed in protest. Our trip back will be yet another adventure hunting down fuel.

Ceret, Picasso was here

Collioure, hugging the bay

Molitg-les-Bains, an elegant spa town 

Vinca has beaucoup English living in and near 

Villefranche-do-Confluent, empty of tourists for once 

Artisan Boulangier et Chocolatier

It is not every day you see an artisan French bread maker in action. Some wicked morsel in the window of an unassuming back-street boulangerie in the unassuming town of Prades drew us indoors. Before long we were crammed into a century old bakery at the back of the store where great sacks of pulverised grain and flour leaned heavily against white washed walls, checking out all the action.

Not a sugar sack in sight. The grains and flours are mixed in giant vats.  Water and a yeast and dough starter called levain, are added. When the dough rises, elongated tubes of it are laid out on neatly spaced scallop-shaped trays ready for the fuel driven ovens along the back wall: slow ovens for crispy breads, faster ovens for thinner skinned bread. The dough prepped now will be baked about 2 o’clock, in the cool of the early morning.

We spent a good hour watching Bruno, master boulanger, pastry chef and chocolatier, finish off a tray of pomme tartlettes (his puff pastry was handmade and light as air), and skilfully, individually dipping exceptional chocolate truffles into a final bath of dripping chocolate before going on display in the window.

His truffles had been days in the making; there were so many layers. They were entirely hand-built in unusual pinched shapes, or in the more traditional ball rolls. There were layers of built chocolate mixed with nuts, or honey, or Armagnac, or whisky, or brandy, dipped in ganache, then rolled in sugar, nuts, or bitter cocao. We were swamped in samples, which, quite simply, were the most delicious chocolate concoctions any of us have ever tasted.

Bruno, one of the most skilled pastry chefs and chocolatiers in France, has worked all over the world:  Toronto, elegant establishments in the High Alps, Corsica, and at one time he almost moved to Australia. Now, with a growing family he has happily settled down in this small shabby town that, in his words, is close to everywhere: the beach is just down the road, the mountains are on his doorstep. He is happy here.

He is not perturbed that Super U, down the road, has on its shelves cheaper bread, laden with preservatives, shrink-wrapped to stay fresh for days. Bruno’s bread lasts just hours. He is not perturbed that there are four other bakeries in this tiny town vying for the bread market. That some of these use frozen dough bothers him not one bit, either. He sells to those who want his bread.

Life is good. He wants for nothing. He is not rich, he says, but he is happy. And those who want Bruno’s bread are buying quality. Traditional, from ages past, hand made, delicious. Just like his chocolates.

Bruno, master boulanger and pastry chef

Every oven in the bakery has a different function 

Artisan chocolates

Hairpin country

The road to Andorra is up: hairpin after hairpin turn to the top, and as you arrive at the height of jagged treeless mountain tops you think you’re done with climbing; surely you are now at the top of the world, (Mont Louis, at that point), but, unbelievably, the road continues to twist right into another vertical hill climb. And on it goes, twisting up, ever up, endlessly. Higher than we’ve ever been in the camping car.

Amazingly, there are video cameras trained on the route.  Pour votre securite, the signs say. We have never driven anywhere that’s needed surveillance before. And just as well. A truck right in front of us, carrying a load of hot mix, swerved too wide and the camber tilted his load, laying his entire rig ever so neatly, and surprisingly gently, onto its side, firmly pinned to the cut away mountainside. A security vehicle, swooped in from nowhere and reached him before we could. The driver was safe. He climbed out of the cab, stood in the centre of the road, his eyes wide with shock, yet registering that he was lucky to be alive.

En route we pass a small hill community, Livia, that sits alone up there, much like an antiquated city state. All around, every bit of surrounding land is France, but Livia is completely Spanish, and has managed like that since ancient times.

From up high you can see the road as it curves around and down. At one stage I count six terraces of switchbacks clinging to the rockface of just one mountain. To build such a road must have been quite a feat. Giant slabs of concrete are steel bolted into the bedrock to hold the mountain in place. Looser rock is wire caged, stapled to the cliffs attempting to contain the inevitable landslides. Beneath one massive mountain a tunnel has been bored six kilometres long. The never-ending road works, maintenance and road security reduce the traffic to single file snarl in many parts. It must always be like this. Amazing expensive engineering for a tiny country with a population of something short of ninety thousand.

Andorra is a co-principality. It has been for over a thousand years. One of the co-rulers is the President of France, a prince of Andorra for the duration of his term of office; the other co-prince is the Bishop of Urgell in Catalonia. There is little agriculture. On these vertical slopes there is no soil.  You can grow nothing. Even if gravity would allow it only 2% of the land is arable. We saw sheep, cattle and horses in ungainly stance attempting to negotiate the vertical tilt of their high summer pasture but any day now, they will be moved to lower ground. The land is given over to snow in the winter.

Consequently, Andorra lives off its mountains, mountain sports and tourism. Mountains drop down over 9,000 feet, allowing narrow gushing waterfalls to be harnessed for hyrdro-electricity. In winter jagged peaks are topped with snow and anchor cable cars that bring snow skiiers, downhill racers, cross country skiers and snow shoers. In summer, soft clouds float between mountain peaks, a boon for photographers; and icy streams flash with trout for the fishing crowds, and for those who are brave enough, who don’t suffer from vertigo, there is hiking. But, like the cattle and sheep it is likely done on very uneven legs.

Tourism brings money, lots of it. The country appears wealthy and everywhere there is improved infrastructure, roads and apartments, going up. The smaller villages are all smart ski resorts, clad in cheerful geranium–red hanging plants or window boxes; most, not yet open for the season.

The capital, Andorra de Vella, looks all shiny-new and modern. We camp about 10 minutes from the centre of town. As always in the Pyrenees we hear fast running water everywhere: funnelled into canals, streams, gurgling in channels underground. Apartment blocks grow vertically from the terraces of the surrounding rock face.

These house a youthful population. The city feels young, hip and energetic, surrounded by its shabbier cousins: Spain and France. Downtown all is new glass and clean concrete. Most signs are not readily recognisable: not French, not Spanish, possibly Catalan. It is efficient like Singapore; energetic like Hong Kong; culturally spare. 

Amazing that every morsel of food in every restaurant, every product displayed in every store window, every hammer, nail and heavy duty pneumatic drill or crane has to be brought into this country over these tortuous roads either from France or Spain. There is no place to put a fixed wing airport: the country is completely reliant on roads. Fuel that is barrelled up these mountains from elsewhere is sold cheaper here than anywhere else in Europe. Products that come from the rest of the world are available duty free in this tax haven environment. 

Ten million people travel these crazy roads to come to Andorra every year, for that very reason. And it is at times like this that the inequities of the earth’s resource distribution seem highlighted in bright marker pen.

Enroute to Andorra

Uneven country makes bridge building a challenge

Livia, a little of Spain surrounded by France

Smaller villages are clad in geraniums

Pretty Andorra

Salt hills and steppes

On our last day in Provence we drove home via the Camargue, because we are charmed by its countryside. We passed large white hills of crystal salt pulled from the sea to make money. We were then brought to a complete standstill by a town that looked like an architect’s recreation of many, but similar, sets of mounded salt hills: La Grande Motte. We could not believe our eyes.

Last year, at exactly this time we were leasing an apartment in a building in Chicago reminiscent of what we were now seeing. A really unusual building, that caused a lot of comment in the architecturally savvy city that is Chicago. This French seaside town looked as if that very same architect had transplanted himself to France for a decade. He hadn’t, we discovered, but the era, the inspiration, were of the time: the sixties: so the influences were similar.

In an effort to counteract the pull of the Spanish coastal resorts Charles de Gaulle, in the 1960s, decided to turn this stretch of sand, sea, salt and flamingo-filled lagoons into something that might make attract French travellers and make France some money. Rather than Spain.

An architect was hired, Jean Balladur. Monsieur Balladur must have had a field day. He had complete freedom to build a resort on the coast that would keep people coming. And he did. Building after building after building is his. Each is similar, yet each is different. But you can see that the same man designed all of them.

The buildings, and they are all white apartment or commercial blocks, rise up out of the ground like spectacularly shaped salt hills. Then, at some point, in their construction they veer off into a sharp angle to the high sun: like the stepped Inca ruins of Machu Pichu.

None of us can ever recall visiting a town like this: where everything is so – homogenous -- in style. It is as crispy clean as Singapore, and each building could yet grace the front cover of many an architectural magazine.

Is it ugly? I am sure there are purists who would think so. Is it beautiful? I have no doubt there are many who would be fans of this homogenous architecture who would adore the place. We were fascinated by it.

What is interesting to speculate is how much fun the architect must have had planning this town. The freedom to plot a new building here, another one there. What luxury he had to make the decisions he had to make: about proportion, execution, how to fill space. How many architects ever have such a free commission? Not even purpose-built cities like Canberra smack of such singular architecture.

One thing for sure: you cannot miss this place. It is jaw-droppingly different, worth a visit, and, actually, draws crowds. Who are the expensive set. The marina is a mooring for multi-millionaires, filled with the largest leisure boats we have yet seen in any one place. Hundreds upon hundreds of them. The restaurants are sophisticated, and sport only the most elegantly dressed clientele

And us. Smartly dressed people – and us! -- walk up and down wide beautifully kept promenades, ogling Balladur’s buildings. What fun to come across something that is such a complete surprise.

White hills of Crystal salt

White houses that simulate the white salt hills

White on white