Dordogne to Cap Ferret

Our week at Domme, in the Dordogne region of France, flew past but we weren’t especially busy, spending quite a lot of time either in or within 20 kilometres or so, of our apartment. There were plenty of things to see and do within those limits, however, and we hope that we’ve summarised our stay in this brief video:



With a week in the Dordogne now behind us, I’m writing this on the coast of the Bay of Biscay, just west of Bordeaux. The weather here today is hot and sunny and we’re in shorts and T shirts. A fine white sandy beach is just 50m away and it fringes a large estuary formed where the river Eyre encounters the Atlantic Ocean in Arcachon Bay.

We pulled up stakes from our small Dordogne village last Sunday, 17 June and drove the three and a half hour distance to Cap Ferret in one hit, stopping to eat our home-prepared lunch only when we found a pleasant shady pause-point only three kilometres from our destination, here in the village of Petit-Piquey. The village is one of a N-S string of east-facing similar villages on a gradually-narrowing sandy peninsula which terminates several kilometres south of us, at Cap Ferret. No sign of that skinny furry mammal, though, and we don’t know the origin of the Cape’s name.

This is a beach resort and we expect it to be unbearably crowded in a few weeks when most of France takes its annual holiday. Right now, however, it’s very quiet and we think we’re probably seeing it at its best. This area is modern France, hardly a church in sight, and it bares a faint resemblance to the northern part of our Sunshine Coast, with only low rise buildings being permitted where elsewhere towering apartment blocks would dominate the skyline.

Huitres (oysters) are one of this area’s claims to fame. And, having sampled some, we agree that the claim is justified. Even as I write this my mouth is watering as I recall our evening meal yesterday, in bare feet at a table and chairs perched in sand just above the high tide line. The oysters are plucked, alive, from a large well-aerated saltwater tank on the premises and are shucked and placed on ice for immediate consumption, accompanied by delicious bread and butter, a glorious ice cold bottle or two of local white wine, and fresh lemons for juicing. The meal isn’t cheap, but is reasonably priced and well worth the cost, especially given the presentation, the service, the accompaniments and the setting, overlooking the exposed sand flats which hold the rustic platforms on which the oysters are grown, encased loosely with a couple of hundred others in a plastic envelope which is submerged twice daily with the rising tide. We’re planning on doing it again tonight.

We’ve adopted low key mode here, with late breakfasts, lots of time spent looking at the view from our large balcony while reading books and, as the need arises (more often these days), taking a snooze. La Conch, the oyster restaurant, is within walking distance, just along the beach, and reservations are not presently necessary: just walk up from the beach, grab a table you like and take a seat. Meal choices are easy and decisions are confined to how many oysters you want, which of the two available wines suits you and whether you want freshly cooked prawns (served whole and cold as in Australia) as an entree.



Moving on to La Rochelle next…

Kev and Mary

Veyrier-du-Lac to Dordogne Region

The time is rushing past and I must admit I’m hard pressed to find the time to update the blog. So many interesting things popping up, so many things I’d like to record.

How about a robot lawn mower? When we were pedalling our boat in Veyrier-du-Lac a week ago we both remarked on the neatness of a very large lawn verging on the lake. Clearly it was the work of a very conscientious gardener. But no, as we got closer we could plainly see a device about the size and shape of a large typewriter (remember them?) crawling around the lawn, deftly avoiding obstacles like the large plane tree which was prominent. It made no sound and had no visible means of support, so was probably powered by an electrical battery and guided by sensors. That night, Google served up an ad to me for just such a device, a robotic lawn mower (and we don’t even have a lawn).

Something more mundane. Apple’s “lightning” power cable is a survivor. We have several and I’d left one coiled in the button down pocket of a shirt which Mary washed, very efficiently, in our Veyrier-du-Lac washing machine. To my surprise it performed perfectly after the one-hour washing ordeal and continues to do so.

Buying fuel in France can be tricky. Often a buyer is required to use a totally automatic system and sometimes a human agent is involved. In most cases the system requires pre-payment so before you can pump fuel into your tank you must first submit your card (debit card in our case) for verification and limit assessment. Usually the fuel delivery system is intelligent enough to recognize that the card belongs to an non-French-speaking owner so it provides written instructions on screen in the appropriate language. It’s a good system which eliminates the human factor and presumably allows 24/7 fuel purchase without risk of theft.

Automatic change dispensers for ordinary shops. At least two patisseries we’ve used no longer require payment to be handled by counter staff. When payment time comes the customer deals with an in-counter robot which handles both cash and card and dispenses accurate change if cash is used. The robot verifies that the goods have been paid for and the human counter person hands over the goods. Much smarter, more efficient and more hygienic than the old systems.

And so, back to our travels…

Veyrier-du-Lac and Annecy have been left behind and we’re now in the Dordogne district, some eight hours’ drive SW of those places. The relocation was achieved with few hassles and minimal cost, given that we could easily dodge France’s extraordinary charges on toll roads. Of course, having plenty of spare time to use up on the toll-free back roads makes such cost savings possible.

We’d used Google Maps/Expedia at short notice to find and book a small Auberge at Orcival, a place Mary identified from an old Lonely Planet (remember them) as suitable for an overnight stop on this journey west. Google Maps suggested the Auberge and we booked it, online, a few nights before, straight from that App.

The Auberge turned out to be pretty good, but this was a village where the English language was rarely encountered and we found no-one among the various hotel, bar and restaurant staff who could understand English. But, as usual, we got by. Google Translate was useful, but limited as the village also lacked modern cellular communications.

After a pleasant breakfast we set course for the Dordogne region having agreed on a 4:00pm rendezvous with Micheline, acting for the owner in yet another Airbnb arrangement. In the event we arrived early and, despite language incompatibilities, managed to change the RV time to 3:30pm using email and Google Translate.

Lunch en-route at a typical lay-by on a quiet road

So here we are in a very old two storey cottage, which is trying hard to reach into the 21st century despite numerous limitations dictated by the builders who could never possibly have imagined modern plumbing, electrical and safety requirements. It’s comfortable, but the floors are wonky and the stairs are a work of art rather than a model of efficiency and as for the door locking arrangements, let’s not go there. We like it, and have already used the narrow balcony twice for our evening glass of red.

I’ve always fancied a bed with a boating/fishing motif as bed head.

View from our narrow but spacious balcony

Video of the trip from Veyrier-du-Lac to Domme and arrival.



Thanks for reading

Kev

Ribeauvillé to Veyrier-du-Lac

We bade a sad farewell on Friday 01Jun to our apartment in Ribeauvillé, where Alex, the owner, came to say goodbye accompanied by wife Veronique and their toddler son, Victor.

Video: Farewell to Ribeauvillé (use the offered Facebook link if video not displaying as embedded)


The direction was south, and the target a small Auberge (named Chez Soi) located on a riverbank near the tiny hamlet of Ougney-Douvot, only a few hours away at moderate speed.

Initial route, 175km. The final route approximated that.

Off we went, with the aim of keeping to the back roads and after an hour or so veering off the route to take a cup of café in any village which took our fancy. And so we found ourselves in such a village, whose typically French-hyphenated-name now evades me, as does its location. We propped near the Mairie and, with no café spot in view, consulted our iPad Maps App which showed a nearby shop with the word “Burger” next to it. Surely a burger place would have what we desired; so we drove to the other end of this sparsely settled countryside village and discovered that the burger shop was in fact a tiny boulangerie/patisserie operated by Madame Burger. Yes, she served café au lait, brought to fruition in a microwave, but burgers, Non! Perfect; no other customers, bright sunny day.

Continuing the route, choosing one from several internet-delivered offerings, our next aim was to find the materials for a picnic lunch, having had insufficient makings on hand to make lunch before departure from Ribeauvillé. Sometime later, while manoeuvering through a somewhat larger village than our previous, we stumbled on a small supermarket whose brand we didn’t recognize. Here we managed to buy some very nice sandwiches, other items we’d had difficulty finding elsewhere, and an excellent, stylish cooler bag which could be folded and thus brought home with us as a functional souvenir.

A leisurely and simple lunch was taken on a picnic table beside a small stream, near a village whose precise location I did not record. Again, no one else around, with the murmur of occasional passing traffic, the continuous chirping of birds in the nearby shrubbery and the gurgling noise of the stream keeping us company.

Expecting that we couldn’t get into our room at Chez Soi until 4:00pm at the earliest, we nevertheless decided to arrive there earlier on the reasonable chance that our room was ready and we could occupy immediately. And so it proved; by 2:30pm we were in. We’d booked the best room of the five it offers (through Booking.com), upstairs with a wide though narrow balcony and had opted to leave our main luggage locked in the car, parked outdoors, nearby, so had plenty of space in the room. Chez Soi is 300 years old and is flooded, downstairs only, by the adjacent river every couple of years.

Chez Soi view from our balcony, river in background.

Our room, with me setting up the WiFi.

Pretty much as soon as we arrived a rain shower passed along the steep sided valley and soaked Chez Soi and its one or two neighbours. But once this had passed I grabbed my boots and backpack (with umbrella) to follow on foot the gravel track from Chez Sois along the left bank of the river. The forest just here was dense, green and dripping wet, and mainly on my left. On my right, where the track departed sufficiently from the river bank, and where the terrain permitted, appeared a few meadows with crops growing profusely. It was in one of these meadows that I encountered a single deer, fleeing in bounds toward the forest at my approach.

Near where I saw the deer.

Later I happened on a group camping on the river edge and discovered, as I’d suspected, that they were there to fish. They greeted me warmly, these two middle aged men and their middle aged wives all from Stuttgart, even though we had no common language but Fishing. They even induced me to drink a beer with them and I carried the resulting empty bottles out to civilisation with me as a gesture of goodwill.

My new fishing friends

Chez Soi operated an honesty bar which never closed so it being 5:00pm and now sunny and warm Mary and I used it, at the same time as another guest couple who’d arrived by bicycle. They spoke English well so we had an enjoyable chat with them over a glass of rosé. Later we four shared a table at the local restaurant, chatting enthusiastically about a wide range of subjects. Klaus spoke German, Italian, French and English but I think had never been outside Europe. As do most people, they expressed a strong desire to visit Australia “some day”.

Klaus and Uta departing Chez Soi in the morning.

After a substantial breakfast at our Auberge we also hit the road around 10:30am, aiming for Veyrier-du-Lac with a deadline of 4:00pm which was the rendezvous time agreed with the agent.

We took the slightly longer route through the forest area.

Having eaten a big breakfast we opted to forgo lunch and simply stopped for a couple of short breaks enroute. Two hours out our iPad was telling us our arrival time would be 15:48 and, incredibly, after traversing dozens of roundabouts, densely trafficked mountain towns and long stretches of curvy mountain road we arrived at our exact destination at 15:50. The agent showed up at 4:00pm and a minute later we were ensconced in our spacious apartment whose large balcony sported amazing views of the magnificent Lake Annecy.

We created a video of our stay in Chez Soi and our trip from there to Veyrier-du-Lac:

The blue dot is our location.

So here we are for a week. There seem plenty of activities and novelties to keep us amused but we’ll see how it goes.

Thanks for reading

Kev & Mary

Ribeauville part one

After our two recovery nights in Troyes we felt refreshed enough to head for our next destination, Ribeauville, in the Alsace region, which was taken by what is now Germany in 1871 then returned to the French in 1918 only to be taken forcibly by Germany in 1940 and then returned by force to France in 1945. Plenty of recent history here, then.

The route east was characterised initially by mainly flat land covered as far as the eye could see in all directions by agriculture. Then the forest-covered Vosges mountains appeared in the last hour or so. We’d deliberately chosen the route over the mountains rather than dodge around the southern edge as this seemed a great way to enter our target village which is perched on the eastern fringe of the mountains and the western fringe of the plains which stretch east to the Rhine river, and Germany’s Black Forest region.

Having previously extensively reconnoitred digitally our new accommodation and its village we had no difficulty arriving on time outside our ex-Post Office (19th century German) apartment building, whose architecture is singularly different from its neighbour buildings.

That’s Mary at the front window of our apartment which uses the entire side of the building at that level

Parking space in the street outside seemed tight at first glance but with a little more of a look around we squeezed in just as the locals do. I think they are very casual about parking here.

Access to the apartment was easy, with the use of a key safe and a code which had been passed by Airbnb message. It took me only two trips to transfer all of our gear from the car into the apartment where we unpacked everything into the various built-in storage facilities as we were already tired of living out of suitcases (not that we had any suits in there). Next, off to the supermarket two minutes walk away. A few essentials like beer and wine, oh, and breakfast stuff and a frozen pizza for dinner in the apartment and we were set. It was a warm and sunny afternoon and the sun doesn’t set until 2130 so we took ourselves the two minutes’ walk down to the local Grand Rue where we found a table at a clearly popular establishment and sat down for what we considered a well-deserved rest.

Draft beer (pression) is widely available in Alsace and drunk with enthusiasm

Day one. Saturday. This place is surrounded by countryside and during the small hours is quiet as (I imagine) the depths of space. We slept soundly, arose late-ish, and enjoyed the soft-light views of varying terrain from our windows looking north, south and west. Some light traffic noises and the rare (thankfully) ear-splitting moped roar from the favourite transport of the local youth competed with the melodious calls of the blackbirds in the vineyard abutting our back yard. Breakfast was pleasant and the microwave (our coffee machine, recipe available on request) was easily mastered so all was well. We opted to do bugger-all today, except wander, individually, on foot with the plan that we’d eat in the Grand Rue in the evening, perhaps after a glass of red at home. The washing machine now caught our eye and Mary mastered its various buttons and dials with the help of the manual, written in English for once.

The washing machine got us an invite to a get-together, that evening, of the various tenants of the ex-Post Office in the back yard. How come, you ask? Well, we couldn’t open the washing machine door at the end of its cycle. I messaged the owner, who lives in nearby Colmar with his wife and infant son, and he mentioned that he was attending the get-together, that we could attend also and that he’d get the washing machine door open during his visit. All of which happened, although the washing machine door was far more difficult for the owner than he expected.

The soirée was a great success but, with only one other English-speaker among the less than a dozen attendees, we struggled with the conversation, but the more wines we had the easier it got. Then before the party got too wild, we oldies sauntered off to the Grand Rue where numerous bistro/restaurant choices awaited. After a delicious meal at surf club prices we headed back to bed to find that the soirée was getting rowdier by the minute. We were tempted to stay but fortunate, I think, that we didn’t, although it would have been a great chance to pick up some new words of French.

Sunday. Day of rest. Yeah, sure! Early start, on with the boots and backpack and we were off to conquer the steep castle-topped ridge to our west overlooking the village.

Looking west along Grand Rue, with one of the castles visible on the ridge in the distance

Movie of the hike up the mountain: Click “View on Facebook” if not displaying



Apart from another great evening meal in the Grand Rue, Sunday was used up.

Monday 28May18

Time to use the car, which had stood, lonely and unused, in our street, Rue Klee.

Ribeauville is at top left. We roughly followed the blue annotated line in a clockwise direction. The Rhine and the border show clearly, running S-N.

Germany’s not far away, to the east, from Ribeauville, which, if you’ve been paying attention, was itself once part of Germany. We picked the detailed route as we went along, with no fixed visit locations planned and carried our own lunch (baguette, ham, cheese, fruit) knowing we’d happen on a sweet place to pull up at a picnic table or grassy bank, away from traffic and munch at our leisure.

Probably all reading this have heard of the Maginot Line. If not, you can find lots of info about it on Wikipedia. Anyway, all of a sudden we started to see signs mentioning a memorial to this strategic linear fortress. Sure enough it was on our route and certainly worth a visit even though I’d had no inkling beforehand that such a memorial existed.

One side of the massive bunker

Preserved adjacent to the bunker was this sizable bomb crater; according to the notice a Luftwaffe Stuka dive bomber delivered its bomb there, missing the bunker by 15m.

Unceremoniously we crossed the Rhine into Germany where a huge hydro electricity plant was operating, in French territory, using water from the north-flowing Rhine whose centreline serves as the border between the two in these parts. On the other side, after some diversion onto gravel roads looking for a lunch spot, we happened on a very pleasant facility right on the right bank. Here we ate our lunch before moving to the adjacent riverside restaurant for a single cold beer each and no more, although there was a bit of mission creep on Mary’s side.

Mission creep in action

Having crossed back into France we headed west, as on the map above, to intercept the Alsace Wine Route and follow it north back to Ribeauville. This Wine Route, while scenic, was not easy to navigate, being poorly signed in villages where it’s common for three or more streets to intersect.

So here’s the docket for dinner last night, at Chez Martine.

Each euro uses 1.5 Aussie dollars. Delicious meal, al fresco, with wine and local beer. Surf club prices, but better quality, we think.

That’s the first three days of Ribeauville, and we leave here on Friday 01Jun to a single night in a little riverside inn near Besancon.

Thanks for reading and providing feedback.

Kev and Mary

Paris to Troyes

Several hours’ sleep for both of us on the long, long, night flight from Singapore to Paris were surprising and welcome. Perhaps our preflight tourist activities in Singapore pushed us over the edge. It’s pleasant to wake up and find that we had already covered half the distance and that we had only six or so hours to go.

Paris was misty, the immigration process was attentuated and tedious and the bag pick-up chaotic but all three of our bags arrived on the conveyor belt. We spent a few minutes trying to find the exit from the bag pick-up, found and used an ATM to fill our wallets with euros (€) then successfully contacted the car supplier by phone. (Note: there are no longer any public phones in Terminal 1 Arrivals, CDG, even though our explicit printed instructions asked us to use the public phone.) Having landed at 0720, we eventually escaped at about 0900 from the concrete cauldron and scrambled with our bags into the white transit van which took us to our Renault Clio, patiently waiting for us with its Peugeot and Citroen cousins at the handover base nearby.

Our Renault Clio, our transport for the next few weeks.

Cars provided under the system we’re using are brand new, fully insured, prepaid, but have only 50 km of fuel in the tank (no electric cars offered, yet). Knowing this before I left home, I’d found a fuel filling station only 15 minutes’ drive from the start point and on the route to Troyes, our first planned overnight stop, two hours’ drive SE of Paris. So this was our first halt after start-up. We drove to and found it easily, filled up (pre-pay system, as I discovered after a couple of minutes of confusion as to why the fuel wasn’t coming through the nozzle) then parked in the nearby Carrefours shopping centre. This centre contained another vital service needed on day one of trips abroad: a telecommunications provider who, for a paltry sum, links my iPad to the French cellular system, thus giving us an internet connection within the car, or on foot, wherever there’s a signal (so most places in France, also free roaming within the EU).

So, we had cash, car, connection and coffee. The road to Troyes beckoned and we set off at about 1150 in our shiny black Clio to meet our host at the agreed RV time of 1400.

The sweeping crop-covered plains of this part of France reminded us immediately of previous trips and we eventually swept into Troyes right on time, successfully navigating the narrow cobbled one-way streets of the city centre. (Thank you, Siri, whose robotic pronunciation is not always perfect but whose intricate navigation information usually is.)

We secured a car park right outside the apartment entrance and a few minutes later were met by our host, an engaging young guy called Aurelien who, summoned by our Airbnb message of successful arival, arrived in a few minutes by bike, introduced us to our apartment, and left us to our own devices.

By now we were quite weary, but not too weary to first do some grocery shopping, mainly for breakfast items, then afterward sit in the dappled shade in the main square, just around the corner from our apartment, with a suitable drink or two watching the trovians (inhabitants of Troyes) going about their normal activities.

Thursday, our first full day in France for this trip, was filled with a self-guided walking tour of the historic city centre (with a lunchtime nap half way round) and outdoor dinner at one of the many restaurants within a 200m stroll.

Some Troyes pics:

Streets and buildings emerging onto the main square

Typical cross alleys in Troyes centre. That’s Mary beneath the turret.

Ruelle des chats, between buildings which lean against each other above for support.

Snapper in the market at Troyes (same price as in Noosa, but slightly different source).

Many buildings have unsettling leanings

And, to finish off, a video we made (note that you can use the Watch on Facebook option even if you’re not a Facebook user):




Off to Ribeauville (further east) Friday 25May18 for a full week.

Thanks for reading.

Mary & Kev