Road trip

The first rule of Road Trip is: you don't talk about road trip. 

The second rule of Road Trip is: you don't talk about road trip.

The third rule of Road Trip is: If someone yells stop! wait - I need to look at that old decaying building, the car stops, and the edifice/other psychogeographic element must be observed/explored.

The fourth rule of road trip is: two people to a road trip - this can be altered but two is preferable.

The fifth rule of road trip is: one road trip at a time, people. 

The sixth rule: No shirts, no shoes. Actually, weather depending, shoes are useful, and as many layers as required can be added.

The seventh rule: Road trips will go on as long as they have to . . . probably curtailed naturally by running out of petrol, and or other pressing life commitments.

The eight and final rule of road trip is: If this is your first day on road trip, you have to do road trip.

(After Brad Pitt's inaugural Fight Club speech) 

I'd add another rule involving regular snack-stops. 

Ezra (son) and I have enjoyed many road trips over the years - not necessarily miles away (got to think of the carbon tyre print, after all). Often they have been inspired by a town with an odd name, or a disused mine/train station/other places that would not appear in a guide book. 

Yesterday a drear day of grey announced itself we decided on a trip to Durtal, with some cross country wandering before reaching the town itself. I turned the ignition key and stated the first two rules, after which we drove to Saumur and Vivy to look at abandoned train lines, then to Longue Jumelles to drink hot chocolate in a village bar - where I got sat on by a very insistent and warm ginger cat.

seemingly abandoned chateau with distinct horror movie potential

Cross country to Durtal via villages with intriguing names such as 'Huillé (Oily) and quickly tracked down a pizza restaurant run by two Afghans. The food was wonderful and fuelled us for a good slope around the town which was enveloped in grey fogginess, temperature hovering around 2 degrees. Durtal has a beautiful sandstone chateau, which would certainly feature in any normal guide book as well as many once-prestigious buildings which speak of a town which had in the past grown wealthy on its tannery businesses thanks to Le Loir river.

       Durtal chateau and church

The cold was sinking into our bones, and the not overly-abundant daylight was fading fast. Thoughts of wood stove/tea and cake rather abruptly ceased the road trip, but it was as ever an excellent day, the hours, very memorable.

Abandoned places

This is the staircase of our local ex-railway station; a magnificent building with carved staircase, and high ornamented windows. As ever while nosing around sad and neglected places it makes me reflect on who was the last person to use that broom, the last person to water the flower boxes now filled with brown crunchy plants. The station must have been of some importance at the time judging by the care taken over the building's construction and its collection of fanciful waiting rooms and WCs. 

I did go the marie recently and ask if there was ay chance that the station might be reinstated - easy enough, not that I know much about the complications of such an idea; all that would be required would be a ticket machine, or they could do the place up, give someone a job, refill the plant boxes, make a tea-room . . . as if. The woman eyed me kindly - mainly as I had already congratulated them on their fine development of park/playground area - and said the mayor was keen to do this but it depended on SNCF (French railway) and 'the region'. 

You'd think that the latter and former would be keen to take several hundred vehicles and associated pollution away from the roads per day as nearly everyone must commute by car to the nearby big town. If it is even an idea I have a feeling it will exist in various in-trays for several years to come. Unless . . . Hm, there could always be a petition . . .

Hidden places

While trying to find an abandoned mine up on a hillside recently - as you do - me and the boy took a wrong turning and ended up on a gravelly overgrown track, the sides of which were lined with dismantled bicycles. It had to be worth further investigation, even with the risk of slavering dogs, or a slavering owner.
At the end of the track we came across a semi-derelict windmill and a huge rotting lorry, its inside full of everything from crockery, pans, hoses, sinks, to records, books, bedding, toys, furniture, dead plants, and more bike parts.



How had they got such a massive vehicle up there? And what had happened to the owners of the place? It was possible to see inside the windmill (I assume it was an ex-windmill) and there was a slight Mary Celeste scenario - plates and cups on the table, a stove with pans on it . . .
Feeling uneasy about trespassing, despite the place looking long-forgotten, I took a few photos, the weirdest being a picture of a decrepit Harry Secombe record in a wire basket along with many other long-forgotten English vinyls.



I often think about that place now as I drive along the main road and look up into the hills, wondering if all the stuff is still gradually decaying away up there, or perhaps someone has returned for the summer and is re-fitting the windmill with a shiny new Ikea kitchen - probably not.

       

Minor discoveries

So small that no one else would be remotely interested, except our dogs and maybe the other members of my family.
For about three years we have been making the short drive up to the 'runnies field' not runny as in something custard-like, as in an extension of 'walkies'. Our dogs - greyhounds - need to run, even if only after each other and finding a safe space to do this was a tad challenging. We now have a 'menu' of runnies fields where farmers don't seem to mind dogs hurtling over their pastures, and roads are far enough away (these dogs don't seem to notice any form of vehicle, even if bearing down on them).
So, the minor discovery . . .
Where we park at the most visited field, there is a stone arch with various weather-mangled signs reading 'keep out' and 'beware, mines' etc, attached to the surrounding trees. As I've never seen anyone on this piece of land and an arch (naturally) invites one to step through . . . we did so.
Nothing happened; we didn't get blown up, or fall into a shaft (depending on the mine) but we (I) -dogs not being overly interested in views - did see the familiar landscape from a whole new visual perspective.
I've only observed the river Aude from standing on the banks and looking left or right along its length; now it was visible as if from a plane coming in to land, or almost resembled a lake banked by winter plane trees.

                           


                  

We walked all around the odd hillock of land which appeared to be a cross between a place of leisure (now abandoned) and a storage place for building materials - small piles of marble off-cuts, tiles, posts, and most odd, a large granite sarcophagus complete with massive carved cross.
It was faintly creepy - the whole place. I turned a few times half-expecting a David Lynch film crew, me an unwitting 'extra'.