A Special Un-Welcome Back

I'm just back from two lovely weeks in the UK: one week chez mum, and one week in Rhossili with my big bro and his family in a fantastic house for nine, including four teenagers...

Yesterday, it was back to France on the train. My suitcase had finally given up the ghost on the journey over, and been taken to the dump, so I was going back with a massive one my mum didn't need any more that used to be used by my dad on his visits over when it had been filled with goodies. It was heavy... and unreliable. Sitting in a train on the Circle line, my eldest, who'd been given the task of hauling it around, realised the trolley handle was stuck and wouldn't retract. Ah.. We decided to worry about how to get it into Eurostar's luggage space later.

I popped into M&S in St Pancras to pick up a couple of their tasty salads for the journey, and found myself also paying for four bottles of ale that my son added to the basket. He discovered ales such as Gower Gold, and 1555 this summer and took to them like a bee to honey.

Almost first on the train, my suitcase found a home in the roomy empty luggage space but had to be jiggled about later to make room for others as the train was heaving. Crossing Paris was as ghastly as usual. I'm so glad I don't live there and have to travel on the RER every day! We had enough time before our train to Montpellier to venture outside Gare de Lyon to buy the boys some kebabs and chips at their favourite Turkish place next to a sex shop...

The TGV was half an hour or so late much to my eldest's disgust as he was planning to go out and see his buddies when we arrived home - I don't know where he finds the energy! Eventually we were let on, and I managed to get the recalcitrant suitcase snugly stowed on the luggage rack as I was one of the first in that carriage too. Thank heaven!

Back home, my cat welcomed me with neurosis and revenge poo on the bed. Not the first time either, the little sod even though next door pop in and keep his dishes full and give him attention. Shame catteries are so expensive because he'd be in there like a flash!

Next up was the fridge. My eldest had joined us (just) in London, travelling by himself from Montpellier to London. He nearly missed the train however, as he partied the night before he left and didn't hear the alarm, or me calling his phone. As a result, he didn't do all the things on the list I left, such as to put all uneaten chicken breasts in the freezer, and ten days later, they were not a pretty sight, or smell. You can imagine how happy I was throwing out six raw chicken breasts!

He also left the dishwasher full and unwashed despite me telling him not to use it. It was a repulsive sight in there, I can tell you, and the smell was foul. One wash was not enough either, and one of my wooden spoons has been consigned to the bin covered as it is in mould even after everything the dishwasher could throw at it.

Finally, this morning, my car wouldn't start so I had to call out the Assistance, then watch as the car was taken away to deal with the battery, and wait for a taxi to take me to the car rental office. A morning's worth. As I was in the taxi heading for the centre of town, I saw the truck with my car on the back that I'd seen off an hour before going in the opposite direction to where Toyota is located in Montpellier. Bizarre. I presume it's all okay... and will get to where it's going eventually!

The rental car is a snazzy DS3 which is black with a white roof, runs on turbo-charged diesel and goes like a bat out of hell. All paid for by the Assistance. Could be worse...

Enough EAUvergne

What did I see when I poked my head out of the hotel window in Le Mont-Dore? Sun? A few clouds? Any improvement in the weather however minimal? No, it was the same old drizzle, low clouds and miserable cold. We'd had enough. After a terrible night on a hard bed that shook every time someone turned over, which was often seeing as it was so uncomfortable, we decided to go home by the quickest route possible.

I was so keen to leave I suggested we wait for coffee until reaching Saint-Nectaire a few kilometres up the road. After paying an over-priced €70 for the room, we walked in 5°C drizzle to the car, parked in its free space behind the casino (the only place whole town where parking is now free), and I took the wheel to make sure we were actually leaving, now!

The route out climbs onto a plateau which was so foggy, there wasn't 20m visibility ahead. It stayed like that until we came down off the plateau. How glad were we to be leaving?

Saint-Nectaire has two parts - upper and lower. The upper old town has a church, a bar (closed) and houses, and that's it from what we saw of our short tour. All the shops are at the bottom. We drove back down to the little row of shops along the main road, went into the bar (open) to ask if they had croissants, and was told to buy them next door. Joy!

Saint-Nectaire fermier

After breakfast, we popped into the little Vival market to see what cheese they had, noted the prices, and then drove back all of 50m to the Maison de Fromage to see what their prices were. Seeing they were more than double, we hurried back to Vival and asked for some Saint-Nectaire fermier and lait, plus some Bleu d'Auvergne. I asked the girl serving what difference there was between Vival's cheese and the stuff up the road at double the price. None, she said. Up the road they cater for tourists and offer a service (of some sort), have more staff, and basically have a different business model. So be warned: if you are in St Nectaire and just want some cheese, get it from Vival. We popped back into the boulangerie to buy some bread au levain, and then set off towards Issoire and the autoroute.

My DB wanted to see Issoire because it was where there was an attempted revival of the French motorcycle industry - Voxan - created in 1995. Voxan went into liquidation in 2009, but the name was bought by Venturi. Located in Monaco, Venturi's Voxan is making a come-back as an all-electric motorbike claimed as the most powerful on earth, packing in 200CV.

I told my DB that Issoire is a bit of a dump, but he wanted to see it with his own eyes, and make a brief pilgrimage to this biker town. We drove through the centre where the halles (an historic covered market) was the only remarkable building, and out to the autoroute, and agreed that it was indeed a bit of a dump.

We stopped for a bread and cheese (again) picnic lunch in the car at a packed service station. There were many families from the academy of Clermont-Ferrand in Zone A going south on holiday, no doubt in search of some sun!

Old road.
Copyright: 34-Pas_de_l'Escalette-Ancienne_N9-2003-JRL.jpg‎ 

We found it on the other side of the Pas d'Escalette, the col which marks the separation of the causse du Larzac from the Languedoc plains. Before the autoroute was built, the N9 was the route south and the road crossed the Pas d'Escalette through a gap in the rocks which then took a sharp turn left. Suddenly the view opened out and you could see right down into the valley towards Lodève. Nowadays, you go through a tunnel but you still come out onto the amazing view, and invariably, better weather.

The sun, the sun, how good it was to see the sun again! It was warm and bright and colourful. How I love living in the south!

My little car was very pleased to have its engine stretched. It was a bit sluggish on the way up, but full of pep on the way back. At 25,000 km, it is now run in, and at its best. Hurrah!

La Pluie d'Auvergne

My DB's latest breakfast trend is 30g of walnuts. Rather than spend €13.60 on the hotel's buffet brekkie, we had a handful of walnuts each... and then went into Salers to get coffee, and a croissant for me, because, frankly, walnuts is not a breakfast worthy of the title.

My DB warned me that I couldn't just waltz into a bar with a bag of croissants and start eating - it wasn't done, and anyway, the bar would probably want to sell me a croissant (with mark-up). Maybe in some places... but we found a bar that was just opening - the lady was still cleaning the floor - and when I asked if I could eat my croissant with my coffee, she said it would be fine. Result!

We drove around the village a bit, made the mistake of not buying bread and cheese, and set off into the wilderness along the Col de Neronne towards Puy Mary (still closed). I'm sure the views would have been fantastic had they not been shrouded in low clouds. Visibility was extremely bad, which made driving along the narrow lanes somewhat hairy.

Having missed the Col de Neronne, we then missed the Vallée du Mars thanks to the pouring rain and low clouds. The morning was advancing, and we had nothing for lunch (except more walnuts), so we kept a look-out for a boulangerie. Hamlet after hamlet yielded not a single shop, although cows and green pastures were abundant. The one tiny Vival store we found was out of bread, so we decided we'd better just drive to Mauriac, population of more than 10 (actually around 3800), where there would be a proper supermarket.

Sure enough, Mauriac had a very large Intermarché where we got cheese - Laguiole, Salers/Cantal- crisps, lettuce, bread, and had a difficult choice between all of two bottles in the 'extensive' selection of Côte d'Auvergne wine...

We found a picnic spot near a viaduct and, although it had stopped raining, it was very damp, so we ate in the car (hurrah!). The Laguiole was excellent, the Salers/Cantal less so.

In the afternoon, we drove along the Gorges de la Rhue in the rain, didn't see much, but the road did go through a luscious forest of moss-covered trees and rocks. At one point we followed a sign to an 'Arbre remarkable 340m' up a delightful forest track. We went all the way to the end, but didn't see it, so turned round and looked more carefully on the way back. Sure enough, we found it - a rotting 200 year old beech tree 43 metres high... Remarkable? 

As we crossed the border into Puy de Dome, the sun promptly came out. Miracle! It made the moorlands which were carpeted in thousands of tiny jonquils positively glow. We made a short detour to see the ski resort Super Besse, still with a little snow clinging to the hillsides as my DB likes to see ski resorts out of season. There was a surprising number of vehicles about, and the cable cars were running, although the top of the hill was shrouded in cloud so I don't know what you were supposed to do once you got to the top! I always understood that if you were on a mountain and caught in fog, you should stay put in case you fell off. Maybe there's a restaurant chalet up there offering consolation for the fog-bound! In general, I thought the resort looked very down-at-heel without its improving cover of snow.

The weather closed in again, and we drove on through rain and 100% humidity trying to spot volcanoes. We were getting very bored with driving and not seeing much. At last we arrived at Le Mont-Dore (of the cheese you melt) which is a spa town and ski resort with casino and where we were to stay the night.

Le Mont-Dore looking cold and wet

Our hotel, La Russie, is up at the top on Trip Advisor for the town, god knows why. It was noisy, very basic, and had red plastic bedside lights that you couldn't read by, but were great for pretending you were in a cheap brothel. Our room was opposite a wooden staircase which was deafening when people pounded down in their winter boots. The town is a tourist trap, so every other shop sells over-priced goods and produce.

Le Mont-Dore - lovely views...

That said, the place was packed, and the restaurant where we wanted to try a truffade was full. Actually, we weren't that hungry so snacked on cheese and wine in our room whilst watching the film 'Fonzi', the story of a student who donated his sperm for scientific research, he thought, only to find out twenty years later he was the biological father of 530 young people. I'm not a great fan of French films, but this one was charming and funny.

The bread, cheese, and wine and bits and bobs went down very well, especially the Laguiole (which disappeared). A last look at the weather forecast for the next day - cloudy with sunny intervals - had us wondering if we should stay or should we go.

Invisible Volcanoes

We're back from half a trip to the Parc des Volcans in Auvergne. The weather was so awful, we gave up and came home early! The forecast had got increasingly bad from the time we initially made the hotel bookings, but we were locked into a couple of the bookings so either had to turn up or lose the money.

We left on Thursday in brilliant sunshine and 20°C. By the time we'd ridden for an hour and were up on the plateau de Larzac at le Caylar service station it was 12°C and drizzling. It was also lunch time, but did we want to perch our lunch on the motorbike seat in a nasty drizzle and stand to slurp a soggy sarnie? No we did not, so we turned round and went back to Montpellier.

Wimps! Yes, we had to admit that although, in our heads, we are toughies ready to brave un-fair weather and foul in our search for adventure, in reality, we'd much rather go motorbiking in fine conditions only... So we had our picnic lunch outside on the terrace in warm sunshine, sitting at my garden table, not soggy at all.

Then we unpacked the bike, packed my car and drove to Auvergne instead!

While it was late spring in Montpellier, it was still winter in Auvergne. Even the Col du Pas de Peyrol/Puy Mary col was still closed so we had to take a lengthy detour via the north through Riom-ès-montagne to get to Salers, our first port of call. Could we see those famous volcanoes as we drove along? Not through the relentless rain and low clouds which shrouded everything in heavy mist, no. It was all too reminiscent of holidays in the Lake District...

Typical view of countryside, volcanoes somewhere about...

Salers is one of the Plus Beaux Villages de France, and is splendid in its dark lavastone Gothic glory. Turrets, nooks and crannies around every corner - it's one big photo opportunity.

Salers

Shame muggins here forgot to take her camera... or at least didn't look in the right pocket of her not overly huge handbag and only discovered its whereabouts once back home! Luckily my DB had his phone camera. Mine decided that its memory card was a frivolous irrelevance and refused to acknowledge its presence.

Salers

Half a view from Salers

We stayed at the Hotel Bailliage, in the centre (actually it's so small you're never far from the centre!) run by two brothers who inherited it from their parents. We were in the Audrey Hepburn room, snazzily decorated in yellow, white and black, with some nifty mood lighting. The bed was heavenly - so comfortable, and with snuggly bedlinen.

Audrey Hepburn room at Hotel Bailliage

Misty view from hotel window, temperature outside 5°C

We didn't eat in the restaurant as it was a bit pricey, so found a bar-brasserie and tried a couple of local specialties - pounti (see recipe here) and bourriol which is a buckwheat pancake with batter that's been left to rise overnight. The pounti came as a type of terrine made of pancake batter, ground pork, herbs and prunes, but no swiss chard to my knowledge even though the recipe often has it. My bourriol  was served with butter, as is traditional, and had an unusual smoky taste, presumably from being cooked over wood-smoke.

We washed it down with a red Côte d'Auvergne. Wine from Auvergne? Yes, we'd never heard of it either, but it has an interesting peppery note on the tongue, and the red was just right for the 5°C miserable weather!

Our decision to take the car was vindicated the next day too when the weather got even worse...

Motorbiking to Italy - the French Riviera

Better late than never, I have finally got round to Italy. With my sieve-like memory there's no way I could remember most of what we did or what happened, apart from the couple of "misunderstandings" which took the shine off a couple of days, but at the time I wrote a trip report, so I can just dip in and pick out the highlights.

Plan A was to ride from Montpellier to Cassis and spend the night, then Cassis to Nice along the coast and spend the night, then on to Italy. As it happened, it pissed down all day in Nice so we abandoned the idea of getting soaked and staying wettish all day, in favour of a much-needed day of relaxation chez his (absent) mate in Villeneuve-Loubet. So Plan B it was.

It's a long way to Nice from Montpellier. On the autoroute it takes four and a half hours. By the road it takes all day which is why we split it up into two. We took the dearest little ferry across the Rhone at Barcarin near Port Saint Louis, which has been in operation since long before WWII. On the other side we should have turned left, but turned right by mistake, which took us to a dead end at the sea 7 km later and a huge packed-sand car-park where a sand-yacht was being hurtled along in the strong wind. There were only a couple of cars of visitors braving the wild woolliness of the weather, one of which was having fun doing hand-brake turns.

Port Louis car-park

I've done the same in the car-park at Espiguette which is also made up of packed sand, but that was years ago when I had old cars I didn't mind throwing about... Fortunately, my DB didn't have any desire to muck about with his heavily-packed bike with me behind, so we turned around and rode the 7 km back.

Crossing Marseille was fun. They've instigated a one-way system along the Vieux Port so you can't drive along it going west to east which means going round the houses, getting lost and almost losing one's temper as one tries to get back to the corniche and the Prado. The last time we were there was when we took the ferry to Corsica/Sardinia and back. Happy days.

Having negotiated our way out of Marseille successfully, we managed to find the route de la Ginèste, which is the lovely scenic road between Marseille and Cassis. It goes over the cliffs and is a much more exciting ride than the normal road. It's also the scene of an annual run apparently too. Bet that's knackering!

Cassis was disappointing. It was as cute as ever, but our hotel was over-priced especially out of season, and the best restaurant on Trip Advisor that we found was just average. The red Château Minuty that we had because it was a tad chilly was nothing like as good as the rosé which is excellent.

The route des Crètes, however, from Cassis to La Ciotat was anything but average.

Fantastic road, glorious views of the coast, cliffs and blue sea, glimpses of coves and calanques, and the dramatic Cap Canaille.

Winding road and a glimpse of the sea along the route des Crètes

Winding road along the route des Crètes

I believe that the seafront road of La Ciotat is very pleasant to ride or walk along, but I couldn't tell you precisely because it was Sunday which meant it was closed off to make way for a market, pedestrian traffic only. What with that plus other roads closed for works, it was a miracle that we found our way out.

And it wasn't just La Ciotat either. Every single seaside town had closed its most attractive road. It meant that we missed the best parts of the towns with the views over the ports and marinas, and had to be content with back streets and unattractive neighbourhoods. As this was one of the days we had a misunderstanding, riding along in stony silence... it didn't exactly lighten the ambiance... We were not 48 hours into our holiday either. That has to be a record!

It was only as we reached the Cote d'Azur at Bormes les Mimosas that the road became enjoyable again what with the flowering mimosas on either side followed by the craggy red Esterel mountains.

Esterel

We rode along the coast through Saint Tropez, Sainte Maxime, and Fréjus but decided not to join the crawling vehicles as they stopped and started their way through Cannes. We took the autoroute to Villeneuve-Loubet just outside Nice and stopped chez my DB's best buddy. There's an amazing marina resort there with a stunning curving apartment complex and shops/restaurants at the bottom. We got our sensible hats on, talked out our differences and had a lovely evening which included dinner in an Italian restaurant at the marina.

Fantastic Combined Military Services Museum, Maldon

There's been quite a lot in the papers this summer about how awful it is having the kids at home and having to take them on holiday and entertaining them and what a drag blah blah blah. I don't know how old these terrible kids are to be such a drag, but I have greatly enjoyed having mine around.

Mine are nearly 16 and 11 and are very easy to keep happy. Just take them to castles, military stuff, hands-on museums with vehicles, trains, and London (especially the Science Museum). We are back from two weeks in Essex and we've had a great time. I did my homework before we left and found a number of places I thought would interest them. Essex is brilliant for military museums.

Their favourite was the Combined Military Services Museum in Maldon and I can strongly recommend it for anyone interested in military artefacts from British history. It houses several collections including army uniforms from as far back as the Civil War, RAF full flight gear from WWI, early shipwreck artefacts from the navy plus an amazing array of munitions, special forces weapons and equipment including survival, escape and evasion devices. You can also see a collection of Home Front uniforms and equipment that were used and worn by various essential personnel such as nurses, Land Army, ARP wardens and so on. My mother recognised a lot of what she saw there.

There are even items collected by the Essex Yeomanry which was formed originally to counter the French Revolution and is now part of the TA. It shows uniforms and and books from the regiment including mess and cash books, a huge enrolment scroll, and a scrapbook of regimental service from WWI.

My favourite though was the Secret Services collection, with items donated by Captain Peter Mason and his wife Prue codename Zoé. If you have always been fascinated by James Bond you'd love the Peter Mason collection. Ian Fleming knew Peter Mason too so it's likely he helped inspire the character of the fictional spy. The collection on view has an amazing array of covert operations weapons and clothing many of which were used by Peter and his wife. They operated essentially during the Cold War so there were lots of opportunities to use their kit. You can see Peter's dapper suit, pictures of him with his beloved fast cars as well as exploding cigarettes, camera pens, tiny pistols and poisoned umbrellas.

I spent ages going through it all, admiring Prue's nifty suit and coat that could be turned inside out for a completely different look and had holsters for her pistols. She was a crack shot and took part in a circus in Russia where she could pass on secrets obtained whilst in disguise.

It was absolutely fascinating and my mother and I had a lovely time pretending how we would use the various lethal instruments on the baddies.

The boys were running around in heaven looking at the collection of swords and knives, various arms and missiles, and trying on some chain mail and armour helmet.

Outside were a couple of Chinese made Iraqi tanks and an Argentinian field kitchen plus a cannon from HMS Lutine that was lost off the Dutch coast in 1799 carrying over a million pounds of gold bullion!

As you can see, it is in a poor state after spending many years outside Lloyds of London and the museum is looking to restore it. They have launched an appeal to raise £2500 so if you know of any individuals or companies that might be interested in participating do let them know. There's a person to call and a number at the bottom of the appeal notice.

The museum is a fantastic resource so if you get the chance to go along and visit it, do. A family ticket costs £15.50 and it's well worth it. The staff are enthusiastic and informative and happy to talk about the collections, and it's not busy so you can enjoy browsing in peace.

Over the Grossglockner Pass

What we didn't see because of being in low cloud

There are only 3 ways you can leave Bavaria and go south to reach the Dolomites in that part of Austria. Two of them involve tunnels, and not any old poxy tunnel of a couple of hundred metres, no, we're talking 8km's worth of underground carbon monoxide pit. That is bad news on a bike.

The third option is to go over the Alps which means taking the Grossglockner Hochalpenstrasse (great link by the way). We were looking forward to this. The views are supposed to be stunning and the road is a fantastic challenge for bikers. Unfortunately, being a mountainous region it's also subjected to the vagaries of the weather, and when we arrived at the bottom all we could see when we looked up was low cloud cover. Great. Added to that the price of €22 for the privilege of seeing nothing except dense water vapour and perhaps the odd Alpine monster lunging out of the fog, we hesitated over lunch before finally deciding we had no choice really.

Poky hotel had not been able to furnish us with sarnies discreetly and I'm not brazen enough to make them in full view, so we stopped at a tourist trap restaurant (bikers welcome) for a quick meal. The consolation for parting with €22 was that we got a nice sticker to go on the bike.

The history of the road is fascinating. It was built in 1935 at phenomenal cost:

The Grossglockner High Alpine Road was officially opened on 3 August 1935. 870,000 cubic metres of earth and rock were moved in the 26 months of building, 15,750 cubic metres of walling was created, 67 bridges built and a road telephone with 24 facilities was installed. 3,200 workers undertook 1.8 million work shifts.

The total building costs, according to the final calculations from 16 April 1936, amounted to the 53.5 million euro at the currency of today for the road building, 3.3 million euro for improvement of the approach roads, the telephone facilities and various details.

Previous to the road:

Trails over the Hochtor: the Celts-, Romans and Pack-animal Routes
The road over the Hochtor follows ancient trails. People crossed the Hochtor almost two-thousand years before Christ.

Such finds as pre-Celtic bronze knives, Celtic gold jewellery, a Roman Hercules statue, medieval pack-animal bridles and the chains of galley slaves from the 17th century are proof.

Until the highpoint of trade in the 17th century, after the Brenner and the Radstadt Tauern, the Hochtor was the third most important trade route carrying almost ten per cent of the trade goods over the eastern Alps. 

"It might be a lovely day at the top" I suggested, ever the little optimist. It wasn't. It looked like this at the top:

It wasn't all bad though. Before we got into the clouds we enjoyed scenery like this:

Note low clouds hiding views of peaks

On the other side of the col you can turn off to visit the Pasterze Glacier at Kaiser-Franz-Josefs-Höhe.

Glacier pool

Dirty looking glacier. You can walk the steps down for a better look.

There is a visitors' centre here.

The Kaiser-Franz-Josefs-Höhe is named after the visit Kaiser Franz-Josef made here in 1856. Upon arrival you stand directly before Austria´s highest mountain, the Grossglockner (3,798m), with a view of the longest glacier in the eastern Alps, the Pasterze.

A few of the bikes at the visitors' centre

The storm caught us up - it's raining on the right

We got wet several times that day. It started raining as we came off the pass at which point we decided to give up and look for a nice hotel. We found one thanks to the Tourist Information Office - the Schlank Schlemmer Kürschner Hotel in Kötschach-Mauthen at the bottom of the pass. They had an indoor/outdoor pool which we relaxed in, followed by a good, copious dinner accompanied by this delicious wine (love the name too).

To be continued.

Ruined Castle Hols in Lozere

We've just come back from a week's camping (in a chalet) at the Lac de Villefort an hour or so north of Alès. The best bit about the chalet was the all-in-one hob-oven-dishwasher. Yes, a dishwasher! Luxury!! The other best bit was the view (or vice versa):

View from chalet over Lac de Villefort

I think you'll agree that that's pretty stupendous. The camping is practically invisible from the other side of the lake (hint, the blue stripe bottom left is the swimming pool).

Spot the campsite

We visited, or rather saw, several castles. We were not able to visit all of them - this one, the Chateau du Cheylard at Aujac because it was closed on Mondays, and we didn't notice this important piece of information on the board at the bottom until we'd climbed a couple of kilometres in 32°C heat to find the closed gate and another notice.

Chateau Cheylard, Aujac

This one, the Chateau Bresis because it's on private land and although we were told that theoretically no one can stop us visiting an historic monument, we decided not to bother trying just in case the owner came rushing out wielding a shotgun...

Chateau Bresis

We got to this one, the Chateau de Castanet a bit late in the day and decided not to hang about mainly because it was not a ruin and my boys greatly prefer clambering over old stones than looking at rooms of furniture and exhibitions, and also because it was windy and pretty nippy out, and the car was a lot more inviting.

Chateau Castanet

I discovered that on the map there are a number of symbols for castles. The most promising ones for us indicate a decent ruin in a triangle of three black circles. A totally ruined ruin has a triangle of white circles and, from experience, is so ruined that it's little more than a pile of stones. Inhabited castles come in the shape of a rectangle with little lines poking out of each corner.

La Garde Guerin offered a good mixture of ruins and restored buildings - this photo was taken from the top of a very windy tower.

La Garde Guerin

We ended our castles visiting with the Chateau d'Allègre where they were having a medieval fair, with the usual armour and weapons displays. My youngest tried on a couple of helmets and wielded a heavy sword for effect.

Chateau d'Allègre

The van in the background rather spoils the effect but you get the idea. They were still setting up in fact, hence the general lack of activity.

We didn't just drive about looking for castles, however. We also did some sporty activities which I'll keep for another post. I think you'll agree that we got a good dose of castles on this holiday!

Summer Hols

Today is the end of the school year and my eldest took himself off to Toulouse for the weekend. Not without a last minute panic of 'mum, I need a cozzie for the swimming pool, can we go to Intersport?'. No, we couldn't go to Intersport. It was either we go to Intersport and get a cozzie and miss the train or get on the train minus cozzie. When put to him, he voted for the latter but I think he secretly he believed he had time to do both. He is his father's son.

I took out €20 so he could buy a sodding cozzie at the pool (they often have a self-service of cozzies, ear plugs, goggles, swimming caps and other useful objects to buy in a machine that looks like it usually dispenses cans of Coke, packets of crisps and Twixt bars), and pay for the entrance. The cost of his jaunt has now gone up to €60. It is his end of year pressie for getting through and being accepted for lycée. I won't say he managed this 'gloriously' because that would be too far from the truth to be credible. No, I think 'stumbled through despite all the odds because he was too lazy to move his arse' would be pinpoint it more accurately. He maintains his Brevet is 'dans la poche' (except maths) though, so we'll see...

I dropped him off at the tram station and left him to it. He seems quite capable of negotiating his way around train stations, including Gare de Lyon, so I declined from driving him through the ghastly traffic and road works to the station when he is quite able of getting there himself on the tram, finding the right train and his seat.

I suppose it's a rite of passage, this - end of collège, bid for independence and freedom. He's looking forward to a month of July full of his mates, sleeping at other people's houses, having friends sleep at ours, swimming in the river, dossing about and eating as much bread and Nutella and pipa (sunflower seeds) as he can. Heady days.

I have a plan to get him to manage his bread eating habits himself. I'm going to teach him how to make soda bread which is ridiculously easy, and then he can whip up a batch in less than an hour and be stuffing his face while I'm peacefully oblivious at work.

We will also be heading off on holiday, camping in a chalet near Villefort in Lozère. It is camping de luxe with air con and a dishwasher. Mum's on holiday too! The boys love camp sites what with their pools, activities and night-time entertainment, potential friends and space to do nothing in particular. The chalet even has an oven so we'll be able to make soda bread there too. Buying endless baguettes gets very expensive.

Camping le Lac, Morangies

I'm looking forward to it. We usually go to the UK but this year I had to maintain the car which ate up all the travel money (and some) so it's up the road for us on the edge of a stunning reservoir surrounded by pine-covered hills, a dam, viaduct, and bridge - all very dramatic.

Meanwhile, my youngest is looking forward to being an only child for the weekend and take charge of the tele remote, the best spot on the sofa and not sharing anything.

I can already feel the stresses of the school year start to melt away. Long live the summer!