And so this is Christmas

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Hi Dot

Here are Jane and I thinking about our next trip to Spain and you’re probably thinking we are still in France! How very lax of me, so before you alert the French authorities to start a search here goes...

When we last caught up we were just leaving the Arcachon Basin and heading towards the Dordogne. Our first stop was at Rauzan, a great rural site just under the chateau. Whilst there we scooted into St Émillion, which sounded like a brilliant old town with, as you may expect, two out of three shops selling wine at prices we could not afford! Fear not though for the French wine industry, as plenty of Americans and Australians were overjoyed to have cases shipped home at over €100 a bottle. And there’s the rub, unfortunately for me the town was rather spoilt by rich, loud Americans and Australians, so my recommendation is close the wine shops! However we did enjoy a look inside a wine cavern which took great advantage of the natural caves for storage.

Next stop was Bergerac, at a site right on the Dordogne river. Bergerac is well worth a visit with a fantastic medieval area which comes nearly down to the river. We did a couple of walking tours (don’t worry Dot, our walking tours are just us with a tour map, nothing involving us being organised or following guides with placards), plus a boat trip and got eaten alive by midges walking along the river. Also, to feed our chateau addiction we scooted to Chateau Monbazallac, which while small is perfectly formed (just like a child may draw it with a turret at each corner), it houses an interesting wine museum for their Monbazallac wine which is still handpicked and hand produced. Interestingly the grapes were still on the vines and looked very mouldy which apparently gives the wine its distinctive taste, some things are better not to know!

We carried on up the Dordogne to La Roque-Gageac, another great site right on the river and no midges! La Roque-Gageac is stunning, like so many of the Dordogne villages, with houses built into the cliff caves and more rounded pointed turrets than you can shake a stick at. You can see where Disney got its inspiration from. We got talking to a young couple at the site who spent their time collecting walnuts and chestnuts and foraging for mushrooms. To make sure that they were not collecting the wrong mushrooms they took samples to the local chemist, not a totally satisfactory experience as the chemist said there were only two worth collecting the others, poisonous or edible, tasted awful!

From here we visited a couple of chateaux (Beynac-et-Cazenac and Castelnaud-la-Chapelle), both castle like, huge, very high up on cliff edges and have gone through massive amounts of restoration, (don’t know where the money comes from but chateau restoration is the life’s work for many families and the results are fantastic). We also scooted into fabulous old town of Sarlat. Jane by now was really enjoying the scooter, testing me on arrival on what we passed on each journey, not sure she realises that I have to pay attention to the roads and traffic and not just take in the sights!

Whilst we were drinking coffee in Sarlat, a splendid octogenarian gent appeared wearing flannels, blazer and a panama (sorry no photo). The staff tried to entice him to sit down but he was having none of it until he was satisfied they would serve him the food and drink he required. They tried to offer him a menu which he waved away and carried on explaining, in French with an English accent, what he wanted and when satisfied that they could meet his culinary requirements he accepted a table next to ours. Realising that we were English he struck up conversation in an incredible plumb accent that, with the clothes, gave the impression he had been lifted from an old aristocratic country house. It turned out he was a retired schoolmaster of a public school and he wanted to know, in detail, where we had been, how we travel and our further plans. While talking a younger chap turned up and we both thought “ah this could be his son” until he spoke with the broadest Brummy accent. The new chap (NC), opposed to the elderly gent (EG), wanted to check that EG was OK and it became apparent that they were on the same tour and NC was generally watching out for EG. Now in conversation with them both, NC recommended that we should visit Rocamadour which was enthusiastically endorsed by EG. So, being good pupils and as it was already on Jane’s radar, off we went and stayed a couple of nights. EG’s food by the way turned out to be an omelette with salad.

On the way there along a narrow, steep country road, we had a near death experience with a deer. Well actually the deer did not us. But luckily for the deer, venison was not on our menu that evening. Rocamadour is very much on the tour guides’ itinerary, very busy and surprisingly small. Worth a visit although one day would have been enough. The old pilgrims’ route up to the Sanctuary, with its various churches and chapels are impressive, with oddly one chapel decorated in rugby shirts. I have heard of people treating sport as a religion but this was most strange! They made a big thing of the steep steps leading up to the Sanctuary (which only took about 10 minutes) and how exhausted the pilgrims would have been when they arrived, we were both confused as if the pilgrims were shattered at this stage what would they be like when they get to Sandiago-de-Compostella in north west Spain, possibly we need to understand a bit more on how the pilgrimages worked!

And so it was time to start to head north..... next stop was Perigueux, on another pilgrim route. The city has both a medieval town and old Roman remains including a coliseum which is now a park, but the most stunning thing is the cathedral. The cathedral on the inside is a series of domes and on the outside a series of turrets, very hard to describe, but hopefully you can get some idea from the photos, again a must visit if you are ever close.

Next up was Tours. Now Dot at this point you could be forgiven for thinking we were looking for pilgrim routes as Tours is on yet another one! We stayed at Saint Avertin and successfully navigated our way into Tours on a bus, how grown up are we! Tours is very cosmopolitan, with a large number of university students, and while there are many great old buildings and an impressive cathedral, the town hall and railway station are spectacular.

And that sees us back in Caen, you remember Dot we were there in May, or more precisely Ouistreham which is where the ferry leaves from. This time we spent a few interesting days here, looking around the town and surrounding area which played such a large part in the D Day landings. So often we just pass straight through the ferry ports without looking. One day I’m going to spend a whole day in St Malo. Another striking thing about Ouistreham was the number of immigrants looking for the opportunity to cross the channel, all totally non threatening, just wandering about and shopping in Lidl, mostly for food and not this week’s gardening offers. I heard somewhere that since the authorities closed the Jungle at Calais most of the channel ports are like this, very sad just a problem moved.

Now, as you know Dot, Jane and I are now absolutely committed motorhomers, nothing else is considered, but when offered free accommodation and flights at £29 we did weaken and had a couple of weeks in Lanzarote in November. Great weather, great walking, great time and we needed a break as we had been home from France for nearly three weeks! One of the highlights was a fish platter for two at a local restaurant; the centre piece was a whole chargrilled octopus which was brilliant, just melted in the mouth tentacles, suckers and all! There was a newish GB plated motorhome parked up, wild camping, overlooking the sea in our village, we kept walking past hoping to engage the occupant in conversation but never did get their story and they probably kept wondering who keeps staring at them!

Needing to show off our tans, we have had one further trip away to visit family and also spend a few days at Ludlow. Ludlow was a great test of Otto’s heating as it was sub zero most nights but we were very toasty, another success. We love the town and as you can imagine, now without the dogs, we visited both the castle and the church. The church in great, heated and used for community events as well as services and the castle was cold and windy. One day we will visit it on a warm day and do it justice. Very fortunately Ludlow has a good supply of warm pubs which we visited, just to try to get warm you understand.

And so here we are a home looking forward to a family Christmas before leaving home on 29^th to visit Jack (grandson) and of course his parents, before spending a night at Poole Harbour on 30^th to catch the ferry to Cherbourg on 31^st and hopefully arrive down at our winter quarters in Aguilas (Spain) on 4^th Jan.

Well Dot I think that’s us up to date, so take care and have a great Christmas.

Terry and Jane (long suffering editor)

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