A man is standing outside a railway station, a warm breeze raises his grey hair as he shrugs out of his rucksac and places it in the cellar of the coach. It is Nick and he is about to set off and visit a princess and her sister and parents in the South of France. The coach does exactly what it says in the adverts and pulls into the car park at Stansted 55 minutes later. After a mooch around the airport (vodka taster in duty free and an avocado and chicken sandwich lunch) I board the plane, fight my way into a window seat and allow the pilot to take off. It's an interesting journey, we fly over Luton Airport, Heathrow Airport and Gatwick Airport, we also fly over several airports in France but I don't know what they are. Eventually we land at one, fortunately it turns out to be Perpignan which is where I wanted to go. I get on the bus which has a handy sign saying Airport Bus, and a handy lady driver whose command of English stems beyond the fare, and encompasses such useful phrases as, "Get on the bus!" "The bus station!" and "The railway station! Get off the bus!". As I was an hour and a half early I summoned my best French and approached a railway official,
"Bonjour, votre pardon, je suis Anglais et je parle Francais comme un Anglais."
"Yes?"
"Oh, umm... can I use this ticket on that train."
"Yes - platform two."
"Merci."
We zoom off along the coastal plain looking back to the Pyrenees looming over the town and the passing one of the many windfarms that dot the hilltops. As they sink behind the skyline they turn into a series of front crawlers, flailing at the scrubline. At d'Agde the train comes to a grinding halt just after a level crossing, a total mystery but at least with no-one dead. This means we're in late to Sete and consequently get caught by the harbour bridges being raised to let in the local regatta.
"That's the road bridge...."
"Hmm." - I've seen Tower Bridge raise it's bascules, and one of the Chicago ones and that one in Dublin.
"... and that's the railway bridge."
"Cor!" I haven't seen that before- the engineering aspect of my holiday is complete, tomorrow a trip to the beach will help me with the biological aspect.
In the car, is lovely Tessa, a princess (Princess Imogen of Cambridge), and the Mooshter (Princess Lucia of the Boob) (who must be kept awake), we arrive back to some bread and cheese, and my brother, who spends a lot of time carping about the fact that I have failed to bring purple sprouting (£1.99 for 200g in Sainsbury - no chance), I merely hurl the Jersey Royals and poppadoms at him.
Soon it is the Princess' bedtime, I am summoned to read a story.
PI "How good is your French pronunciation?"
Lackey "Err?"
I am given "Cendrellen", par Walt Disney.
PI "Now you read it and then I'll read it with the correct pronunciation."
L"!?"
Apart from a slight mix-up with sourire and souris I apparently do quite well (when she's being mean the Stepmother apparently does not sport a little mouse but rather, a little smile).
The evening closes in and we watch the bats fishing the mosquitoes out of the gloaming, and the lights of d'Agde coming on across the bay. The white chocolate tasting goes quite well with Sainsbury's basic being declared adequate, and Montezuma raspberry being pronounced "lush".
I fail to sleep as per normal for a "new" bed, I also have to get up at 3.00 to take the pills that I forgot to take at bedtime, probably reminded by my blood trying to squeeze past the Camembert blockage in my cardiac arteries.
Next day breakfast dawns in a riot of children and eggy bread, followed by some colouring in and general snoozing. Then we have a light lunch of cholesterol with salad, before a snooze, followed by a trip to the beach for a snooze, and for me, a swim, my summation "a bit bracing!". After this there is a bout of castle building, where I realise that it is the lot of a lackey who has achieved a faithful one tenth scale representation of the Great Pyramid of Kufu (or Cheops, as he used to be known in my day), to have it jumped on by a Princess who has only achieved a faithful representation of a small cow pat. We then return for supper, featuring my smuggled Jersey Royals and some fish, and a (hopefully) cholesterol-busting glass of red.
By this time I have realised the error of my ways as far as purple sprouting is concerned, it would be worth 10p a gram to avoid the unrestrained ire that I have been subjected to, even the baby seems to have been bribed to assault me. Injured I go to bed and feed the mosquitoes, they have probably been slipped into the room in a jam jar placed under the bed.
Today is big walk day, Steve and I are off to the Lac de Salagou, a reservoir and watersports utility area about 50K North of Sete. We arrive missing, bread, sunscreen and a jumper, but with a saucisson sec, some fruit and 1.5 litres of water each. The day is sunny with a disarming breeze, by this I mean the sort of breeze that blows across your sunscreenless arms, making you unaware of their UV challengedness until they separate from your elbows. We ascend a track offering unparalelled views of the car at every turn. It is bathed in the scent of broom and wild thyme, we scatter butterflies (fritillaries, tortoiseshells, some blues, some swallowtails and even more nobloodyideas) before us, and, surrounded by birdsong, it is a rustic poesic heaven, even the ubiquitous cuckoo buggers off before it drives us insane.
The rock is red, dark clotted-blood red, with an inch or so of mudstone deposits running through it, in parts we will come across these light mudstones clearly displaying their dried- out muddiness (have a look at the photo's and you'll see) In other parts of the area, dinosaurs have left their footprints trailing through these muds. As we ascend, we move through out of the red, into a zone of basalt that caps it all, an outcrop displays basalt columns, unnatural hexagonal pillars, like some gargantuan Lego. The path continues, skirting the lake, the reds of the rock changing in different light levels, after a couple of hours we reach the far end and descend to the hamlet of les Vailhes, where we stop for our carbless lunch, reasoning that the fat from the saucisson will either do for energy, or do for us.
We have moved out onto a headland, as neither of us want to be seen handling Tessa's penknife, while engaging in such manly pursuits as sausage slicing, and discussing the virtues of Pink Lady over Fuji. Tessa's Victorinox is bright pink, contains a compact mirror, and, where the long blade should be, there is a nail file, a Victor/Victorianox perhaps.
Post-prandially we stagger back along the shore over a series of switchbacks, with the wind at our backs (after saucisson this is only good if you're the one in front), admiring the plants and rocks, until a final climb back to the original path. Halfway up we meet a man coming down carrying a bike! At the crest we stare across the creek that we are going round to the other side where an elderly couple are making a determined attempt to go the wrong way, the cliff, oops, fall into the water way. I wave, moving both hands in an extravagant gesture designed to convey the message that you really should be going THAT way. The elderly gentleman waves back but eventually turns and heads off in a new (wrong) direction. A few minutes after this we are re-overtaken by the man with the bike, this time it is carrying him, he appears to have peaked either early, or insanely, and made a bid to cross the dam at the end of the lake, before actually getting there.
As we cross the dam it starts to rain, so that it is with a lucky smirk that we regain the car two minutes later, we celebrate with the last of the fizzy water before heading off to Moureze.
Moureze; a mediaeval town with fortunately touristic geology. The mountainside above Moureze is composed of Dolomite, a limestone where the calcium has been replaced with magnesium (the Dolomites are made of it), which has been weathered into a series of pillars and blocks which resemble "fantastic animals, towers and phalluses" (bloody French). We spend fifteen minutes going, "Cor!" (that's fantastic animal/tower "Cor" obviously not a phallus "Cor!" got to have some sense of propriety y'know)) and decide that it's gone into the "must come back and give it more time" section of the Guide de Hayes.
We return through the traffic of Sete to Tessa's delicious curry and some beer from the Brewery at Meze (Visite et degustation) which sadly (as far as Tessa may be concerned) has been located on the way back. Whited-out, Tessa settles for Milk with Hazelnuts.
In the morning a bit of a lie in to allow my overused limbs to recover, and then up and at a croissant, before un petit visite a la club tennis, where I met Pierrot, who rumbled at me in true Gallic fashion (a background rolling growl, punctuated by highs and lows of intonation signifying affirmation, query, disagreement and amusement without any pause for breath, or indeed any noticeable vocabulary - plus shoulders) I replied in true Anglo-Saxon fashion by raising an eyebrow at my brother, and submitting a short prayer to Durex, the God of Divine Intervention. We got on famously.
"Bonjour, votre pardon, je suis Anglais et je parle Francais comme un Anglais."
"Yes?"
"Oh, umm... can I use this ticket on that train."
"Yes - platform two."
"Merci."
We zoom off along the coastal plain looking back to the Pyrenees looming over the town and the passing one of the many windfarms that dot the hilltops. As they sink behind the skyline they turn into a series of front crawlers, flailing at the scrubline. At d'Agde the train comes to a grinding halt just after a level crossing, a total mystery but at least with no-one dead. This means we're in late to Sete and consequently get caught by the harbour bridges being raised to let in the local regatta.
"That's the road bridge...."
"Hmm." - I've seen Tower Bridge raise it's bascules, and one of the Chicago ones and that one in Dublin.
"... and that's the railway bridge."
"Cor!" I haven't seen that before- the engineering aspect of my holiday is complete, tomorrow a trip to the beach will help me with the biological aspect.
In the car, is lovely Tessa, a princess (Princess Imogen of Cambridge), and the Mooshter (Princess Lucia of the Boob) (who must be kept awake), we arrive back to some bread and cheese, and my brother, who spends a lot of time carping about the fact that I have failed to bring purple sprouting (£1.99 for 200g in Sainsbury - no chance), I merely hurl the Jersey Royals and poppadoms at him.
Soon it is the Princess' bedtime, I am summoned to read a story.
PI "How good is your French pronunciation?"
Lackey "Err?"
I am given "Cendrellen", par Walt Disney.
PI "Now you read it and then I'll read it with the correct pronunciation."
L"!?"
Apart from a slight mix-up with sourire and souris I apparently do quite well (when she's being mean the Stepmother apparently does not sport a little mouse but rather, a little smile).
The evening closes in and we watch the bats fishing the mosquitoes out of the gloaming, and the lights of d'Agde coming on across the bay. The white chocolate tasting goes quite well with Sainsbury's basic being declared adequate, and Montezuma raspberry being pronounced "lush".
I fail to sleep as per normal for a "new" bed, I also have to get up at 3.00 to take the pills that I forgot to take at bedtime, probably reminded by my blood trying to squeeze past the Camembert blockage in my cardiac arteries.
Next day breakfast dawns in a riot of children and eggy bread, followed by some colouring in and general snoozing. Then we have a light lunch of cholesterol with salad, before a snooze, followed by a trip to the beach for a snooze, and for me, a swim, my summation "a bit bracing!". After this there is a bout of castle building, where I realise that it is the lot of a lackey who has achieved a faithful one tenth scale representation of the Great Pyramid of Kufu (or Cheops, as he used to be known in my day), to have it jumped on by a Princess who has only achieved a faithful representation of a small cow pat. We then return for supper, featuring my smuggled Jersey Royals and some fish, and a (hopefully) cholesterol-busting glass of red.
By this time I have realised the error of my ways as far as purple sprouting is concerned, it would be worth 10p a gram to avoid the unrestrained ire that I have been subjected to, even the baby seems to have been bribed to assault me. Injured I go to bed and feed the mosquitoes, they have probably been slipped into the room in a jam jar placed under the bed.
Today is big walk day, Steve and I are off to the Lac de Salagou, a reservoir and watersports utility area about 50K North of Sete. We arrive missing, bread, sunscreen and a jumper, but with a saucisson sec, some fruit and 1.5 litres of water each. The day is sunny with a disarming breeze, by this I mean the sort of breeze that blows across your sunscreenless arms, making you unaware of their UV challengedness until they separate from your elbows. We ascend a track offering unparalelled views of the car at every turn. It is bathed in the scent of broom and wild thyme, we scatter butterflies (fritillaries, tortoiseshells, some blues, some swallowtails and even more nobloodyideas) before us, and, surrounded by birdsong, it is a rustic poesic heaven, even the ubiquitous cuckoo buggers off before it drives us insane.
The rock is red, dark clotted-blood red, with an inch or so of mudstone deposits running through it, in parts we will come across these light mudstones clearly displaying their dried- out muddiness (have a look at the photo's and you'll see) In other parts of the area, dinosaurs have left their footprints trailing through these muds. As we ascend, we move through out of the red, into a zone of basalt that caps it all, an outcrop displays basalt columns, unnatural hexagonal pillars, like some gargantuan Lego. The path continues, skirting the lake, the reds of the rock changing in different light levels, after a couple of hours we reach the far end and descend to the hamlet of les Vailhes, where we stop for our carbless lunch, reasoning that the fat from the saucisson will either do for energy, or do for us.
We have moved out onto a headland, as neither of us want to be seen handling Tessa's penknife, while engaging in such manly pursuits as sausage slicing, and discussing the virtues of Pink Lady over Fuji. Tessa's Victorinox is bright pink, contains a compact mirror, and, where the long blade should be, there is a nail file, a Victor/Victorianox perhaps.
Post-prandially we stagger back along the shore over a series of switchbacks, with the wind at our backs (after saucisson this is only good if you're the one in front), admiring the plants and rocks, until a final climb back to the original path. Halfway up we meet a man coming down carrying a bike! At the crest we stare across the creek that we are going round to the other side where an elderly couple are making a determined attempt to go the wrong way, the cliff, oops, fall into the water way. I wave, moving both hands in an extravagant gesture designed to convey the message that you really should be going THAT way. The elderly gentleman waves back but eventually turns and heads off in a new (wrong) direction. A few minutes after this we are re-overtaken by the man with the bike, this time it is carrying him, he appears to have peaked either early, or insanely, and made a bid to cross the dam at the end of the lake, before actually getting there.
As we cross the dam it starts to rain, so that it is with a lucky smirk that we regain the car two minutes later, we celebrate with the last of the fizzy water before heading off to Moureze.
Moureze; a mediaeval town with fortunately touristic geology. The mountainside above Moureze is composed of Dolomite, a limestone where the calcium has been replaced with magnesium (the Dolomites are made of it), which has been weathered into a series of pillars and blocks which resemble "fantastic animals, towers and phalluses" (bloody French). We spend fifteen minutes going, "Cor!" (that's fantastic animal/tower "Cor" obviously not a phallus "Cor!" got to have some sense of propriety y'know)) and decide that it's gone into the "must come back and give it more time" section of the Guide de Hayes.
We return through the traffic of Sete to Tessa's delicious curry and some beer from the Brewery at Meze (Visite et degustation) which sadly (as far as Tessa may be concerned) has been located on the way back. Whited-out, Tessa settles for Milk with Hazelnuts.
In the morning a bit of a lie in to allow my overused limbs to recover, and then up and at a croissant, before un petit visite a la club tennis, where I met Pierrot, who rumbled at me in true Gallic fashion (a background rolling growl, punctuated by highs and lows of intonation signifying affirmation, query, disagreement and amusement without any pause for breath, or indeed any noticeable vocabulary - plus shoulders) I replied in true Anglo-Saxon fashion by raising an eyebrow at my brother, and submitting a short prayer to Durex, the God of Divine Intervention. We got on famously.
Later I mounted Tessa's bike and skedaddled off to Auchan (the supermarket). At least that was the plan, the skedaddling part didn't quite come to fruition. A misunderstanding of the working parts of a Presta tyre valve left the front tyre quite squashy, and a reluctance on my part to be of a similar consistency left me over-cautious. However, I got there, bought cheese, sweets and sausages (like you do), forgot to buy Tielles* for the workforce at UCL (who'll have to make do with sweets), briefly dallied at the wine section to look for a particular bottle-shape that I'd seen being scarfed in the bar on Sunday ( I failed to find it, time and sensory overload was taking its toll), and remounted my soggy steed for the journey back. I didn't die, even at the roundabouts.
* Tielles: the local delicacy, a delicious flaky pastry, round pasty filled with a tomato and chilli mixture, featuring as its protein content - squid. No seriously they're fab, really, would I lie to you? No I bloody wouldn't! How dare you? Come outside and say that! Interestingly squid in Setois is apparently "pouffre" I wonder if this is onomatopoeic?
After lunch, I pumped up the front tyre and set off for a whizz along the promenade, hoping to recapture those heady days of my first trip to the South of France in 1980, sadly, young women did not take their tops off directly in front of me, leaving me to wonder why I'd put my sunglasses on in the first place. At the first bump the water bottle flies out of the basket, I catch it, between my legs! Sadly this display of femoral dexterity is not witnessed, I re-wedge the bottle and continue to the end of the prom, contemplated the suicide run alongside the German camper vans arranged along the front, and returned back to entertain the Mooshter for an hour or so.
We then pick up the Princess from l'Ecole, where she has been audiencing minions, before heading off to the beach to throw stones at the sea, pour sand into the lackey's leg hairs and use his Croakies as a sieve. After an hour or so we move off to the new Japanese restaurant "Via Tokyo", they have just opened, they fete us with a free cocktail of sangria, litchi and sake and later a free digestif of sake (or Grappa as some of us know it), the digestif is served in a novelty glass featuring a drawing of a young woman disporting herself wanton- and nakedly, upon drinking she disappears. My brother and I, of course, commence on a discussion about refraction, and are only dissuaded from trying to recover the picture with an increasing concentration of sugar solution by Tessa pointing out that it is past the Princess' bedtime. Just before the first course I pour a glass of water over the Princess' drawing, tears are abated by the suggestion that I should do ten penalties, they are formulated throughout the meal with many chuckles, giggles and laughs of PURE EVIL. Here they are:
1. Stay in a palm tree for 1 week.
2.Cook in a bar for 2 whole weeks.
3.Put your pants in your eyes for 4 weeks.
4.Put a tree in your head hole for 10 weeks.
5.Every day you see me buy me a chocolate ice cream.
6.When the avion (Fr) takes off hold on to the wing.
7.Put a noodle up your nose for 100 weeks.
8.Put coffee on your head for 3 whole weeks.
9.Call Nick (me) a sticky face.
10. Be my French Teacher, please.
We return home to bed, with the realisation that my flight leaves at 10.00 am, and white chocolate with toasted coconut.
I arrive back at work to find a packet has been delivered to me, it contains 50 purple sprouting seeds. Har bloody har.
* Tielles: the local delicacy, a delicious flaky pastry, round pasty filled with a tomato and chilli mixture, featuring as its protein content - squid. No seriously they're fab, really, would I lie to you? No I bloody wouldn't! How dare you? Come outside and say that! Interestingly squid in Setois is apparently "pouffre" I wonder if this is onomatopoeic?
After lunch, I pumped up the front tyre and set off for a whizz along the promenade, hoping to recapture those heady days of my first trip to the South of France in 1980, sadly, young women did not take their tops off directly in front of me, leaving me to wonder why I'd put my sunglasses on in the first place. At the first bump the water bottle flies out of the basket, I catch it, between my legs! Sadly this display of femoral dexterity is not witnessed, I re-wedge the bottle and continue to the end of the prom, contemplated the suicide run alongside the German camper vans arranged along the front, and returned back to entertain the Mooshter for an hour or so.
We then pick up the Princess from l'Ecole, where she has been audiencing minions, before heading off to the beach to throw stones at the sea, pour sand into the lackey's leg hairs and use his Croakies as a sieve. After an hour or so we move off to the new Japanese restaurant "Via Tokyo", they have just opened, they fete us with a free cocktail of sangria, litchi and sake and later a free digestif of sake (or Grappa as some of us know it), the digestif is served in a novelty glass featuring a drawing of a young woman disporting herself wanton- and nakedly, upon drinking she disappears. My brother and I, of course, commence on a discussion about refraction, and are only dissuaded from trying to recover the picture with an increasing concentration of sugar solution by Tessa pointing out that it is past the Princess' bedtime. Just before the first course I pour a glass of water over the Princess' drawing, tears are abated by the suggestion that I should do ten penalties, they are formulated throughout the meal with many chuckles, giggles and laughs of PURE EVIL. Here they are:
1. Stay in a palm tree for 1 week.
2.Cook in a bar for 2 whole weeks.
3.Put your pants in your eyes for 4 weeks.
4.Put a tree in your head hole for 10 weeks.
5.Every day you see me buy me a chocolate ice cream.
6.When the avion (Fr) takes off hold on to the wing.
7.Put a noodle up your nose for 100 weeks.
8.Put coffee on your head for 3 whole weeks.
9.Call Nick (me) a sticky face.
10. Be my French Teacher, please.
We return home to bed, with the realisation that my flight leaves at 10.00 am, and white chocolate with toasted coconut.
I arrive back at work to find a packet has been delivered to me, it contains 50 purple sprouting seeds. Har bloody har.
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