Le Franco Phoney

One of the most amazing marriages between nature and humanity is la Roque Saint Christophe: Europe’s largest and oldest cave dwelling site. As uninteresting as a long, shallow dent in a rock sounds, la Roque Saint Christophe is actually really interesting. To help the imagination, a miniature version of part of the limestone village rests half way along the ‘main road’, just before the indented steeple of a long-gone church. The bell-tower allowed a series of similarly carved villages dotted along the Vézère river to warn each other of danger within minutes. The site has been restored in some areas and the entrance fee includes a booklet (in English if you want) explaining each of the different areas of interest, including an abattoir. Thankfully, that part of the village has not been restored.

 

Before I tell you about this place I visited, I have to tell you a few other things.

Firstly, my mum likes gardens. If I was to go on holiday with my mum, I would tell her that I don’t want to visit any gardens. Gardens are not my ‘thing’.

Secondly, I don’t see the point in quoting poetry. People might think it’s clever, but I don’t. It’s not original and it put me off liking a rather attractive French boy a few years ago when he thought he would quote Shakespeare in front of his French friends who all looked rather confused during his performance. You may think I am shallow for judging, and maybe I am.

So, where did I go? Well, in a completely hypocritical moment, I went to a garden called Marqueyssac which immediately led me to quote Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” to an equally confused French boy as we wandered around the sinuous rills of the fertile ground. This garden was made for Mr C’s poem! Although not quite ‘twice five miles of fertile ground’, there’s six kilometres of greenery full of nooks and crannies to visit: a tower; a playground; a lookout point which shows a village below with some buildings carved in the stone cliffs above it; lots of different walks; a water feature; an enormous length of hedge; interesting plants and trees abounding with wildlife; a chapel; and even a poet’s hut! Maybe Mr C wrote “Kubla Khan” at Marqueyssac after all. I did not, however, see any damsels with dulcimers, caves of ice or blokes who looked like they had been fed on honeydew and the milk of paradise, so maybe not.

Anyway, my mum will be pleased that I’ve visited a garden. Even I am pleased that I visited this one!

If you suffer from vertigo or if you’re scared of heights, you might want to avoid the massive bridge near Millau and take the road underneath it, as I did, instead. From the road below, you can see the eight pylons clearly: they fork open about half way up to allow the wind to pass through. If they did not, the bridge, apparently, would collapse. These pylons are the tallest in the world. It should therefore come as no surprise that the road bridge they support is the tallest in the world.

Travelling under the bridge means that you can stop at the information centre. We stopped there at around lunchtime — with a picnic which we planned to enjoy under the cool shade of a tree. However, a security guard is employed to walk around the ‘grounds’ (a car park) and point out the sign that says no picnics are allowed. In addition, the centre has no tourist display area: you have to pay for a guided tour of the small building.

We jumped back into the car and drove about ten seconds away to the pylon on the other side of the road. We parked in the shade provided by the bridge above, grabbed the picnic rug from the boot of the car, and cooled down with a great view of the bridge right across the valley while we ate. If the weather hadn’t been so hot, I probably would have walked over to the security guard to thank him for making our visit more enjoyable (and free).

Instead, we took the obligatory ‘pretend you’re holding up the bridge with your hand’ photo before driving on.

Le Gouffre de Padirac is possibly the most beautiful natural landmark I have ever seen. A gouffre (pronounced ‘goof-rrr’) is a cave, and this one is massive. Apart from stalictites and staligmites, the gouffre offers an underground boat ride at a constant 12°C. So, remember your jumper even on a hot day, and remember to laugh when the man steering your boat pretends to rock it a bit too much: if you were stuck underground in a damp cave for many hours each day, you’d want the tourists to humour you too.

The gouffre was formed over time naturally. It has something to do with acid rain, but the explanation was in French so I didn’t quite catch, well, any of it. What I did understand was that rainwater has since washed down some seeds, and there is now a tiny fern growing under one of the courtesy lights – the first plant life there. Looking at it is a bit look like looking at your friend’s baby scan: it’s tiny; it doesn’t seem real; but you’re still meant to say ‘wow’.

Of course, photography — even without a flash — is not allowed. So none of the photos below were actually taken, and none of the guides were tipped well for not noticing any blatant photography that was going on before, during and after the tour.

One thing to bare in mind before arriving is that this tourist attraction closes earlier than most others in France. It takes a good hour and a half to see everything, and perhaps a bit longer if you choose to mount the hundreds of stairs instead of using the three separate escalators to get back to the top. So, if you turn up at 6.03pm (like we did), the gates will be shut and the restaurant next to the gouffre that sells gauffres (waffles, pronouced ‘goff-rrr’) has probably run out of gauffres, making the early closure even more disappointing. We returned the next morning and the queue was massive, but fast. When we left just before midday, the queue had vanished and those arriving had the added benefit of cooling down during the hottest part of the day at the busiest time of summer. We did not stop for a gauffre. It was too hot and we had a red village to see.

The Dune du Pilat is Europe’s largest sand dune, but, like Europe’s highest road, there is some confusion: signposts for Dune du Pilat are often twinned with signposts for Dune de Pyla . What? Are there two giant dunes next to each other? Nope: the village next to the Dune du Pilat is called Pyla-sur-Mer (which means ‘Pyla by the sea’) and over time, the dune has been misspelt to match the village, and now, both spellings are acceptable. At least, this is what Wikipedia told me, but my travel partner swears that he saw signposts for Pilat-sur-Mer as well!

Climbing the dune is hard work, but well worth the effort, with lovely views of the beach front from the top including a sand bar with lots of moored boats that are completely out of the water at low tide. In fact, you can see from some of the photos below just how steep the dune is, but once you’re at the top, the side leading down to the beach is far easier (phew!). Annoyingly, I saw one guy run up the steep side of the dune and tumble down at least twice while I was walking up it slowly. I can only imagine he was doing some sort of Rocky 4 endurance training (think back to Sylvester Stallone in snow-covered Russia, running with logs of wood and pulling carts around as if he was a horse and you’ve got an idea how silly this guy also looked). Meanwhile, I stopped every ten steps to ‘look at the view’. It had nothing to do with my aching leg muscles or over-inflated lungs feeling like they might collapse. No, it was all about the view.

We managed to camp within fifteen metres of the dune at the Pyla Camping (or should that be Pilat?) caravan park (lots of French entertainment thrown in for free: we witnessed a foam party which kids were literally lost in). The dune gets the big thumbs up from me: I really enjoyed it.

 

Last week, I ended an eleven-day road trip that took me through central France and onto the West coast to visit friends, followed by a quick drive back to La Clusaz. Some of the places were amazing, including the giant underground cave involving a boat ride on an underground lake to get there; ancient caveman paintings; camping metres away from Europe’s largest sand dune; and limestone rock, carved to create entire villages on cliff-faces. I’ll write in more detail about them just as soon as I’ve sorted out my French car insurance which is a whole separate story in itself.

Basically, if you change insurers, you have to give your existing insurer notice through a signed letter two months before you want your contract with them to ends. I still haven’t figured out if this is only possible when the contract is due to end or not, as I was using the alternative way of ending a contract: you have a twenty-day window when your contract is due to expire but you still have to write to them via certified mail to change insurers. Now, my old insurer has written to me to tell me that I can’t change insurers because I didn’t write in the specified twenty-day gap. However, my new insurer says I can because the date on the envelope is stamped as sent on the 20th July, whereas my old insurer tells me I needed to write within twenty days of the 9th of July (the date d’édition de l’avis d’échéance – the date of expiry). This in itself makes no sense as my insurance was set to run out on the 31st August. I’m hoping that the new insurer is correct in that the twenty days commences from the date stamped on the envelope, as I did change insurance during this period. Either way, I’ll be having a fun morning of speaking French and not understanding the responses. Actually, that’s presuming any of the insurance agencies are open: I heard they’re closed on Monday mornings.

Below is a map with the places we stayed in during each night of the road trip (we went anticlockwise). I’ll be adding photos and stories to it in the coming days. And maybe some photos from the Annecy Fete du Lac fireworks display on Saturday night (it included love-heart-shaped fireworks…awwww).

Another road-trip related post. I’ve made it across central France and have arrived on the West coast. The drive over was fun, although slightly dangerous, thanks to a game that my friend Jen tricked me into playing. Sometimes, this game seems next to impossible and it’s downright frustrating. I can’t resist playing it.

It’s the number plate game! In France, there are 95 departments: each department (region) has a number (see the map here – I’m in 74). French post codes and number plates reflect the region. So, for instance, my postcode starts with 74, and the local number plates also contain 74 as the last two digits, separated from the rest of the numbers and letters. The number plate game is simple. The game starts when you spot a number plate ending in 01. You then look for 02. I spent about a week seeing 02s but no 01s which was really frustrating. Finally, success! I saw one 01 and started watching out for 02s. Nothing. For two weeks, I searched. I saw 03 to 07 in one day alone: the number plate game was taunting me. I finally saw 02 and 03, then got stuck on 04 for the rest of winter 2007. I still find myself far too interested in car number plates when I really should be watching the road as I’m now stuck on 47.

This all started when I was sitting in Jen’s car and she said “21!”. “What are you talking about?” I asked, and so she explained the game to me. I thought, “Well, if Jen came out in late November and she’s already up to 21 by mid-January, it must be pretty easy.” Jen revealed yesterday that she actually started her count last May. And that was during a road trip where she drove through loads of departments.

Other numbers I’ve been stuck on include: 9; 19; 26. Luckily, Jen educated me on department 20: it doesn’t exist. Instead, the French island of Corsica has two regions: 2A and 2B, which are separate to the department of 02. Confused yet? Try the number plate game and this will all make sense.

I’m doing a road trip from the South East of France to the South West, and I’ve noticed a few things. Only in rural France…

…do you see the rebellious elderly block off a car park by parking their car across the entrance so they can play pétanque (a bit like lawn bowls but without the grass);

…can you speed through a village (30km/h zone) at almost double the limit and have the police wave a thanks to you when you slow down because they’re crossing at a zebra crossing;

…are you required to stop when travelling on some main roads to give way to traffic from a side street on your right because of an ancient French law;

…do you see every signpost framed and mounted on wood just because they’ve got so much of the stuff;

…do they set up automated lights for a ten-metre stretch of roadwork, which the locals ignore and drive through when the light is red because the lights take five minutes to change to roadwork-green (ie, orange);

…do you see a family of four park their car by the side of the road, fold out their picnic table/chair set and have a picnic next to their car when there is a perfectly good nature reserve right next to them (with a picnic table free for use).

Last week, I did a quick road trip to Nice, opting for the mountainous roads over the fast, but further-away highways.

I left La Clusaz and took the Col des Aravis down to Albertville. It was a mistake: it took longer than the Annecy route as the windy roads were wet and slippery. From Albertville, I took the toll road (€7.20), where I had the option to take the Frejus tunnel through to Italian motorways — the fastest route, but probably the slowest given my inability to understand Italian road signs — so I opted to go towards Briançon, which took me through a town called ‘Bonnuit’ (‘good night’), over the top of many mountains and quite close to the mystical La Grave, then through Serre Chevalier, and though Barcelonnette, which leads to the Cime de la Bonette — the purported highest road in Europe at 2802 metres high. The narrow, but freshly resurfaced and empty roads were breathtaking and the French are rumoured to have added an extra loop of road at the top to make the route an extra 50 metres higher in order to claim the title for the highest road. I really recommend this road — part of the Route Napoleon — for the natural views. However, the cloud was so thick at one point that I was keeping up with the motorbike around 15 metres in front of me, but the tail-lights were only visible from time to time. Just beyond the peak was an old army barracks, now turning to rubble, and apparently complete with cartoon murals inside. Alas, I had no time to stop, so I continued past the region of pink rock closer to Nice before arriving in the traffic-laden, hot city itself. Gelati topped my list of needs while I waited to meet my friends to take me to their apartment.

The next day, we went to Antibes, so I accidentally enjoyed the coastal road to Cannes while looking for signs to Grasse. I found the place and its many perfumeries, but I mistakenly followed the N85 route signs in the wrong direction through town before realising I was heading back to Nice. Don’t go to Grasse unless you like getting lost or you want perfume: the motorways all stop on different sides of town and you have to find your own way through the rather large town that Grasse has become. The road from Grasse was easy and equally as beautiful as the previous day’s taking me up high again with views of a large dam in a valley with amazingly blue water. The road had also recently been flattened out nicely so it too was great to drive on, although a man in a Ferrari looked as annoyed as I felt about the loose tar-covered gravel still littering the road. I ignored the sign-posts and went into the centre of Digne-les-Bains for petrol. I passed the ‘Bains’ part of the town — another amazingly blue lake, with lots of people dotted around it that made me want to join them for a swim on such a hot day. Alas, I only had time to fuel up the car. I continued North towards Grenoble and this was by far the most frustrating part of the journey: a single-lane road that was typically busy for the national route. I took toll roads from Grenoble to Albertville to gain some lost time, then home via Lake Annecy as mountainous roads had now lost their appeal.

Here are some photos, mostly taken while I was driving.