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Published: July 20th 2007
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Ana & Chas Fisher For those of you who know, Luke and Molly missed our Oz wedding due to their selfish desire to volunteer as health/social workers in rural Uganda. You can read up on their adventures prior to Europe by searching for Luke and Molly/Celeste on this website. But now we have joined forces!
We are writing this in our second last day in France. It is a beautiful day, which only makes matters worse when we have heard how miserable the English summer is. Also, as we intend to work, it is the end of our holidays as it were for a brief while. This blog is the post script to the wedding fete; how we teamed up with Luke and Molly to explore Brittany before being profoundly honoured by their invitation to join them on a road trip to the alps to see the stage of the Tour de France with the highest climb.
Breton Castles
This was our last day with Steve Flew (my cousin from Sydney)and his wonderful girlfriend, Alison. They had a flight to catch in the afternoon, so we crammed 6 people into the car and did a bit of a road trip to Nantes.
They had taken the rental car with them on a trip which forced us (including Luke and Molly) to just bum around St Just putting on weight. Oh the torture! Stop feeding me booze and beautiful food!
Stop it! We stopped to look at a beautiful old chateau in
Chateaubriand. It had wonderful medieval castle surrounded by renaissance chateau buildings. In the newer buildings (newer being 1500s) there was an exhibition on slate which translates wonderfully as
schiste. Needless to say, the exhibition was incredibly schiste. But on the ground floor of the crumbly castle was the prefecture. If you have to get a passport or a drivers licence, you have to rock up at the local castle! We just caught the end of market day which gave us the opportunity to introduce Steve, Alison, Luke and Molly to galettes (previously mentioned buck wheat pancakes). I had a salmon, cream cheese, pea and carrot one - yummy!
We had quite a whirlwind trip of
Nantes as Steve and Alison had a flight to catch, but we did walk around the beautiful Ducal Castle, which was surrounded by a moat and glorious gardens. The walk along the ramparts was
stunning, alongside the views and more renaissance buildings. There was a bit of a panic as we jogged back to the carpark, squeezed in again one last time, and then tried to work out on our very vague maps which way to get to the airport whilst negotiating loads of traffic, small one lane roads and keeping to the wrong side of the road. Chas was heard to have said to Steve, who was driving, and wanting to know whether to go left, right or straight, 'We just have to go south-west!'. Despite lots of arguing, mostly between Chas and I, we made it, and Steve did really well driving under the circumstances.
The next day, in a much less cramped car, we took Luke, Molly and Ellie (Chas' little sister) to one of the most amazing sights in our area of the country (although technically it's in Normandy not in Brittany),
le Mont Saint Michel. Of course on the way, drove past another magical castle at
Combourg but was not enough to make us stop. Mont St Michel is a breath taking monastery on top of a small hill that becomes an island when the tide comes up.
During the 100 years war, it was the only place for miles around that resisted English invasion for the whole war due to its natural military defences and hence became a bit of a french icon. You have to fight your way through the lanes and stores of commercial tourist sourveniers and hideously expensive restaurants, but once you're above that, it's really beautiful. Unfortunately for Luke, he was just a month and a half over their 25 year olds and under ticket category, which was such a pain in the arse. But with Chas as our tour guide to translate all the French sign boards, we had a merry time wandering around the monastery that looked like a castle. Hard to say how beautiful it all is, just go there if you can but
not in July. The bloody tourists were talking and taking photos during a service of the monks despite signs telling them to be silent and not take photos. How it angers me to be lumped into the same categories as those idiots!
We spent two of our last days exploring a nearby marvel,
La Gacilly. No castles. It would be a stunningly pretty town, but
sometime back the whole town got together and invested in art. They have many galleries and an artisan quarter filled with glassblowers, furniture makers and all sorts of other beautiful but very expensive items. But best of all, they have turned the
whole town into a photo expo on the planet and our part in it. So stunningly beautiful to see these old country houses with huge photos of, say, an obscure African tribe on their front wall. I could never imagine any Aussie city allowing this to happen. One of the exhibits on Kamchatka was in a plant maze with
mist machines in it! Amazing.
The Car
It was on our way back from Mt St Michel that we had to pick up the hire car that Luke and Molly had hired to drive to Grenoble before they had invited us. We drove into Rennes (see map if vaguely interested) with the instructions that all car hire companies are near the train station and certain that we had to pick the car from the downtown office. When we finally found the Europe car office near the train station, they informed us that downtown was down and literally
outside of town. Then gave a map of Rennes (25 times larger than Alice Springs) that was the size of a coaster in order to find the downtown office. Cue an hour of random driving through Rennes looking for the street name. We finally found it; it was outside the Rennes ring road. Ah. Good times were had by all. And Ellie should be comended for her excellent behaviour depsite being hot, tired and hungry towards the end.
To the Tour de France (Grenoble)
Luke being a cycling fan had quickly cottoned on to the fact that St Just (population approx 800-1000) has two pubs both of which had TVs showing the tour de France. The rest of tagged along just for an excuse to be in a pub. But after several days of watching stages, getting pissed and asking lots of questions of Luke about cycling (like: do they stop to pee? Answer: No! Their team mates push them along while they hang their willy out the side of the road!) we became
addicted to the tour de France! I had never even cared past knowing that Armstrong had beaten Ulrich again. But now, we were on our way
to the Alps to watch them on the biggest climb on the tour!
We started before dawn on the day after Bastille day, which gave us primetime views of the sunset on nearly abandoned roads. As the French charge for use of any road that avoid towns while consistently having more than one lane, we had a big day of driving ahead to cross the nation. Ana got a little car sick but only vomited twice! Is anyone else excited?
The landscape remained beautiful rolling farmland right the way up to Lyon, where suddenly the architecture of the towns became much more Mediterranean and land a lot more hilly. Mountainous even. We stopped off at a pub to watch the tour where three of us fell asleep. Can you guess which three? I (Chas) was the most attractive and impressive; one beer down, head face down on the table snoring gently. Sex personified I think.
Anyway we finally pull into where we thought we would be spending our next three nights, a beautiful campsite about 18km down the road from where the race was. It was in a verdant valley with a lovely river running through it
surrounded by snow-capped mountains (who would have thought it in the Alps?). It also had its own bar, swimming pool, fusball table and ping-pong. We cooked ate and drank and then lay on the grass staring up at a starry sky where shooting stars and planes crossed from mountain to mountain. After a long day, it was heaven. Unfortunately for Molly and Luke, they put their tent up in the open and, come 7 o'clock am, were wide awake and sweltering in their cauldron of a tent. All the while the cunning and cool Chasanaski (pure luck but we shouldn't mention that!)snored on until 9:30.
We got up and walked through the valley to the nearest town, La Grave, to do some investigating at the tourism office. We found out that the road to the top of the mountain we were heading to the next day was closing at 6pm. Bugger; we quickly decided to leave our amazing camp ground to make for the mountain and camp there overnight. By the time we packed up, had a surreal swim in the pool looking at the snow-capped mountains around us and drove the 10 km to the bottom of the
mountain it was 1:30pm. The road was already closed because too many other pushy tourists in their bloody RV's had got there first. A conundrum. Hundreds of people were setting up camp at the bottom of this mountain. We decided to join them as they idea of lugging up all the booze we had to drink (not to mention our tents etc) was unappealing.
Pitched our tent in this lovely nook in an odd flat-topped hill in the valley surrounded by Alps. We spent an amusing lunch watching 6 drunk Norwegians pitch a
teepee and a hilarious guy who spent 20 minutes trying to tie a shade clothe to a street sign which, just for our entertainment, blew off as he arrived back from the car with his chair.
Gold. Anyway, Luke decided that he wanted to get to the snow and so off we went up this incredible steep mountain, which was mostly made up of loose rock.
It was a gruelling walk but so worth it to arrive, eat snow and (could there be any avoiding it?) having
snowball fights! I think we pretended to be adult for about 4 minutes before the first snowball went
flying. The damn women had a great height advantage and Molly managed an amazing double throw which hit both me and Luke. Lots of fun and worth both the walk up the hill and back down. It was good practice for what awaited us the next day. Finished the day trying to cook dinner in freezing cold wind, and so we climbed into one tent for warmth, companionship and a good game of cards (although I (Chas) still claim my handicap was extremely unfair!). Luke, Molly and I (Ana) had enough of Chas winning diamonds by so much that we all agreed that he would start on -10, whereas we would start at the normal 0.
Stage 9
We got up early and walked the 8km up the mountain to get a great possi looking down on the poor riders climbing the mountain. We got there about 5 hours early so there was much suntanning and drinking and napping on the bitumen. Did I say suntanning? I meant sunburning. However, the caravan that preceeds the riders started the crowds up and gave the place a buzzing atmosphere.
Vans selling official merchandise are followed by sponsor trucks throwing out
free stuff to everyone. Unfortunately on my side of the road we had the most professional scab I have ever seen. He sent his 5-8 daughter to the other side of the road to hedge his bets and then used his bodies, hands, voice and bloodymindedness to grab every freebie in our 10m stretch of road. It got on our nerves a fair bit, especially when he grabbed something right out of my hands! But the excitement of the upcoming riders quickly quelled any bitterness.
Luke got really serious/excited; it was his first tour de France. The rest of us just got silly and caught up in the excitement of the moment (see photos). Cadel Evans, Australia's best chance after losing Michael Rogers, Stuart O'Grady, Robbie McEwen and some random Aussie all in the same day, climbed the mountain in fourth place and rode well to end up third.
Ana here: IT WAS SO EXCITING!!!
Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi! I was house captain in my final year of high school, and being the leader of the cheer squads at all the school sporting competitions gave me enough experience to be the loudest person cheering the riders
on! We could literally reach out and touch these guys, and although Molly and I thought about grabbing their lovely firm arses, we thought we'd better behave. Ohhh, and Chas almost did a nudie run with our Aussie boxing kangaroo flag but chickened out in the end! Bit sad, we might have made it on TV then! Molly's mum taped the stage back home in Oz, but I don't think we made it on air despite having dozens of cameras go wizzing by. We are so going back some day! Hopefully with Molly and Luke again - fingers crossed! It was sooo much fun!!!
We walked down the hill spent and slowly made our way to Grenoble with thousands of others as Ana and I had a 5am train to catch. Our last night with Luke and Molly ended with kebabs watching the end of the race we had missed. We would not have wanted it any other way. When I said we were honoured by their invite it was because when friends travel together they either get close or further apart. I am happy to say that we had an awesome time with Luke and Molly and look
forward to seeing them in Adelaide.
We got back to St Just for my brother's birthday which was great. We are writing this while packing, drinking champagne and eating dip. Hedons for our last night. Sad to be leaving but excited by our next step in this incredible journey.
And so aurevoir to France and hello to England! Or better said: a bien tot.
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Molly!!
non-member comment
Sooooo Exciting!!!
Wow.... We have spent the last half hour in the tourist office in Ljubljana laughing very loud at your latest blog!! So many great memories, and we to have been missing your company. We actually have achieved a week long drink-wise since we went our seperate ways tho!!! All the best for the following leg of your amazing journey. Much love, Molly and Luke xxxxxxxxxxxxxx