New departure, and celebratory road trip.

The lad has been living with us on and off for most of his life - pause of three years for art college, another couple of years for carpentry/leatherwork training, but basically he's been part of our lives from breakfast through to teatime, (tea/Dad's cake) to supper and through to 'goodnight' for most of twenty-seven years.  

So, it's time. He has a new life-chapter in Tours, living with his girlfriend, an uncertain future in some form of engineering, preferably with trains, or perhaps using one of the skills that he has already amassed. Uncertain but exciting. I know he'll be fine; he's not afraid to work in any job but is hopeful of finding something he would really like to do, that helps others in some way. It's not about making money for money's sake, and for that, amongst many other things, we are proud of him.

We haven't had time recently for a him and me road trip - see many previous older posts - but yesterday, work behind him, and me appreciative of a break from DIY, we set off in an easterly direction, following the meandering Loire.

Rules of road trip are stated somewhere a few posts back but basically, you get a bit lost, stop for snacks, go off on tangents and support the other person's wish to look at old abandoned train buildings or swim in a keep out stretch of water or wander along a tree-shadow lane going nowhere. Luckily we share a love of the insolite - slightly odd, a bit eerie sometimes, a tad melancholic, unsung by any guide books, etc. this trip had a bit of all of it, including an ancient coal mine and associated slag heaps.

Challones sur Loire seemed a fairly ordinary French town but with its beautiful waterside it was well worth a long amble around, and lunch of Fish and Chips - sadly the antitheses of my favourite chippy - the Fryer's Delight in Holborn: small fish, small chips, and scrap of salad rather than mushy peas. Tasty enough but not really enough for a still-growing lad. We made up for it later after buying absurdly lovely cakes in St Florent le Vieil and sitting in a bar with cups of tea. The other towns we passed through and explored were fairly unremarkable but St Florent is certainly worth a detour with its mix of faded grandeur, ancient, boarded up charcuteries/hair dressers et al; panoramic views of the Loire, and the truly magnificent abbey overseeing the town.

                                                          waiting for fish and chips

Abbey of St Florent

We walked along afore-mentioned tree-shadowy lanes, crossed stepping-stoned river tributaries, admired flower filled water meadows and then returned to the car to make the return journey - a good, road trip style one of heading vaguely westwards though little villages and sunflower fields until the 'cats ears' of Saumur Chateau and the nearby water towers were visible on the horizon - now our compass points of home.

Today, Ezra is off on a bike trip with Dad, an equally relationship-confirming trip out. Later we will help him pack, and will feel that weird mixture of melancholic sadness but joy that he is making his next move to somewhere he wants to be. He's only up the road in effect, in the next city, not off on a world tour/moving to Australia. And we'll see him often, those times to be as precious as yesterday's road trip.

Good luck, our lad. 

Dog, I and lad road trip

He's not a lad anymore (25) but our road trips started when he was - around eight or so.

We had a free day so perused the map for a short while pinpointing a town we knew nothing about, not too far away but with some potential interesting stops along the way - probably not the usual things folk stop for: castles, famous monuments, prettiest villages of France, etc; rather, abandoned quarries, desolate unused railway stations, abandoned railway lines, and lakes, in case it was still warm enough to swim.

The town chosen was Bressuire, between Poitiers and Nantes. We stopped to give the dog an airing at an actually very pretty and interesting village called Curçay sur Dive atop a hill with panoramic views of the Anjou and Torraine landscape. The most interesting part was a small field at the top of the village where many species of vine had been planted in rows with accompanying notices describing the types of vine, age, original region, wine produced etc.

 

Dog aired, we moved on to Bressuire via Thouars - a town I think I have blogged about before which is a strange melange of faded grandeur and desolate concrete infested buildings/vast car parks. I don't think we gave it and its rolling countryside enough chance and will return to re-explore.

First impressions of the Bressuire were ones of the same faded grandeur and eclectic mix of post war/70s/80s buildings but with a more thriving atmosphere than Thouars - the main street being full of fairly up market chain shops. Soon, architectural detail, faded or otherwise, disappeared in significance as lunchtime arrived. Having decided against a picnic, we'd assumed we'd find a nice old fashioned bistro with cheap menu - sadly not. There seemed to either be plasticky, over-lit bars or a choice of two very expensive restaurants towards which well-dressed people were heading. One was fully booked anyway and the other, 28 euros for two courses - prices have certainly gone up . . . that used to be a relatively expensive evening eatery experience. I stopped trying to find an excuse for why we should go ahead and treat ourselves as the mental sum became around 70 euros for lunch - and the dog wasn't even included in  said treat.

The bakeries were shut. I had a banana and some cashew nuts in the car. Then we noticed a kebab place. The right choice, 8 euros a head with some spare meat for the dog, and the most smily restaurant owner I can recall.

Dog preferring wheely suitcase path

Fuelled, we decided on a walk to the factory area near the station, pulled mainly by the site of a bizarre blobular - new word - metal water tower. The station has had much revamping with new areas of planting, benches, sculptures etc, slightly spoiled by the glowering form of a vast abattoir at the top of the hill. We passed by feeling guilty about the kebab and then followed a path back down the hill and into a lovely and contrasting area of meadowland with winding brook and young willow trees. The town and region have spent much on this area, re-digging the river into its wandering shape and thus recreating previous wetlands and helping biodiversity, and probably feeling guilty in turn about kebabs and all the other stuff that starts its product life from the scary abattoir. 

The path continued into the grounds of the impressive and in parts crumbling castle/chateau that looks over the town. More money spent on gardens, metal structures and potagers of unusual vegetables and fruits. The grounds were lovely, enhanced further by a troop of handsome black goats (gated away from the edible stuff). We passed through the entrance gates and back into the melange of over-the-years architecture and searched out a cup of tea in the previous fully-reserved brasserie overlooking the very magnificent town church.

it was time to return to household chores and angry neglected chickens. I had saved them a pitta bread though, so all would be forgiven.

A bientôt

Our son has just left in his new (old) little white Clio. One of those crisp starry mornings when one stands, face up to the sky and wonders about it all. The plough/saucepan was exceptionally bright, a couple of satellites passing at that slow but certain determined satellite speed. The hug gave reason to it all. It's always odd that parting moment but he'll be back again soon.

Some weekends just pass, a routine and pleasant blur of time: jobs, garden stuff, writing, music, dog walks, a bit of tentative thought about what we are doing/will be doing as Covid has, as for nearly everyone, I'd imagine, disrupted plans . . .This weekend with its extra day has been one of those times when all the hours counted.

                                    Son explaining impossibly complicated carpentry instructions

Sunday morning. I'd forgotten that our friend Jean-Paul was going to appear to dig out the pond with us, and he duly did with wheelbarrow of waders and tools. Breakfast hastily finished we joined him, Ezra in waders, Mark barrowing mud and me raking it around trees.

Ezra and I managed to fit in a favourite activity, a road trip; a small one but nevertheless as fascinating and memorable as ever, incorporating various abandoned buildings, disused railway tracks, the spectacularly blue 'Lac de Rillé' and the handsome chateau de Gizeux.

Easter Monday was a day of forest dog walk, lunch with the wood-burner on - weather has backtracked a little into winter - wood cutting and chainsaw instruction. Through his carpentry/roofing studies Ezra has developed a quiet confidence with such tools... Tea and cake, chat and all the comfortable familiarities settling back into place, shared jokes from over the years, happily remembered milestones or just everyday stuff.

So, sitting in bed after the early start with large mug of tea, writing this and thinking of him heading southwards in the small white car, listening to his eclectic playlist. See you soon.  

Nine hours

Sometimes so much can be absorbed in nine hours. The absorbing in this case was a 'weird stuff' road trip that Ezra (son) and I indulge in every so often. This blog has recorded many of them over years.
The weather was looking good - grey, damp, light rain maybe . . . After a bit of map perusal we set off in a Westerly direction to cover an area of the Ariege, previously uncharted - to us.
There is a French word - insolite, which I rather like; its meaning, odd, out of the way, unusual. These road trips usually reflect this word; sometimes intentionally - Ezra might have noticed a factory, dam, old mine or something else possibly interesting (in his mind), or it might just be a 'let's see what we happen upon' which Jane Austin might have said if she had taken part in an insolite horse and carriage road trip.

Photos from the day:

Former bureau and its doorbell sign

Part renovation on the far right side

captive taps within plane tree 

Wonderful old auberge with 15 euro menu

Their piano, bike and chair storage area

 Yes, a blue dog...

Not going anywhere...

Our route of the day highlighted in pink

Ten hours

I might have spent them (the hours) going through the in-tray, putting a wash on, walking into town and flipping through a few racks of clothes, food-shopping, editing, trawling the net, watching cat-antics on youtube, ticking off lists, clearing out the shed; all things that have to be done, or mostly have to be done, but instead, me and the lad went on one of our spontaneous road-trips. Sometimes these are a couple of days with a stay over somewhere or more usually an exploration of an unknown, to us, area.
I'd noticed the Pic du Nore over in the Black Mountains many times on driving to Carcassonne from our town. It rears baldly in the distance with a single spike marking its summit, the shape more reminiscent of a Yorkshire landscape peak. Ezra had wanted to go back to a certain dilapidated factory-lined road between Mazamet and St Pons so I suggested a trip encompassing it all.
Bag of shoes, snacks and maps assembled, we entered the noble filth-covered Kangoo and were on our way.
Space is big - really big, as Douglas Adams, or at least his character Zaphod Beeblebrox once said; I always recall this when traveling through tracts of French countryside. France is BIG, really big, and rich in varied geology and flora even in just one department. We drove miles through landscape that changed from gentle hills carpeted in grapevines to arid and rocky mountains, to beech-covered lush forested slopes, to lakes and Alpine plains, all, still within the Aude.

France, or at least this bit, is also incredibly underpopulated. I think in all those hours of travelling we only saw about twenty cars, a couple of cyclists and . . . a dog. It was lost, somewhere on a vertiginous mountain road, doing that thing that lost dogs, (and probably humans) do - staring jerkily about, running this way and that. Lad and I looked at each other, then I stopped the car, turned around, drove back and opened a door. The hound jumped in, settled down in one of the back footwells and I started to imagine a return journey home with our dogs not forming a welcoming committee.
We asked in a village if anyone was missing a hound but they weren't so St Pons where there was a vets seemed a good option. Boris, as I had temporarily named him, turned out to be Jasper when the kindly vet checked his 'chip', and happily for us, the trip wasn't curtailed - Jasper staying on at the practice until his owner turned up.

This is a house! Could imagine living in it, strangely . . .

     

So, onward, along the factory road where we frequently stopped, photographed and admired various crumbling, art-inspiring edifices, culminating in a particularly melancholic little town. It had obviously once been prosperous while the various leather and timber industries along the river had flourished in the 50s and 60s, judging by the shopfronts that must have been de rigueur at that time.
We ate pizzas the size of a bus wheel - or Ezra did, in a friendly little eatery run by an enthusiastic Sicilian, explored the town and then drove on up the afore-mentioned pic.
At the top, all the wind in the Aude had gathered to welcome us, blowing seemingly from all directions - not a tree, even a bent-over one in sight; all flora was of the ground-hugging variety: bare winter-thrashed stems and stubborn grasses but surprises are up there - bright pink tiny orchids/cyclamen and violet pansies somehow attracting insects.
The small red and white rocket at the summit - viewed as a spike from far away, is actually part of a radio transmitter, (according to the blurb on a sign). It and all the other equipment having been up there since the mid 60s transmitting away various French radio stations to unknowing bods far below in the surrounding towns.

Ears aching from the gales, we walked around, admired the views and rejoined the car which was surprisingly still there then voyaged back down marvelling at the change in tree-species as we descended.
Tea required we went in a bar and experienced a pot of the French default blend - Yellow Label. Odd . . . if you make this at home it tastes of old air but in a café it's always surprisingly refreshing and even has a reasonable tea-taste. Maybe it's just the anticipation off a brew after a long journey or a walk, or it's the novelty of someone else's cup and saucer rather than a mug; maybe we'll never know and the cup of tea will just remain part of a happy set of memories from that particular day.