Finally, it is done: I have killed my Lumix compact camera, the one that’s almost always with me and with which I have taken the majority of the photos on this blog. Here’s the good news – it’s time to go shopping for a new one. In Bordeaux!
Old dog, new tricks – me driving on the wrong side of the road to Pont-des-Sables; mediocre lunch in medieval Marmande; frazzled fuses, fan-belt frustration and the fabulous Fabré Pierre at Fontet
Villeton to Pont-des-Sables
A big day for me! We’d spent a full week in Villeton, and now we were were heading for Pont-des-Sables on Karanja, my plan being to cycle the 16km back along the tow-path to collect the Twingo and drive it back to Roy and the boat.
Why is it such a big deal? Well, I’d never ever driven a car on the right side of the road, and in France they kind of expect you to do that.
Getting the Twingo to Villeton; skinning a cat in Nérac; snail soirée in Damazan; petrol-pump wine in boozy Buzet; three canal-side resto reviews; Bastille Day – let them eat paella; Allez les Bleus!
There’s more than one way to skin a cat. Karanja’s 4.3m width being too wide for the river Baïse locks, we’d have to explore Nérac (see the featured photo above) and area a different way – by car. That entailed getting a train to Moissac to fetch the Twingo from its garage.
First, we’d have to find a place: (a) where we’d be happy to leave the boat while fetching the car, and (b) with good train links to Moissac. That place turned out to be a hamlet called Villeton.
Villeton is just 12km and two locks from Buzet – Berry and La Gaule. Going downstream, just before the bridge at PK146 is La Fallotte, which has pegs and free mooring. (Remember this for the return journey in a few weeks’ time.)
Loving and leaving Moissac; Three Men in a Boat: Poms in Lycra at Pommevic; rainstorms, men at work and Le Carré Gourmand in Boé; time with the Thomsons in stormy Sérignac; fish & chips, football and FOMO in Buzet
Who wouldn’t love an excuse to visit Paris in summertime! This time, for us, it was to have dinner with our Californian friends the Campbells, who were spending a few nights in the city.
As I’ve said before, one of the great things about our 15½ years in Singapore is the friends from all over the world that we made there. Among them are Ellie, Steve and their twins Peyton and Prescott (17), long since returned to live Orange County, southern California. It’s been seven years since we visited them there in 2011.
In just under four hours, the high-speed TGV train whisked us from Montauban station (half an hour from our home port, Moissac, in the south of France) to Gare Montparnasse. From there, we hailed a cab to our three-star hotel Chambellan Morgane at 6 Rue Kepler, close to the Champs Élysées. Ten out of ten to them: they upgraded us to their best room, complete with Nespresso machine, bathtub and separate loo. So civilised!
What makes a village one of Les Plus Beaux Villages en France? Believe it or not, there’s an official list – even an independent association. Our friend Anne, who grew up in in the area, recommended we take a drive with daughter Wendy to Auvillar, about 20km by Twingo from Moissac.
The old Occitan market town with its river port was picture-perfect on this hot and sunny afternoon. So I did my “Japanese tourist” thing (according to Wendy), and here are the results.
Built in the late 1600s (in the time of Louis XIV) to replace the original fortified gate, the clock tower (below) welcomes visitors to Auvillar; it also houses a waterway museum. Its bell strikes the hour.
Daughter Wendy had requested that we “go somewhere on the boat this time” – a clear reference to her last visit during September 2017. That was shortly after Karanja’s epic three-month journey from England to Calais and thence to the south of France – when Roy and I were not keen on going anywhere at all!
Roy had been hankering to visit both Albi and the smaller town of Gaillac since he came across them in a series of novels by Peter May. (See my previous post on Cahors.) So, daughter Wendy being down with us for several days from her home in St Malo, Brittany, we three inserted ourselves into the Twingo and headed first for Albi, 140km away from Moissac.
Though they don’ñt look particularly red here, Albi is known as la ville rouge because of the famously red brick buildings in its historical centre – particularly Albi Cathedral (the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Cecilia). It is said by some to be the the biggest brick building in the world.
Fortress-like, this imposing Gothic giant was built in the 13th century, just after the cruel and violent suppression of the so-called Albigensian Heresy. (The cathedral is on the Unesco List of World Heritage sites.) Its vast interior owes its incredible ornateness to various influences over hundreds of years, including Catalan, Renaissance and Flemish styles.
We admired the lapis lazuli blue tones glowing from high, vaulted arches; they tell the story of the martyr Saint Cecilia, now patron saint of musicians.
Complex frescoes display the torments of hell, complete with devils, fire, pitchforks, and cauldrons boiling the damned. Others show the various layers of eternity: hell, purgatory (I think), and then a disappointingly bland-looking heaven featuring hymn books and haloes.
On the streets
Lunch was beer and salads at Le Solelhou, to the accompanying hammering of artisans restoring the ancient cobblestones just metres away.
I wanted to take the petit train, below – but Wendy wasn’t keen.
Musée Toulouse-Lautrec
On such a blistering day, chilled medieval interiors are a welcome relief.
Housed in La Palais de la Berbie – a 13th-century episcopal residence – Musée Toulouse-Lautrec (€9 entry) has a large and interesting collection of works by the Post-Impressionist painter Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, who was born in Albi.
The long way home, via Gaillac
Roy having instructed the Garmin to avoid motorways at all costs, our Twingo was taking somewhat longer than expected to get us around. So, though we stopped in Gaillac on the way home, we didn’t linger, other than to buy a couple of bottles of local drops* from a cave in the ville centrale, plus a tasty-looking loaf from the neighbouring boulangerie.
*Unfortunately, there was none of the local vin mousseux that Roy was after. According to author Peter May in his Enzo McLeod novel The Critic, the making of this bubbly was “a secret stolen centuries before by a monk called Dom Perignon, and made famous in another place on the far side of France”. Hah!
With so many exquisite places to choose from, what makes you decide to visit one particular town rather than another? In the case of Cahors, it was because Roy had read about it in a book.
I’d expected a restaurant that served subsidised meals for construction workers – les repas ouvriers – to be something like a British transport caff, all greasy linoleum and reeking of lard and bacon. But this is the Dordogne, France. Auberge d’Imbé exudes homey comfort, featuring white napery and charming service, at just €13 a head for a five-course meal that includes wine.
Roy and I had arrived in the Renault Twingo at his sister Lyndsay’s house in Saint-Geniés in time for Friday lunch. It’s a two-hour drive from Moissac, and we would have been earlier had we not been faced with a route barrée and a deviation, complete with signs.
