67. Ste Foy La Grande, Bordeaux region

On 26 July we arrived at Sainte-Foy-La-Grande, a small town on the Dordogne river, about 70 km due east of Bordeaux.  It is not the area we wanted to be in but it was all we could get.   So we took it for 17 days - and it has seemed a very long 17 days to me.  It is comfortable enough but our part of the building doesn't get any sun and doesn't have an outdoor area, both of which I miss.  It has a great view of the Dordogne, but you must stand up at the window to look out.  So spoiled aren't I?  Paul has enjoyed it though, and although we are on the river we are also in the middle of the town.

Here is the house, an old medieval building divided into three apartments.  The top apartment is quite large with a fabulous terrace facing the river.  The bottom apartment is huge and takes up all of the ground floor plus one bedroom on the first floor. It also has a terrace on the river. So, in this photo, the two top windows are the living room of the top apartment and the middle window plus the bottom windows, are the two bedrooms of the lower apartment.

Our studio space is at the rear of the building on the river side.  It has the two widows facing the river - the two blue shutters.  You can see the terrace above us and the terrace below us (with closed umbrellas). The lower blue door opens onto the river quay with stairs going up to the first terrace.  The owners are English and live in the British Virgin Islands - at present they are staying in the top apartment.

This is the view from our windows.  

And that is a beautiful little chateau just over there on the left!  They say that there are more chateaux, and grand houses in the chateau style, in the Bordeaux region than any other area of France.  I think it is true.  We have seen some wonderful houses on our drives around the area.

 This is the original quay side where river barges would unload goods that were transported on the river.  That sandy patch on the other side of the river is the local "beach".  At certain times of the week it has 4 life guards and organised games like water polo, volley ball and badminton.  Paul tried swimming there but said the water weed was quite sharp and uncomfortable.  Despite looking like a mill pond, the river is flowing quite swiftly in the middle although it is very wide and shallow on the sides.

There are two very famous wine growing area close to us here in Ste Foy La Grande.  

The first is Monbazillac, best known for its sweet whites.  Here is one of the vineyards, complete with chateau, at Monbazillac.  We bought three bottles here, similar to what we had tasted at George Biron's table at Sunnybrae in Birregurra.
Monbazillac

The second famous wine area is St. Emilion, about 35 km east of Bordeaux.  The town is fabulously well positioned on a hillside, surrounded by vines.  It was stunningly beautiful.

If a space was not taken up by vines, it was occupied by tables, umbrellas and tourists.

The whole town was beautifully restored.  Obviously, there is a lot of money in this area.

Of course we had to stop for a drink - it was quite a warm day, after all!   Paul ordered one glass of a good local house wine at this cafe.  It cost him 7.95 Euros ($11.30 AUD).  You should have seen him squirming and to add insult to injury, he didn't really like it.  Needless to say we purchased nothing from St Emilion.

This lovely pool of cold water, feed by a spring further up the hill, was surrounded on two sides by a small arcade of shade for weary oldies with sore feet and painful knees.

We had a lovely day in this gorgeous village, site of many famous movies and advertisements.  It is also on the UNESCO World Heritage register.

St Emilion

66. The Millau Viaduct, Southern France

On the 25th of July we set off across France once more.  We had managed to secure an apartment on the Dordogne River in the greater Bordeaux area for 2 weeks.  Rather than take the more direct route, we decided to take the scenic option via Millau in the gorges of the River Tarn.

This engineering masterpiece is the new Millau Viaduct, traversing the Tarn river valley.  The bridge has won many engineering awards.

Millau Viaduct

"Problems with traffic on the route from Paris to Spain along the stretch passing through the valley near the town of Millau, especially during the summer when the roads became jammed with holiday traffic, required construction of a bridge to span the valley." Wikipedia

It rains a lot in this place.  Any wonder - it is about 2,900 metres above sea level.  It was raining when we were there, so the photos are a bit dull.   It was clear and sunny as we climbed through the mountains.  But at about 2,000 metres the rain set in, and continued until we worked our way back down to about 2,000 metres on the other side.

These photos really show the gorges - the huge valley carved in the rock by ancient glaciers in the Ice Age.  You can just see the bend of the river at the bottom.

To take these all of these photos we had to climb up this path to the viewing platform.

It was quite a climb from the car park and visitors centre - all especially built to allow bridge gawking in safety.

65. Pont du Gard, Southern France

We couldn't be in this area of southern France and not visit the Pont du Gard.  We have visited it on each of our four trips to France.  It never ceases to amaze.  And this time we can also visit the new museum that was under construction during our last visit in 2006.

In the 1st C, the Romans built an aqueduct to carry water 85km from a ground spring in the village of Uzes to the booming Roman city of Nimes.  When the aqueduct reached the gorges of the river Gardon, it had to be elevated not on a single tier but on a triple tiered bridge or "pont".

And here it is ... 2,000 years later!   It is a UNESCO World Heritage site and second only in importance to the aqueduct we visited in Segovia, Spain last month.

The bottom of the gorge here is rock - no stones or pebbles - just rock.  After snow melt, the rock is submerged for some weeks while the river rushes through the gorge.  But now, in Summer the water is only flowing in the main, deeper watercourse.

Originally the water was enclosed in the very top section (the third tier) of the aqueduct.

Walking on the first tier of the pont and looking up.

Standing on the first tier and looking down to the water.  Those sides are all rock.

Canoeing is incredibly popular throughout France and Italy.

And this is the new Museum of the Pont du Gard.  It encapsulates all of the Roman history of southern France and it was wonderful.  We spent many hours here.

Fabulous working models .....

Once we emerged from the museum it was early evening.

7pm and still lots of people around.

Time for a drink before heading home.

Next: the Millau Viaduct.

64. Vers du Gard, Uzes and the Gorges of the Gard, France

Once we had crossed France, in the shadow of the Pyrenees, we arrived in the area of the Gard river.  This area is north of Nimes and just south of Avignon.   The sun had returned and all was well with the world.  

We know this area well as we have passed through here on each of our four trips.  We rented a gite for 6 days in a tiny village near Remoulins.  Gite is French for self catering, independent holiday house. The village had no redeeming features and I never even thought to take a photo of either the gite or the town.  

However, there were some beautiful villages close-by.  The three photos below are of the village of Vers du Gard.  

We were so enchanted by this village that we inspected three properties that were for sale.  

Luckily, we came to our senses and didn't buy one, but it was a close call.

Charming village!  But the realities of owning a house in France are not what we want to take on at this late stage.

Next we re-visited the charming town of Uzes.  On our first trip to France in 1998 we had a week in Paris followed by a week in Uzes.  It was a great choice for a first experience of a French village.

This is the market square of Uzes called La Place aux Herbes with the traditional plane trees, hundreds of years old and the original fountain.  Uzes holds a very famous weekly produce market in this square.

Most of the streets are as pretty as this one.

And this is the house we rented in 1998.  Our apartment was the right hand window on the second floor.  In 1998, this was a quiet street, but not now. 13 years later it is a busy road.

This is the Gard river as it flows through Remoulins.  This particular structure is a type of breakwater to slow the flow, especially in Spring after snow melt.

Access to the river is very easy here, and it is a particularly popular local swimming spot.  Paul tried it out and described it as brisk, bracing and beautiful.

A little further down-river are the Gorges of the Gard.  Again, very popular for swimming and canooing - but no sand, only stones.  So everyone wears "water shoes".

At this spot the stones are coarse black gravel.  Shoes are still required.

Can you imagine huge glaciers moving along this water course in the Ice Age and carving these gorges for the river?   This is all so ancient it is a bit eerie, especially at dusk!

And a little bit further down stream - the Pont du Gard.  Next ............

63. The Pyrenees - Men on Bikes.

Once the French Bastille Day (14 July) long, long weekend was over and people started to move again, we were able to leave San Sebastian and re-enter France.  

But alas, with the summer looking promising and school holidays in full swing, we were STILL unable to find accommodation around Bordeaux or anywhere along the Atlantic coast of France.  So we had to take what we could get and decided to chase the sunshine into the south central area of France, north of Marseilles.  

This meant driving across France on the Pyrenees highway - the road that runs parallel to both the Pyrenees and the Spanish border - from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.  On French highways there are many wayside stops called "aires".  Each aire is unique.  It has a service station and either a cafe or restaurant or sometimes both.  This particular aire had a monument to celebrate the Tour de France.  It was amazing!

Wow!  Go Cadel! 

62. A little break

Today is 10 August 2011.  The last email I sent was on 14 July from San Sebastian in Spain, so I have had a bit of a break.  

There have been several reasons for that.  Firstly, our wifi access has been intermittent at best - something we have found to be very annoying because (as you know) we are travelling without bookings.  Most hotels and gites will advertise that they provide wifi, but when you actually get there, the wifi is often in someone else's room or apartment and not in yours! Or there is some other weird arrangement for internet access. 

Secondly, I haven't have a table and chair to work on and I'm too old, and my back is too sore to sit on a bed or prop in McDonalds for the hours it takes me to compose these emails. 

Thirdly, I just got a bit sick of sitting at the computer every night and needed to spend some times with my books.  

And the fourth reason - for the first time in 11 weeks we have had English language TV.  Paul was always able to watch news and sports programs in French and Spanish, but for me it was just "annoying babble".  For the past three weeks we have had all of the English speaking programs from Great Britain and it has been a lovely break for me.  In addition, I've read five or six novels.  So we haven't done a lot of anything in the past three weeks or so except watch TV and read - and of course eat and drink and walk around interesting historical places.

Spain was hot and exhausting.  We are tired.  We've been away from home for 13 weeks.  We have moved constantly, every two or three nights for a month.  We drove thousands of kilometres.  We drove all the way down the east coast to the bottom - then all the way through the centre to the top.  We've seen some of the most beautiful buildings in the world and some of the most brutal terrain.  If that was Spain - we've done it!  Would we return?  Yes, but only to the north - to Barcelona and across to Segovia and the Rioja wine trail.

So I've had my rest now and we both feel a bit more chipper - ready for the final 7 weeks of our trip.

61. San Sebastian, Espana

This is the fabulous San Sebastian on the northern coast of Spain - in Basque country.  For you wine gurus out there, that is Rioja country (pronounced Ree-o-ha) and it was fabulous wine and fabulous food for the 5 days we were stranded there.  

In the Basque language of Euskadi, San Sebastian is called Donostia.  All public signage is in both languages, Spanish and Basque.  This makes signposts quite bulky.  And yes, the Basque riders in La Tour de France ride for Euskatel Euskadi.  Euskatel being a telephone company - Euska-tel and Euskadi meaning traditional Basque language.

San Sebastian is in a beautiful bay with two high headlands at each end and an island in the middle.  Outside the headlands (and island) is the Atlantic Ocean.  When the weather is good - it is very special.  But when the weather turns bad - well, it is wild!

And why were we stranded in San Sebastian?  Because we mostly travel without forward bookings, usually going online the night before we need a place to stay and picking up something without a problem.  But we left Bilbao without a forward booking, thinking that we'd break out the computer after a good lunch in the hills overlooking the blue bay of San Sebastian, and pick up a booking just across the French border at St. Jean de Luz. 

The problem was, that after an exhausting month circum-navigating a very hot Espana, we had completely underestimated the impact of the 14 July Bastille Day Public Holiday and long weekend coupled with French school holidays.  We could not get a booking.  So we had to stay in San Sebastian for 4 days until we could find a booking in France.  This is about the only time in 40,000 km of driving in Europe that we have ever really struggled for accommodation.

We were actually heading for Bordeaux on the Atlantic Coast of France but there was NO accommodation to be had ANYWHERE in South West France.  So we had to drive many hundreds of kilometres off our planned course, to sort of "prop" in the area around Avignon on the Rhone for a week until we could back into south west France near to Bordeaux.

While we waited in San Sebastian we experienced 24 hours of .....

... wild weather from the Atlantic.

But the weather clears and the sun shines again and you forget the wild Atlantic on your doorstep.  

This is the waterfront area.  We hopped on a little boat here and went out to see the island in the middle of the bay. 

The island is very popular - wall to wall people really. 

Not much space to spread out .

After the island we poked around the streets looking at food (Well, what else? Shopping is not our thing.)   

This is one of the best tapas bars in San Sebastian, so if you've ever wondered how tapas is done in the world's capital of tapas - this is it!

Yes, those are legs of ham hanging from the ceiling with a plastic drip tray underneath.  

The bar is absolutely choca-block with plates of fabulous food.  When you come in they give you a plate - you select what you want and then go to the guy at the end of the bar for your drink.  You then pay him for your drink and food.  You can go back as many times as you want.  The food was indescribably good - but when I photographed it, it looks pretty ordinary. But believe me it was fabulous!

Of course there are many more photos of San Sebastian, both the wild storm and the following tranquil blue calm, but I can't send too much as we have poor internet access at our hotel.