We’re on the cusp of autumn, sure.  And you can tell by morning and evening mists, and the dew that stays on the grass until well into the afternoon.  The foliage by the roadside is showing it too.  I’m really not a fan of autumn, beautiful though it can be, because I’m all too conscious of what comes next: short days, frost and snow, and centrally heated stuffiness.  But carpe diem and all that.  We’re having a striking Indian summer in these parts – a highly respectable 23°in the shade as I write, and quite warm nights.  I was awakened around 3:00 am by wildlife noises from outside.  Unfortunately I didn’t have a torch to hand.  The basket by the front door is doing really rather well: cuttings from Jane’s New Guinea impatiens, plus Unwin’s sapphire trailing lobelias.

It has certainly been the weather for gardening: I have taken seed from various rudbeckias (this year’s Unwin’s Rustic mix has been terrific), and several dozen cuttings: five colours of penstemon, three of potentilla and two of cistus.  Earlier honeysuckle self-layerings have rooted very well in pots, so we’ll get them planted out over the next few days.

The car went in yesterday for its first annual service (a bit late) and for further investigation of the naarsty noise I complained about when it was new.  The mechanic I took for a test drive yesterday reckoned it comes from the gearbox, which would have to be taken out and replaced in toto.  I can’t imagine VW UK agreeing to that without a bit of a fight.  Watch this space.  Meanwhile, I’m bopping about in an over-geared and underpowered 1.6 diesel Golf, which doubles as a peripatetic advertising placard for the local VW dealership.  Competent little car once you get the hang of it, but it has this curious reluctance to change gear by itself.  Must be something to do with that mystery pedal on the left. 

+ve experiences

We were at a 60^th birthday party last night at a nearby golf club (like you do...), and had a glorious time.  Birthday girl Dawn had organised a dinner dance for upwards of 80 people, and hadn’t stinted on the wine.  Having designated myself as driver, I nursed a very modest amount over four and a half hours, so was in good shape to ferry us and three friends home afterwards.  But I don’t dance, and hate being in a noisy room, so elbowed into the conversations of some smokers at the back door for the last hour or so.  Having tried to make conversation over the din of the disco, I’m distinctly poany (a little hoarse) this morning.

Today’s good experience was the repair of a windscreen chip we’d picked up on Wednesday on the way north.  Booked on the internet, the Autoglass man arrived well inside the allotted time slot, parked alongside the car on the drive and set to without even the need for a power supply.  The repair is as near as dammit invisible – the best of a number we’ve had to have done over the years – and the cost is already factored into my insurance premium, so nothing to pay. 

It’s bright and breezy here today, and I’ve been out in the garden, dead-heading and staking.  The rudbeckias are putting on a fine show: I was just saying to Martyn that I really ought to grow something else, but they do give a terrific range of yellows, oranges and reds.  I’ve been sizing up likely-looking seed heads with a view to next year’s.  Might try cosmos next year: we’ve seen some fine displays on the way up through France. 

Home

Sunday: Pretty good drive from Bayonne to Sigalens, without benefit of péage.  Google maps showed that the time using D roads was little longer than the motorway itinerary, hence by definition it was shorter and less fuel hungry.  We’re tending to find that we prefer this approach: the motorways are getting very busy, and they’re not a nice place to be when HGVs are kicking up a lot of spray.  By the time we got to Sigalens, it was a fine sunny day, though not quite warm enough to sit outside for lunch, and we’d a few showers as the day progressed. 

Annie did some delicious pork chops for dinner, floured and sealed then baked over softened chopped onions with some pink wine, then served with gently sautéed mushrooms in a cream sauce.  Careful note taken.   

Monday:  We did quite a bit of sitting and watching the rain.  We went into Marmande and fuelled the car, doing a bit of shopping while we were there.  The avenue of plane trees at Sainte-Bazeille was looking superb.  It reminded me of the nave of the Sagrada Familia, making me think that Gaudí must have visited and been inspired by it.  Tea in the afternoon with friends from Cocumont.  Ah, this demanding lifestyle... 

Tuesday dawned rather brighter, and though it wasn’t a breakfast on the terrace day, it was clear and pleasant, with a gentle breeze.  We went for coffee/tea with Christine and Jacques, and it was good to have some intelligent conversation in French.  They are both on great form, despite the fact that Jacko is still waiting to start radiotherapy for prostate cancer.  He has had some months of hormone treatment to shrink his prostate, and has had his tattoos done prior to treatment, though he’s still waiting for a start date.  It sounds as if the French medical system, for so long so admirable, is turning into a culture of long waiting times.  But he’s as vigorous and positive as ever, so far as I could tell.  He has a 1943 Dodge fire truck (‘It’s a year younger than me!’) that comes into its own when he has to go and cut wood from sloping ground – and it has a working winch that is handy when his friends finish up in the ditch on the way home.  Unfortunately, the brakes are in bad shape – the cylinders have rusted up, and he’s buying replacements over the internet.   

Wednesday: we had planned to take two days for the journey home, so left at a reasonable hour and ambled up via Marmande, Bergerac, Périgueux and Limoges.  We took the (free) motorway from Limoges to Vierzon, and then paid for a bit through the Sologne and round Orléans, before striking off for Chartres, Dreux, Evreux and Rouen.  This wasn’t a brilliant move, since the roads were busy (it being evening going-home time), hence slow.  We’d omitted to research hotel possibilities, and the only Ibis we found in Rouen was full.  At this point, we thought ‘the hell with it!’, and set off for Calais.  Whereupon the heavens opened (at dusk), and we were confronted with a lengthy detour to by-pass motorway road works.  Once past that, we paused for a sandwich and a quantity of water, and set off.  At Coquelles, whence we were booked to depart the following afternoon, we checked in at 22:24, were instantly offered a 22:50 departure, and were on the Shuttle (with maybe as many as 15 other cars) and moving by 22:46.  This is the kind of travelling experience I like! 

No bad surprises on arriving home, so we had a relatively restful Thursday, going no further than the sorting office to collect my new French Visa card, and the next-door M&S for a few bits to eat.   

The long road home.

It's always sad to close up the house after a lengthy stay: and to leave behind the good weather and drive into drizzle and low cloud.  But even in filthy weather the beaches of Biarritz, teeming with surfers, are mightily impressive.  Not a bad journey: we cut the corner south of Toulouse on the beautiful road from Villefranche du Lauragais, via Nailloux, Auterive and Saint-Sulpice-sur-Lèze.  But  with the low cloud, the spectacular views we sometimes get of the Pyrenees were just not to be had.

We found François on splendid form.  Danielle, whom I hadn't met before, was very tired after a day of mud baths and pummeling in Dax, but had laid on a copious and delicious apéritif.  She didn't feel up to coming out to dinner with us, however, so it was just us three chaps.  François took us to Le Roy Léon in Petit Bayonne, and I'm happy to say that his celebrated gift for finding good addresses is every bit as good as when I worked with him twenty years ago.  We had txakoli as an apéritif, and Irouléguy with the meal, so François tells us we now know all there is to know about Basque wines.  The former is from 'the other side': the part of the Basque country that lies in Spain, Irouléguy from 'this side'.  Both very drinkable, we thought.  On to the Gironde tomorrow for a few days' radio silence at Annie's.  More news once we're home in the UK.

Lunch at the seaside - yet again.

We opted for the Villerouge-Termenès-Albas road this morning.  We hadn't noticed the trials bike track shortly after the junction at Villerouge, and presume this was an investment by Kate and John, who like this road - we could visualise them leaping over the humps on their Mobylettes Pegasus and Bucephalus respectively.  More motor sport further down: we came round a bend to meet a net stretched across the road by a couple of old hippy types.  They obligingly hoiked it out of our way, nattering into a walkie-talkie (NB: French translation is talkie-walkie.  You might predict it, não é?).  Curiosity suitably pricked, we interrogated the next w-t/t-w wielder, who told there that there was a racing car coming up, but not to worry: they wouldn't send it off till we'd gone through.

At the end of the section, we found the arrêté municipal ordering the closure of the road for 15 minutes at a time between certain hours on specified days.  Plus a gaggle of identically-uniformed VW Motorsport technicians poring over a small vehicle normally originating from the Mladá Boleslav factory (among many others) but in this instance almost certainly  breathed on vigorously in Wolfsburg.  Their French minders approached us to say 'photos interdites'.   'Par qui?'  'Volkswagen.'  'Pfff...'.  Damned if I'm going to be told by a bunch of teutonic grease monkeys where I may or may not take photographs in my back yard, specially since I'm a customer of theirs, and have myself been doing a bit of VW Motorsport lately.  Said French minders were somewhat in tune with my f***-em attitude: I'd love to have poured them a few pastagas and found out how they felt about their employers.  Anyway, the little car burped and farted off the mark, but once it was up on the cam, it sounded like a receptive alley cat on LSD. 

Lunch was something of an anticlimax.  Martyn's entrecôte was broadly OK, but my moules marinières were grotesquely over salted, and went back.  The replacement shark steak was a bit ho-hum, and swimming in oil.  Guess the usual chef had phoned in sick.

We paddled gently in a warm sea, slightly disappointed that we hadn't brought swimming togs.  The wind-surfers and kite ditto were entertaining, though more so from the restaurant as we lunched than when seen from closer quarters.  But to be in shorts and at risk of sunburn in mid-September is not to be sneezed at.

It’s a strange visit when we don’t take a trip to Gruissan, often for Sunday lunch.  Our main purpose was to see whether the flamingos were still around, and indeed they were, on the étang de Bages.  A few rewarded us by taking off and flying to another feeding ground – they are an amazing sight.  As we stood and watched, there were definite sounds of fish hitting the surface to feed on insects.  (Loud applause, given how often I get bitten to hell when we’re by the water thereabouts.)  We stopped further along to get a closer view of some flamingos, and saw fish leaping clear out of the water to feed.  Big chaps; possibly bass.

Other forms of hunting are of course in evidence.  The chasse begins on the first Sunday after the 15 August holiday (elegantly described in German as Mariahimmelfahrt).  We’ve heard a few rifle shots from home, and one of our neighbours drives past the house every Sunday morning during the season with two or three dogs in his van barking blue murder.  One day as we headed out for lunch, we crossed the path of a convoy of hunters, one of whom had tied a huge wild boar across the front of his 4x4.

Returning to Sunday, one of our usual lunch venues was closed, so we tried one of their neighbours, Le Mouton de Panurge, and weren’t disappointed.  €16 for a decent, if limited, 3-course menu, decent wines by the glass, friendly service and a view of the yacht harbour.  We’ll be back.

Today we finally gritted our teeth and tackled the Canigou – by car, of course: don’t be silly!  A few years ago, on going in search of views, we were thwarted by a sign at the bottom of the road up into the Massif, saying that access was restricted to 4x4s.  This was not entirely absent from our minds when we bought the current vehicle.  Well, today dawned fine and clear, so off we went, finding a new sign at the foot of the hill, saying no access without a permit in July and August, 4x4s only, no access at night or during rainfall, very narrow roads etc, etc.  We should have got the hint, really.

The road is classified by Michelin as ‘difficult or dangerous’.  The last time I used such a road was in the Vercors, years ago, when I took one of those roads that were rebated into vertical cliff faces to transport timber to the markets of the Rhône valley.  Frightening, but paved and safe.  If you’re advised to try the Escala de l’Ours, please don’t.  It’s little better than a mule track: narrow, rocky and with vertiginous drops.  Well, we crept up the mountain tracing our way between boulders and water courses, and a few times I was deterred from giving up only by the idea of having to face such awful tracks a second time, and by the shortage of turning places.  The only experience that comes remotely close in awfulness was picking my way up packed snow on an alpine road in an over-powered Alfa-Romeo on summer tyres.  All we met on the way up was a handful of walkers and a couple of mountain bikers.  I was really worried that we’d meet an enthusiastic Land-Rover driver hurtling round the hairpins.  Fortunately, he didn’t materialise until we’d just reached the col.....

We eventually reached the col at 2055 metres, breathing a very small sigh of relief, the air being on the thin side for my liking at that altitude.  The road down the other side was a little better – wider at least – and our worst problem was a rather peculiar family driving mules, donkeys and a nanny goat down the hill.  The good side of it all is that we have got it out of our systems, and had some fantastic views in consequence.  From the highest point we reached, we could easily see the Montagne d’Alaric, our very own back-yard mountain, from a good 50 miles away.

Have to say that the car behaved really well.  With a younger and more capable driver, it would have been up there like a mountain goat, sure-footed and predictable, with the oil and water temperatures remaining well within safe limits.  Very good downhill as well, with bags of engine braking in first and second, so I didn’t cook the brakes. 

So, back home safely.  I acceded to Martyn’s offer to take over the driving just this side of Narbonne, shortly after I’d tried to set the cruise control by turning on the right indicators.  Dinner of saltimbocca, oven wedgies (home made) and ratatouille (ditto).

I'd never have guessed...

We've been puzzling since Easter about a new building that's going up on the edge of the airstrip at Lézignan.  With a tall hexagonal 'keep' and a more conventional two storey building adjoining, we wondered whether plans were afoot to develop it into an airport, starting with a proper control tower.  We've often muttered about how handy it would be to have an airport on the doorstep.  The runway must be of reasonable length, since the military occasionally come down with an old Transall out of which they launch parachutists: the notoriously under-powered Transall doesn't exactly land on a dime.  Lézignan currently has no lights, however, and no commercial buldings, and there's a proper airport half an hour away.  So that couldn't be it.  A 21st century oast house, perhaps?  Not a lot of point when it's surrounded by acres of carignan.  Well, Google to the rescue: it turns out to be a vertical wind tunnel, in which one will be able to simulate sky-diving.  One of the investors turns out to operate a similar rig not a mile from my old office in Switzerland, and it was evidently operating back in my day, à mon insu.  Not that I'd have been tempted, I think, had I known about it.  Its purpose is purely recreational, evidently: the gift for the man who has everything; an expensive party or team-building.  I suppose it might also come in handy if you felt like knowing what free fall is like before you commit to jumping out of a beat-up Turbolet.

You'd think that, with all the travelling I've done over the years, I'd be a bit organised. Ha! I find that I lack means of connecting the camera to the computer and, until an hour ago, a means of recharging the Kindle. On one of the recent dull days, I got out a canvas and some paints, only to find that I hadn't brought a palette or a palette knife. And where is my second-best box easel?  UK - where else? - whence we shall schlepp it south next time we drive. Still, a bread machine carton can be induced to make an easel of sorts, an old billy can serves as a palette, and I'm sure my brushes, thoroughly washed, will recover from being used for mixing acrylics. All I need now is inspiration and talent. And as for the Kindle, I ordered a charger yesterday on amazon, and a nice young man delivered it to the door this lunch time. If we leave the charger here, it's one fewer thing to carry in future. As for the camera card reader, we'll pick one up tomorrow in Carcassonne, and similarly leave it here - above the water line. 

We're having a lazy time today, having driven a fair bit yesterday. We'd to venture across the frontier into the Hérault yesterday for bits for Martyn's new model railway (Eridge station in the 1950s), so while we were there, dropped in on a former colleague from my working in France days. I hadn't seen him for at least 17 years, and we'd neither of us met each other's partners. He hasn't aged a second since I saw him last - snarl. They live in a little house in a side street two minutes' walk from the sailing harbour in a town on one of the Mediterranean lagoons.   So we sat under a plane tree in their back garden sipping rosé before repairing to the café du port for lunch (excellent value, friendly service, lovely view across the harbour), and all got on like a house on fire. They also have a delightful, if moulting, Jack Russell bitch, which is the nearest I come to being tempted to dog ownership. We got some local recommendations, so clanked home.

New technology baffles pissed old hack

Well, I seem to have succeeded in deleting the last four month's blog, thinking I was deleting drafts.  Bugger.  Following is a re-hash of the latest entry that I deleted. 

It's so embarrassing when you invite people to visit, and they cop a parking ticket because you've failed to brief them on the village's arcane seasonal parking regulations.  Such a fate befell Immy and Jon when they and the girls called in for lunch on their way home from Spain.  For some reason they were unable to pay their €17 fine in the various Tabacs they called at on their way north, so  when I was back in the UK recently, they gave it to me to deal with.  The Mairie was unable to take a cash payment.  I'd to trek up to the Tabac and buy the necessary stamp, then walk the paperwork back down to the Mairie.  Sometimes I think that the gallic psyche relishes pointless and complex administrative details.  (Getting into and out of the Post Office, for example, now practically requires a City & Guilds in operating the new security system.  Still, it hasn't been axed yet, so one shouldn't grumble.) 

Neighbours Kate and John would tell you a thing or two about trying to get connected to broadband.  I remember all too clearly how attempting the same process myself a couple of years ago left me incandescent with fury at the bum-shuffling, rude incompetence of the people I spoke to - Martyn thought I was going to bust a blood vessel.  And that was on the rare occasions when they could be bothered answering their phones.  In K&J's case, France Télécom contented themselves with saying 'sorry, can't be done' and they were forced to pay a broker a king's ransom to unscramble the bureaucracy.  It turns out that their line was at one time shared, and still carried a label in the FT files saying that uses of the line were limited in consequence.  Well, all's well that ends well-ish: with a little help from said brokers, I was soon able to connect through their router with my laptop.  Not so John's PC, unfortunately: when it was thrown together (in the late middle ages, by the look of it), it plainly wasn't intended to connect via a router.  Disappointing, though, that the well-paid brokers concluded that they couldn't fix it without extra payment.  K&J have other computers, so ought to be in business next time they come.

We've been doing some shunting of furniture.  Martyn is building a new model railway layout upstairs in the studio, and has built a baseboard about 9' by 2'6".  It fits into the end of the room where we usually store the outside table and chairs, so we've brought down a big desk to make space.  Said desk has suffered badly from having a 19" CRT monitor parked on it, and my attempts at running repairs have not so far been a brilliant success.  Anyway, it's a better desk for the downstairs computer, and goes neatly into the drawing room, obviating the need for an extra side table for the printer.  The exercise has concentrated minds a little, however.  Other clutter in the studio included said old monitor, which is serviceable but no longer useful, plus a broken turntable and a duff printer, which, together with a few redundant or broken bits and pieces from other hidey holes round the place will shortly make up a cargo for the déchetterie intercommunale.  The code around here for such stuff is 'Auntie's good gramophone': doubtless of quality and functioning well, but sadly overtaken by time.  By the same token, I probably ought to take a header into the déchetterie myself while I'm there.