Back in Disgustedville

Our last day in the village was a shade anti-climactic after such a feast of wonderful music.  But the visit to the Abbey on its tenth anniversary open day was a treat, the more so since we'd spent a sweaty morning on the chores that infest the day before we leave.  The restoration of the cloister and the garden are real successes, and the reception by the brothers was friendly, informative and nicely understated.  They'd done a little Powerpoint show of the before and after, which was fascinating, and elsewhere in the Abbey there were explanations of its history in general, and of the stunted tower in particular.  It's thought that it ought to have reproduced the spire of the cathedral of Mirepoix, hence that it should have been close on twice its present height.  I don't see that work being done in short order, but given the 132 years and counting progress on the little church down the road from our Barcelona flat, succeeding generations may be surprised.

We dined on our last night at the restaurant at the top of the Prom, and were not vastly impressed.  They did not have the wine listed on the menu.  The table was set, on my side, with a fork that was simply unusable, and we were short of a glass: I nicked suitable replacements from an adjoining table.  The first course salad was copious, granted, but full of Dutch hothouse tomatoes, cucumber and the like, which beggars belief when there are such superb tomatoes etc to be had from the organic supplier just up the road, or indeed from any local supermarket or village shop.  Martyn's main course entrecôte was OK.  I'd selected a pavé de porc, but got two thin leg steaks, overcooked and served with a strip of Schmelzkäse and a couple of slices of flavour-free bacon.  The cheese platter was OK, though without character, but at least it wasn't overpowering.  My tarte aux pommes was so heavily laced with cinnamon that I couldn't taste anything else, and gave up after a single spoonful.  When we needed more wine, the staff determinedly avoided my eye, and I had to march the carafe up to the bar and slam it down to get service. 

Manky.  Don't think he knows we call him that

Dreadful night of indigestion - not handy the day before departure, but at least we'd done the worst of the housework the day before.  Before we left, we fed the street cat that visits us when we're there.  We know from his coughs and sneezes when he's on the dining room window ledge sunning himself.  I tried him on softened bread (noting that he has lost most of his teeth) without success a couple of weeks ago, but Martyn found his weak spot with chopped-up baked chicken breasts.  We were quite upset to leave him, and wonder whether we'll see him again.  But then, we say that after every visit.  And I think he has rewarded our hospitality by pissing on the dining room window.

I tire of reporting the awful driving we meet on the motorway, so shall gloss over that.  The journey was pretty much OK, and less rained on than we'd expected from the forecast.  We'd decided to spend the night on the outskirts of Orléans, choosing a place that offered more than the Campanile for less money (save for the kettle, which we take with us anyway) and threw in breakfast as well.  Ibis Styles, Orléans.  The Ritz it ain't, and the makeover from its previous All Seasons title is distinctly half-hearted.  But the WiFi was good, the room clean and just about quiet enough (though it was a good job we didn't need the noisy air conditioning). 

A selling point is its proximity to the terminus of a tram line that takes you inexpensively (1€50 per ticket) into the centre of the city.  The tram was very busy, with a lot of Eid revellers heading into town to celebrate the end of Ramadan, some of them in superb West African gowns, of which we saw a lot more in the centre. 

We had a stroll round, settling eventually on a rather pretentious restaurant in the shadow of the statue of Jeanne d'Arc.  I've reviewed it elsewhere as La Maison du y'en a plus.  'I'd like a gin-tonic, please'.  Lengthy pause: 'We have no tonic: how about a gin-fizz?  Oh, and by the way, we have no moules, filets de rouget or filets de bar.'  'OK, we'll both have faux-filets, mine saignant with pepper sauce, his à point with béarnaise.'  Very lengthy pause.  Steaks arrived, each with pepper sauce.  On remonstrating: 'Oh we'd run out of béarnaise, so we just gave him pepper sauce instead'.  A French couple, on hearing the litany of what they hadn't got, got up and left.  Wish we had.  Inflated bill, no tip.  Name on application.  But think of the British Finance Minister's title.

After another indigestion-afflicted night, we'd a pretty fair ride up to the end of the hole, including a pause to top up the diesel and to stock up the cool bag at the good old Intermarché in Marquise.  We got away an hour or so earlier than planned, so were home in time to wind down before fish and chips from the usual suspects down the road.  Best meal we've had for a couple of nights, but maybe a bit of an ordeal after so many other challenges to the appareil digestif. 

Gentle day today: we've washed the covers of the top floor sofas from Another Place, dead-headed the penstemons and roses, and elected to put off grass cutting till tomorrow.  As usual there was a mountain of paper, including three weeks' worth of the local rag, which was more than usually full of scurrilous revelations.  Details, not unrelated to the hobby, on application. 

Kate's play Queen Anne is getting a lot of good reviews, and we shall go on its closing night, perhaps taking in the RA summer show on the way.  Check the web site for lots of images of the production, the synopsis, reviews (including the usual bitchy one from The Stage) and much more.

You'd never know we'd 'ad a do

Last day of En Blanc et Noir - rehearsal

The Halle this morning was its usual Saturday self, with a lively market, the only clue to the preceding revelry being the stack of chairs in the side alley off the Place.  I went to every single concert in the festival, and enjoyed them all.  The apotheosis was a four-hands piano recital by the incredibly talented James Kreiling and Janneke Brits (Mrs Kreiling), which ended with a blazing rendering of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps.  

Earlier in the day we had a recital from Saran Suebsantiwongse (baritone) accompanied by Yshani Perinpanayagam at the piano.  More striking talent, and certainly names to watch.  (Start learning them now...)

The early evening concert was a violin and piano recital by Lev Atlas and Stephen Adams, including some nice lollipops like the Saint-Saëns Introduction & Rondo

Lev Atlas and Stephen Adams

Capriccioso as well as solid stuff from Brahms and Schubert, and an arrangement of the Rachmaninov Conc 2.  And they  had the time and energy for lots of folk and pop pieces as well. 

The whole festival has been a real treat, and we hope it will establish Lagrasse firmly on the classical music calendar.  We hope too that the young musicians we heard performing will put it on their cvs with pride.  They certainly deserve to.  Except for the lightning flashes and thunder that added drama to Charles Owen's recital on Thursday, the threatened storms held off.  Charles, incidentally, taught a number of the young musicians we heard, and sets them a damn' good example.  The piano did not, however: it needed re-tuning at least once a day, as I mentioned the other day.  Martyn suggests I buy a Steinway concert grand and lend it to the festival each year.  I think not...

There were a couple of complaints from traders on the square about the piano music during rehearsals.  Well, if I'd had to be there during the preceding event's rehearsals, I'd have been grizzling too.  Unlike earlier this week after the Abracadaconneries, there was no need to hose the village down after the festival, despite very respectable takings at the buvette... 

Flagpoles, salutes

Better than looking at the back of the sofa.  Not an intentional sales pitch, since (a) I don't need the income or tax hassle, and (b) I only keep pieces I like.

I should add that the door is hardly being hammered down ...

From good to better and better

The festival En Blanc et Noir in Lagrasse is drawing to a close.  We've been treated to piano and vocal performances ranging from Bach to Jerome Kern, with accompaniments of strong wind, thunder and lightning, plus the dulcet tones of the doctor's elderly Toyota, which he doubtless had good reasons to drive into and out of the square during performances.  There hasn't been a single disappointing performance, except by the piano, rented from an outfit in Carcassonne.  OK: it's standing outdoors with changing temperature, humidity and barometric pressure; and it has been taking quite a hammering.  But it doesn't hold its tune at all well: though tuned this morning, the upper end of the right hand was sounding by lunchtime like a neglected church hall upright.  As it has throughout the festival, if I'm to be candid.  It has detracted only a little from the uniformly excellent performances.

Turning to tiny details, I cared less for a performance by a delightful young pianist who felt bound to improve on what the composers had written; variations, fine.  Ornamentation: discuss.  Similarly I was not taken with a performance in which the performer overdid the rubato to the extent that each phrase seemed isolated.  Tastes evolve: composers used to invite improvised cadenzas, and it was once the fashion to take a fermata on a climactic chord at the end of a Bach fugue as an invitation to embark on a spirited improvisation.  But here we are, and this is now: de gustibus non est discutandum.  And if I could play a single note, I might be entitled to have my uninformed opinion taken into account.
 
Part of the charm of the thing is its intimacy: neighbours get together to chat over a glass of wine from the buvette during intervals; most of the musicians seem to be staying for the whole bash, so I've had a chance to chat with a lot of them in their free moments.  Artistically, it has been just one treat after another, and I find myself wishing my life away until the next one. Just hope the last two performances don't get washed out by the forecast storms.

Kulcha at last

Scintillating start to En Blanc et Noir, a four-day festival of piano music, together with some song and choral pieces, in the Halles at Lagrasse.  You can see the programme yourself at the link.  The opening song concert today at lunchtime was really good, despite competition from the Tramontane, the Abbey Bells and some clanking of bottles in the adjacent wine shop.  One down, eleven to go.  Virtuoso piano practice floating over the roof as I got the washing in from the terrace.  Surprised at liking the Alban Berg songs, but I wished I'd taken the initiative to read up the lyrics beforehand.  And a refreshingly un-Piaf-like rendering of Hymne à L'Amour by Penny Turnbull.   

Symbolically, the streets were being hosed down after the village's last little event, on which, you'll be relieved to know, I shall rant no further.  For the moment...

From E to F

Platja Sant Sebastiá, Sitges

Fine day yesterday: Martyn treated me to lunch in Sitges.  After a modicum of research, I opted for a place on the Platja Sant Sebastiá, the Costa Dorada.  Lucky choice, I think, since on the larger beach to the west, a formidable array of amplifiers was being set up: the very thing we'd left the village to avoid.  We had a limited explore of Sitges before booking our lunch table, and spent a while sitting in a rare bit of shade, watching people enjoying themselves in the water.  There was a seasonal market going on along 'our' smaller St Sebastian beach front, selling some of the usual seaside tat, but also a lot of interesting baking, cured meats, odd handicrafts and odder teas (cannabis tea, anyone?). 

Awaiting birthday lunch

Lunch was good, and copious, and as the day was hot, I dozed on and off in the train on the way back to Barcelona.  When I was awake, I was rewarded with beautiful sea views: the return line is closer to the sea and goes through fewer tunnels.  We dined on a chicken Caesar salad in the evening, sourcing the components in the very handy Mini-Corte Ingles 20 paces from our front door.  Unlike in certain less religious countries, it remains open from 08:00 to 02:00, 7 days a week.  It also sells hot, fresh bread, except this morning, when we were looking for an early start.  Oh well.

Today we have returned to the village - just.  Our GPS lady, Dotty, managed to guide us out of Barcelona, but, once programmed to take us to the town closest to the border crossing we planned to take, she tried very hard to route us via two toll-charged sides of a triangle rather than along the direct route.  As usual we opted to Defy Dotty, and she fairly quickly caught on to the fact, recalculating without so much as a sigh.  But I'm convinced she's in the pockets of the oil and motorway companies.

The route was beautiful, though quite busy for the first hour or so.  The panoramas either side of the Coll d'Ares are wonderful: marginally more so on the south side.  Nothing that can be conveyed in a still photograph, of course.  You have to be there among the scents of the herbs and wild flowers, listening to the distant clanging of cow bells, and mentally mixing the colours of the mountains as they blue out into the distance.

We paused to have our sandwiches at a little recreation park near Le Boulou, watching people swimming and running (it was exhausting, I tell you...) while others boated in pedalo catamarans with built-in water slides.  Have I now seen everything?

I took the final stint at the wheel.  It was very nearly my final stint at any wheel.  As we batted up the A9 in rather blustery conditions, a truck I was about to overtake suddenly swung into our lane, and the ensuing panic braking took some hundreds of miles off the tyres.  The car behaved impeccably, I'm glad to report, as did the driver of the taxi behind us.  I hate to over-dramatise, but had we been a second or two further into our overtaking manoeuvre, it might have been our last.  All being well that ends well, we are safely home to find nothing worse following the rock festival than a pool of dried vomit a few paces from the front door.  So, with the larder stocked up, the tank refuelled, the shirts washed and drying and the bodies somewhat rested, it's time to patrol the village, possibly via the café de la Promenade.

The tourist bit

Sagrada Familia, 26 July 2004

 We spent yesterday being tourists in Barcelona, and it was a hot, sweaty and thoroughly worthwhile experience.  We were last in the Sagrada Familia ten years ago all but a week, and though the plane tree inspired columns were mostly in place, it was still very much a building site.  Now, though some of the outside building work is still to be done - and they reckon it'll take another 11 or 12 years - the interior is essentially complete.  It is utterly stunning, and worth the journey.  It is also lousy with visitors, of course, and the queue to book timed visit slots looked like it was hours long.  Having booked on line and printed our tickets, we breezed straight in, a few minutes ahead of our scheduled time.

Sagrada Familia, 19 July 2014

There is a museum in the undercroft, and highly informative it was.  They are recreating many of Gaudí's scale models, and there are plenty of images of the early stages of building.
The central tower has yet to be built, so the full impact of this extraordinary building has yet to come.  But the exterior is already vast and hugely impressive, in its zany and incoherent way.  I hadn't registered before that the flamboyant modernist structure is added to a complete neo-gothic crypt and apse walls.  That's already enough to make the design of the place thoroughly puzzling, and it just gets stranger as the work progresses, giving the impression, Martyn felt, that they were making it up as they went along.  We'll be watching progress with interest.

From there, after a bit of humming and hawing on my part, we bought day tickets at €27 per man for one of the tourist bus services.  First we headed for the the Parc Güell.  It's still quite a climb to get up there from where the bus drops you, but at least there are escalators for the steepest parts at the top.  Having failed to pre-book entry tickets, we got there to find the familiar long queues.  We just had a wander round the free bits, from which we could get a good feel for the place, and quite good views of some of the houses.

Effects of litres of beer: before and after.  Girls on R to note woman on L

Unmemorable lunch at an egg-and-chips with everything joint, then back on the tour buses.  We had a pretty comprehensive survey of the city's exuberant architecture, and also views across the harbour and out to sea.  We got off the bus at the wet end of the Rambla, and people-watched for a while at a café we'd used the previous night.  Hundreds of people go there to strut their stuff in the evening, or, like us, to watch the world go by.  A current craze seems to be Mr Punch-type swizzles, through which countless hawkers squeak at you as you pass.  I wonder how many children choke on them each week.  And I'm not sure I care to know why one fellow was walking up the Rambla dressed in a two-metre inflatable phallus suit.  From there we ambled back to the Plaça de Catalunya to get the bus back to base, taking side streets in the gothic quarter, and getting predictably lost.

By the time we got back to the bus, we were definitely finished with tourism for the day, and were happy to sit downstairs in the air-conditioned bit.  It's always a bad sign when I start to react audibly to people walking out in front of me and then stopping and gawping at whatever had caught their eye.  I'd also had to deploy the elbow a few times to deter queue-jumpers.  Grumpy old man credentials suitably reinforced, I fear.

Building work, ctd

View from Pont Vieux

I begin to think it might after all have been nice to have the end wall stripped and re-pointed.  The bottom meter or so having had to be stripped of its cement render, it doesn't look too bad.  What it'll look like with a lime rendering remains to be seen, of course.  If need be, I'll have it repainted with the same lime wash as further up (which is mellowing nicely, as I'd hoped).  Pierre and friend will first leave it to dry out for 10 days or so.  Chris the joiner will be in touch on Tuesday to decide on the next steps to be taken on the bathroom window.  Meanwhile, I've left a plastic sheet over it to avoid the forecast storms soaking it again.

View from apartment balcony

The village distinguishes itself every year around my birthday with a rock concert lasting three days, running on each night until 03:00, complete with the attendant megawatts.  This being so, the house is shuttered and barred, and your obedient servants are in Catalonia's other capital, where we have rented a nice little flat.  It sits on top of a public car park, and fortunately offers a residents' discount on the public parking rate, reducing it from extortionate to merely eye-watering.  The drive was pretty hellish (truck drivers drifting out of lane while consulting their iPads, insane overtaking and tailgating, etc, etc).  At least the weather improved just as we crossed into French Catalonia.  Thank goodness for air conditioning - it's about 35° outside.  Fortunately, both the car and the flat are thus equipped.  Having gone out to get a few provisions while the cleaner was finishing her work, we're back in and observing the local custom of skulking indoors during the heat of the afternoon. 

We've booked a visit tomorrow to the little church down the street (they've also got the builders in, I see), and aim to visit the Parc Güell some time during the day.  If the weather's decent on Sunday (though the forecast is ominous), we'll take a ride down the coast for lunch.

Culture

After a few days of nothing much, give or take pleasant apéros and meals with friends, we have been out and about a bit.  Last night we were at at a wine bar up on the prom for a folk and blues concert given by Julian Dawson, Dave Kelly and others.  Nice evening, helped along by wine at €10 a bottle.  We had to come home and get some folding chairs, so popular was the event.  All good fun, though I regret the over-amplification that seems to be de rigueur.

Palais des Rois de Majorque, Perpignan

Talking of which, we decided to do some exploring in Perpignan today.  Our visits there have tended to be limited to the airport and suppliers of new chiottes, and as the weather forecast was quite a bit better there, we thought we'd make the trip.  After a modicum of googling and a visit to the tourist office to get a town plan, we went to see the palace of the Kings of Majorca, an impressive 13th/14th century pile built in mixed Romanesque and Gothic styles to the south of the present-day city centre.  It is unfortunately the venue for a heavy metal concert tonight, and we're glad we won't be there.  The beat was discernible if one rested a hand on the medieval stonework.

Basse and Castillet, Perpignan

The cathedral and adjacent burial cloister is worth a look, but the best bit is the bell tower, I'd say.  The cathedral does have a huge Cavaillé-Coll organ up on the north side of the nave.  A bit of googling to a youtube clip will give you a sample of the characteristic blazing reeds and quasi orchestral chorus registrations for which the firm was renowned.  The city has been doing some work on the centre: the sides of the river Basse that joins the Têt in Perpignan have been well landscaped (I'll keep quiet about the rudbeckia envy), and many of the streets, now pedestrianised, are nicely paved.  As you head from the centre out to the palace, however, you pass through some insalubrious areas that we'd neither of us care to visit alone, particularly after dark.

We had a decent lunch at the café-pizzeria La Roma next to the tourist office - but if you ask for a kir/blanc-cassis and don't want it served in a glass with sugar round the rim, remember to specify the fact.  Their escalope de veau Firenze was a regular Schnitzel topped with a slice of jambon cru and grated mozzarella and browned under the grill.  Very appetising -  a sort of 'on-second-thoughts-a-cordon-bleu-would-be-nice' dish, and spoiled a little maybe by the fact that the top layer of crumb was made a bit soggy by the additions.  Very appetising nonetheless.  With frites, natch. 

Back to the village by the direct route (former N9 and N113).  The ladies of the afternoon seem to be back at the roadside, alas, but not in the huge numbers we've seen in earlier years.  It was, however, the first time we'd seen one by the N113 as was.  A move in parliament to criminalise the clients is under way.  (By the way, has anyone got an idea of the costs and benefits of reclassifying so many routes nationales as routes départementales?  There was a time when you could join the N113 in Bordeaux, and take it all the way to Marseille - at vast risk to life and limb, of course.  Now it changes designation every time it crosses a departmental boundary, and of course all the signs and maps have had to be changed.  Everyone still calls it the cent-treize, of course, and its notorious death toll continues.)

Here in the village, we've been treated to a superb concert by the Wolfson Chamber Choir, with a repertoire ranging from Byrd, Tallis and Bach to Duruflé and Rutter, by way of a setting of the 23rd psalm familiar to those who enjoyed Dawn French's performance as the Vicar of Dibley.  The acoustic of the church is very difficult.  But Natalie Mayer-Hutchings's rendering of the Pie Jesu from Fauré's Requiem was as moving as I've heard: she can do close to a boy-treble voice, only with a shade more power.  And I'd forgotten the handkerchief.  Elsewhere in the village, a brass band was giving it big licks in the market square where a wedding party held its apéritif session from about 17:30 to 21:30.  They then processed through the village, doubtless for a hearty blowout at the  salle polyvalente.  At the time of writing, they are out of earshot...

The bouquet of the day goes to the wonderful Wolfson Chamber Choir.  The cactus of the day goes to the twat in the elderly BMW who passed us and the car in front close to a right-hand bend near the Château d'Aguilar.

Away again

A more than usually unpleasant trek south.  Although there was little more than a hint of moisture in the air when I got up yesterday, it was flinging it down by the time we left, and it rained more or less continuously all the way to Clermont Ferrand.  It was all the less welcome that the tyre pressure warning light came on with its ominous ping just north of Orléans.  (Last time we got that signal, it was somewhere in the Ashdown Forest, alerting us to a stiletto heel spike through the shoulder of a tyre, so one takes such messages seriously.)  I couldn't feel any difference in the car's dynamics, but dropped the speed right down and we limped to the next aire.  Having dropped the back seats and shifted the luggage forward to give access to the spare wheel and pressure gauge, I then braved the rain with the latter, establishing that all four tyres were comme il faut: after I'd reset the warning thingy, it stayed off for the rest of the journey, so I guess it must have been some of the diluvian water in the works.  Not long after, we passed a village called Le Déluge.  Fancy that.

The welcome at the Issoire bell tower was friendly and professional this time, but we were again put in a room with a communicating door to the next one.  This time, an Italian family came crashing, banging and bellowing into the room next door just as I was dropping off, not without having first had a long, loud conversation outside our window.  I must admit to getting up and thumping hard on said door, which made for a marginal improvement.  I never watch breakfast TV.  Today I made an exception: it was tempting to leave the TV on max volume as we left, but I resisted it.

Despite appalling weather (torrential rain and fog) down through the Auvergne and the Causses, we got the local shopping done before the cave co-op closed for lunch.  Alas, not all is exactly 100% at Château Smith: the new lime wash has already started falling off  the wall, and there are signs of water ingress round the new bathroom window.  Young Pierre has been summoned.  Watch this space.

Home

28 June: Venice

The last of the organised tours, this time by coach to Desenzano, and by train on to Venice. Our reserved seats in the train had us sitting apart again, and one seat had no window. Fortunately, there were empty seats so we promoted ourselves, and had good views. The ride across the causeway is an impressive experience, specially when the sun is reflected off the ripples on the lagoon. We had a private boat counter-clockwise around the main island to S Marco, where we were met by our guide.   After 10 minutes or so of history lesson, we melted away when the group moved off, and explored the back streets for ourselves.  The disadvantage of going private was that we did not visit S Marco: the queues were endless.  The group got in through a side door with the guide.

On the whole, we preferred our approach: we spent less time shuffling round in a crowd and having to stand and listen to a guide droning on, plus we had time for a relaxed lunch near the Rialto fish market.   After a bit more leisurely exploration, we took a vaporetto the length of the Grand Canal back to the station.   Having been instructed to be back  there at 16:15, we began to get a bit anxious when the water bus gave way to every gondola in sight.  Anyway, we made it with time to spare.  The forecourt of the station was full of life as the Venice gay pride was assembling: lots of signs round necks offering free hugs and kisses, but one did not avail oneself.

I deliberately took few photographs, since Venice must be the most photographed city in the world.  My shot of St Mark's and the Doges' palace was taken only out of irony: the vast Nieuw Amsterdam cruise barge was being towed through, dwarfing everything in sight. There were a few other cameos I wish I'd captured: a girl in a long flowing blue dress standing up in her dinghy, shading her eyes with one hand, and, with the other, steering with a long tiller attached to the outboard motor; the chap in the garbage boat sheltering from the sun under a rose pink umbrella; the gondolier winding his boat-load of Japanese tourists round bends and under bridges, nattering away on his telefonino the while; the fellow chatting away on one telefonino while texting on another.

Before we left for Venice, though, I'd had to go to reception and report that water was, once again, dripping from the a/c intake grille, as it has done each time we've had heavy rain, ie most days. I'd noticed that one of the down pipes next to our balcony was blocked, and water was running down the outside wall. I drew them a diagram to explain, and we went on our way.  On our return, it was dripping worse than ever, and they'd placed a bucket on a heap of beach towels to catch the worst of it. Soon after we got in, there was a call from reception, apologising, and asking if we wanted to change rooms.  We opted to stay put, whereupon they said our wine bill for the week would be settled by the hotel.   It's an ill wind, eh?

Sunday 29 June

Last day in Italy. As I write we're in a train heading for Domodossola and the Simplon, after a short layover in Milano Centrale. Superb edifice, with no fewer than three monumental station halls.  The place is crawling with beggars and thieves, however: helpful young people who offer to lift your bag into the train, for example. Unhelped and unrobbed, we press on northward.

The rest of the journey went perfectly, as one would expect when much of it was in Switzerland and all of it on an SBB train.  Our train was an almost new Pendolino, but our seats were at the end of the carriage, hence not the most comfortable place to spend four hours.  Unfortunately for those who were seeing Switzerland for the first time, the weather was dull and damp.  The last stretch to Colmar was in a rather tired Belgian train that continued to Brussels.  That said, the 1960s vintage seats were upholstered (more recently...) on proper sprung bases, so would have remained comfortable all the way.

From the front, Colmar station looks superb: I think I'd blogged that it dates from 1906, based on the same drawings as those for the main station in the then also German Danzig.  It's a different story when you get off the train: we had to climb through an enormous weed that had been left for weeks growing out of the edge of the platform, which is seriously unkempt.  I wonder what the restructuring of the French railways will achieve.  Probably higher costs and lesser efficiency, as in UK. At the time of writing, the hotel Bristol seems OK.   We have a room overlooking the courtyard rather than the station square, which is a relief.  One of our party had his pocket picked in the reception area of the hotel, however: another disadvantage of travelling in a crowd of obviously foreign tourists.

In my tiredness after nine hours' travelling, I came close to throwing a wobbly when the dinner menu was presented with no choices.  We enquired into the possibility of changing one course that one of us couldn't face, and the response was prompt and helpful, so we stayed.  The meal was by and large better than we'd had in the hotel in Italy, though I wouldn't build an itinerary round it.

Monday 30 June

Reasonable night's sleep: the room was quiet and well appointed, and even provided tea, proper cups, saucers and a kettle.  Copious and varied breakfast laid on, so we were well set up for the day.  We got slightly sprinkled as we did our little walking tour - on our own with the map.  Very attractive town, Colmar, probably a bit overshadowed by nearby Strasbourg.   A lot of timber-framed medieval houses survive, or have been restored, and they are now painted in a pleasant variety of pastel colours.

On a previous visit to Colmar in 1974, the entire UPU centenary Congress was invited to lunch by the French PTT in some vast hangar in the outskirts.  In the best French lunch tradition, it went on for many hours, and I had to carry one of my colleagues back to the coach.  We were a shade more circumspect this time.

Storks are nesting in baskets on top of some of the taller buildings, and there were young birds in at least one of the nests we saw. We visited the toy museum in town: quite fun, though the mechanical orchestra was faintly macabre.

Lunch in the old station buffet, then back to collect the bags and off to catch the train to Paris. Quite a long stretch on conventional track - and on the right-hand road in the German fashion - before we joined the high-speed line. Once on that we whipped along briskly, and far too fast to recognise the few station names. I did recognise the Montagne de Reims as we passed it, but as with the motorway that follows roughly the same route, the view is of vast tracts of farm land.

So, time to take stock.  At various points in the trip, I had to admit that I was most definitely not in my element.  It was rather like being on a school day trip: 'stand still while I count you!', 'back here at 16:45, because the bus won't wait!' etc.  I had to be restrained a few times from getting up and walking out, and I often felt a 'fuck off!' coming on (but managed to restrain myself).  We visited some wonderful places, and loved the views of the lake from the room (from day 2) as well as from boats and vantage points on land.  The catering was rather mixed, and I did not take kindly to being shunted into the second-class citizens' dining rooms for depleted menus.  The planning was not brilliant: after a hot and sticky day in Verona, I could have done with a shower and change of clothes before dinner, but we went straight on to an agriturismo venue for an indifferent dinner and an uninspiring wine tasting.  Dinners at the hotel were very disappointing: choice was limited to two primi, one of which was always hot soup and two secondi, which were by and large better, though not always well-planned.  Having asked for the trout one evening, I sat with an empty plate for quite a while after the others were served, and eventually got a freshly cooked fillet of sea bass - another ill wind...  It took little effort to recognise the part played by leftovers.  The desserts were awful without exception, which was galling when, on leaving the dining room, we had to walk past a copious pudding waggon, the contents of which would go to waste.  The hotel was otherwise good (notwithstanding our room's unplanned second shower), but if you decide to use the Savoy Palace in Gardone Riviera, go bed and breakfast.  Value for money: Awful.

There were some nice moments: Martyn playing the piano in the Gare de Lyon, a sparky woman bus driver who picked us up close to the exit at the Gare de l'Est and dropped us right at the front of the Gare du Nord, and the discovery that the train stopped at Ashford on the way home, which save us an hour at the end of a long day's travelling.

Wednesday 2 July

It's always good to get home and see what the garden has been doing.  Lettuces are filling out, carrots seem to be surviving and some of the beans are climbing their stakes.  The roses are flowering like mad and the recent plantings seem to be surviving, thanks largely to Celia and Andy's watering visit.  We did vast amounts of laundry yesterday which was helpfully warm and breezy.

Off again on Sunday: it's actually quite hard to leave the garden at this time of year, but we'll be back to enjoy it in August.