Beware Mondays

Mondays are peculiar days in France. We went to Perigueux on a Monday and found everything closed. Thinking to enjoy a birthday celebration meal before we packed up and drove home, we drove to St Foy le Grande on La Dordogne and found the chosen restaurant closed. Of course! It was Monday. Hasty scratching of heads. Where to eat, if it was Monday?

St Foy offered nothing and the countryside south of the river, around Ligueux, Saussignac and Monestier, though beautiful, offered only closed auberges and restaurants. We drove into a golf resort hotel, which was open - but would not accept us because we were not resident. So, about six restaurants later, we arrived back in Bergerac, where we'd started, heading for the tourist area of the old town. Surely that would be open?

It was, and we had a very nice meal in a restaurant opposite the poissonnerie. I chose lotte saison and hoped it was fish. Whatever it was, it looked delicious, tasted wonderful and when I checked in the dictionary next day, discovered it had been monkfish of the low season. I'd been lucky with my starter, too, in ordering a tartine de legumes. It arrived as an artistically built mound of fresh vegetables: a baby carrot, a slice of red pepper, and paper thin slices of something yellow that may have been fennel, but might not. Something equally thin, almost transparent with faint pink stripes on white, a baby tomato cut precisely so that the inner structure formed the shape of a tiny tree. Delicious!
But the moral of the tale is this - in the Bergerac area of France (I cannot speak for other areas) the food is good, but almost impossible to get on a Monday night!

I thought you might enjoy a pic of me in my tree-felling gear!

House of Wine and wildlife

We must have missed the House of Wine in Bergerac on other trips, or else it has opened up this year. We didn't bother going down into the caves or view the art exhibition. The courtyard was more than enough for me, with its wooden gallery on two sides and old, ivy-covered stone and brick walls completing the square. Beneath the gallery a series of posters details the history of wine in the area from Stone Age times, with lots of info on which wines grew where and why. Philistine that I am, I just like drinking it!

Still the rain continues. It's like being at home, except that it's still warmer here most of the time. The clouds are hanging low over the tree tops and the air is thick and heavy - 94% humidity. We may have to go looking for a lavarie soon - we can wash clothes at the mill no problem, but drying them in this weather is an issue.

There is a field surrounded by trees next to the mill, and we've found that deer come down at night and eat the plums off the tree. They regularly trek through in both directions, going down to drink at the river, or just passing through. We've put up our wildlife camera overnight, and caught one picture where the deer certainly saw or heard something from the camera as it took his picture. He stared right at it, and then vanished into the darkness. The camera caught a few other pictures, sometimes a stag, sometimes a doe. We saw a doe while we were eating breakfast on the bolly one morning, and yesterday around sixish, still daylight, I looked up just at the right moment to see a doe and faun sprinting for the cover of the trees.

Normality strikes

Home again, and it is so good to be back.

We had almost five weeks away, and enjoyed all of it, even though the journey back was tedious in the extreme, mostly because I'd forgotten the ferry left St Malo at the very civisilised time of 10.30am on Tuesday morning. Now I wish we'd opted to travel overnight.
We drove up through France with no hassle, dropped in on the Campanile in St Malo and secured a room, dinner and breakfast. I like Campaniles because you know what you'll get - nothing frilly and pretentious, but good food, crisp, clean sheets and thick towels. The showers are good, too, in spite of the fact that the two males in our party had been moaning about the inadequacies of the Bricolage as regards the tools of le plombier - you see, I have picked up some French while I've been away! Evidently French plumbers and electricians are totally illogical about how bits and pieces match up, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if our two handymen truly knew the trades inside out, as the French tradesmen do, then things would seem easier.

Anyway, back to our civilised start. It meant that we spent a long time at sea; from 10.30 until 6.30pm to be precise. The day was murky, to say the least, and there were no views to be seen as the coastlines of both France and England were shrouded in mist and cloud. So no views of white cliffs heralding England this time around. The Bretagne plodded across the calm sea and lots of people slept, but I'm not one of those who can sleep all night and sleep all day as well.

We drove off the ferry at seven o' clock, sped north up the motorway and arrived home at 1am on Wednesday morning. We had one stop for petrol and a loo break, ten minutes at the most. And we think the UK is such a little country.

Now I am surrounded by dirty clothes that need washing, and clothes that have been washed and need ironing. We also needed food....so I am only slowly getting back to my interests
But it was fun. My tan is fading already. In fact it faded while we were there, because we had a ten or twelve grey days with no sunshine. The temperature stayed around a steady 24-26, but the sun disappeared. So did my sun tan.

Once the kitchen was torn apart we saw no mice, though I did see some little giveaway pellets that indicated they were around. And we heard them. Pitterpattering away at four in the morning among the pipes and wiring we think, judging by the noise they made, and the mice scat the men found when they opened up the trunking. Sounds dreadful, doesn't it? But then the house is three hundred years old, and its in the middle of farm land, with forests all around. What can you expect? The owner of the house is threatening to kill off the little buggers, but I think another mouse famiy would move in pretty soon. I think they're an inescapable part of living in the country. We simply bought another toaster and put the old one outside. Or rather, we put the old one outside when we saw what had happened and then bought a new one several days later when we realised how much we missed our breakfast toast and we'd forgotten what might have happen ed inside it... Would you believe that toaster was the first thing Sam the labrador sniffed at when he jumped out of the car? The little tail that hung out of it was pretty pathetic, I can tell you.

I've included a couple of pics of modern Bergerac. It's an elegant town, though some parts have been tarted up with posters and road signs, and the pavements off the main roads are somewhat wavy-davey and resemble a miniature roller-coaster.The flames remind me of one of my favourite times of day; dusk - when we're about to eat and the sun is sliding down the sky, the wind is whispering through the treetops and a glass of red wine stands ready to hand while we wait for the barbie to get to the right heat for the steaks and sausages. This pic was taken after we'd eaten, when I piled fallen wood on what was left of the barbie because I love to watch the flames and smell the woodsmoke and it has the other distinct advantage of keeping the biting insects away....

The old town

For two days there has been a nasty smell in the kitchen. I disinfected the sink, scrubbed the tiles of the surround, emptied all the rubbish into the outside bin, left doors and windows open and still the smell persisted. If anything, it grew stronger. This morning, we found out why. A small mouse had gnawed its way into the toaster and couldn’t get out. Its tail gave the game away. Since the outer casing is made of moulded plastic we have no way of opening it, so the whole toaster is, well – toast. We’ll buy a new one to replace it, but the dilemma is where shall we put it so the same thing doesn’t happen again?
That’s three things that have died on us, so I hope we’ll have no more .
I spent a couple of hours clearing out dead wood (sorry!) and brambles from the drive, and another hour or two sunbathing after four o’clock. Did a bit of editing but fell asleep over it. I keep telling myself that's not a bad sign; it simply means I was tired.

Picture of the old town in Bergerac.

A death at the mill

The day began with a death. A mouse, a very small, baby mouse, lay down in the middle of the hallway and went to meet his maker. His little eyes were closed, and I could see his eyelashes. I took him out and laid him among the nettles and brambles.
It rained again. That’s the third day in a row. The grasshopper is still stuck to the window, and I suspect he may be dead as well. This afternoon I went out and hacked ivy off trees, and collected dead wood, nearly braining myself in the process as the twigs I was after brought down a twelve foot branch. The local farmer was tending his asparagus, and the first I knew of him was his four-month-old puppy Fifi racing over to meet me. She’ll probably be a big Alsation when she’s grown, but right now she’s a wriggling bundle of delight.
Conversation was difficult as he has Spanish but no English. We have un peu French but no Spanish.

The pic is the vieux ville of Bergerac.

Oddities

This picture of Bergerac missed the cut last night because my electricity supply was playing tricks. It shows one of the things I love about France - the odd mixture of old and new side by side. And how the old buildings are maintained and renovated. These people have chosen to put modern windows in, but lots choose to get the old style made new; then it becomes hard to tell sometimes, how old a building really is. Fontevraud is a bit like that; so much renovation work has been done it difficult to see what's old and what's "new." Some critics say that renovation means renewal in France. I can't make up my mind , and sway one way one day and the other the next.

I didn't get to describe the meal we had, but rather than bore you, I'll just describe dessert. Imagine a ball of stewed rgubarb inside a blob of fresh cream surrounded by halved strawberries and topped with a ginger "lid" about three inches across, wafer thin and studded with chopped nuts. Yum. The house is typical of the region and sits near the river in St Marcel.

Our wildlife continues to impinge on our lives here at the mill. This morning over breakfast coffee at the table I looked up and saw a mouse, bold as brass, scouting for crumbs around the sink unit twenty feet away. We watched it for two or three minutes. Dh was all for rushing over and doing goodness knows what, but I restrained him. 'Let's see where it goes.' Another half minute and it vanished over the end of the worktop and into the bowels of the dishwasher. We don't use the dishwasher, and anyway the owners of the mill are coming down soon and the entire old kitchen is to be ripped out and replaced. They know the mice are there. When they told us of this plan we jovially said mice would run in all directions, but Sam the labrador would sort them out. 'Oh no he won't,' said his owner, with a rueful laugh. 'He'll go behind you when he sees them.'

Then later, doing what you do in bathrooms, I wondered if my eyes were deceiving me. Coming in from the 31 degree glare outside, the little brown lump in the corner behind the door looked rather like a frog. I waited; my vision sharpened, and it was a frog. Crouched in the corner between the wall and the door, its a wonder it hasn't been squashed when the door opened. So dh put on his gardening gloves, retrieved said frog and we took it down to the stream and set it away. We don't know how long it has been trapped in the bathroom, as we haven't used the downstairs loo for about three days.

Bergerac and Lou Peyrol

The English have long associations with Bergerac and Aquitaine in general. In 1370 the town was given to John of Gaunt by the Black Prince and proved an exceptional source of revenue for him.

While it is perhaps tactful not to speak to the French of such things these days, it is interesting to think of those ancient battles fought beside La Dordogne so long ago. (I love the way the French give their rivers a feminine persona!). The river was open to sea-going vessels right through medieval times, and there was much trade in Wine. There still is! But it doesn’t leave by river these days.

We drove in around five-thirty as we’ve learned by experience that most shops in France close around midday and re-open mid-afternoon and stay open until about seven o’clock. You know the old saying about mad dogs and Englishmen going out in the midday sun? Well, it makes sense when you’re here. Walking around towns with the midday sun bouncing off the pale stone of the buildings is utter madness. The French certainly don’t do it, and so we don’t do it either. In the middle of a wet, rainy day in Newcastle, it seems peculiar, but here, when the temperature is 31 degrees, it all begins to make sense.

It was hot enough to make an hour and a half wandering around old haunts and sicovering new ones more than enough, and we headed back along the D32 towards St Marcel du Perigord with food in mind.

We were not disappointed. Imaginative, delicious food in a tranquil setting – who could ask for more? An amuse bouche, a pre-starter and then a salmon starter for me, followed by canard with green peas, beans and the tiniest mushrooms in a delicious sauce...m'mmm.

I drank the local wine sparingly because I had drawn the “drive back home” straw and I knew the roads home were one car width, twisty and hilly.

I saw one deer, which raced for cover before dh could get the camera out; he saw four more, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off the road to look. For us, seeing deer is rare. On our last trip to Scotland in February, we saw them

everywhere, and we know they exist around our home in the UK, but a sighting is rare, especially here, where there is so much land for them to hide in - and delightful.

Click for pictures and a link to Lou Peyrol


and here for pics provided by Bergerac Office de Tourisme.

Without power...

I love many things about France, but one thing I am learning to hate is the electricity supply. To be more precise, the supply in this house. Now, I know I should be tolerant and think about how old the mill is, and I do, I do! But … we bring adapters with us because the French use a totally different set of plugs etc etc to the UK, and some of said adapters work better than others.

Tonight I was merrily downloading today’s pics from my camera to my laptop when a message flashes up telling me the Power is Running Low. I look to my left where the laptop is plugged in to the mains supply, and the little green light that tells me the current is coming through is not there! I leap across the two yards to wiggle the adapter-plus-socket, and the green light reappears. I sigh with relief and sit down again just as the screen goes blank and the PC closes down.

Now I am wondering if I have a) lost all the pics on the camera b) lost anything on the pc c) and I’m cursing as I switch on again. It would be a pity if I lost the pics, because we’ve had a lovely day. Vergt market by nine o’clock and I’m sad to say it wasn’t as large as it used to be, and that is probably because the local Intermarche has upped its game. The vegetable and fruit prices in the market were higher than the supermarket, and there were more people buying in the latter than the former. Including me. I’m only a visitor; what I do is not going to change the habits of the French, but it seems as if they are voting with their purses.

Later in the day we drove in the opposite direction to Bergerac and walked around the town. It is old, and has un centre ville and un ville vieux down by the river. Naturally, I gravitate to the old town in whatever town or village I’m in. I love the mix of old and new. More detail on Bergerac tomorrow. We drove back to St Marcel and had dinner at Lou Peyrol and I’m sleepy now. Enjoy the pics of Vergt. (Remember, click to make them bigger) It is a small rural town with a population of 1, 614 people. That's small, and France is a big country. Well, it is if you are used to England.