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.
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| 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.
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| Chez Soi view from our balcony, river in background. |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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”.
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| 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.
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| 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:
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| 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
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