Under the disguise previously described, we bravely set off once more, because there are so many beautiful, historic, unspoilt places to visit within a reasonable car journey from here.

Gary had meticulously planned a trip to La Petite Camargue.    Our first stop was in La Grande Motte with its extraordinary 60’s architecture.   I loved this town and don’t agree with those who say the buildings have not stood well against  the ravages of time.

And then to the wild and wonderful beaches at Le Grau du Roi.

(No Gazzie I’m not making a sand castle   I’ve fallen over.   Stop taking the damned photos!)

We had lunch on the red and white gingham table cloths of Les Capucins Restaurant in the town square within the Medieval city walls of Aigues-Mortes.   Afterwards we walked along a canal lined with bone white coppiced plane trees, looking like calcified limbs against a pale blue sky.

Gary had planned our day to perfection. He knows the area because when he was hitch hiking as a student he was picked up outside Paris by three students of Romany heritage. They drove him all the way through France, feeding him and  sleeping on beaches.    When they got into the Camargue they invited him to the family wedding they were attending in Ste. Marie de la Mere.

We visited this seaside town, purported to be the capital of the Camargue and certainly the spiritual home of Europe’s gypsies. Of course, out of season, almost everything was closed,  which lent the town a ghostly air. Though a group of elderly gentlemen played a spirited game of Boules, mufflered up against the sea breeze.

We definitely want to return, possibly in May when gypsies from all over Europe return to Ste Marie for annual festivities. The town is dominated by huge statues of bulls and horses. These animals are central to the lives of the people of the Camargue.

We recounted this story at our French conversation class but didn’t know the French word for gypsy. We learned that a female gypsy is a Gitane, hence the iconic emblem on the cigarette packet.  

We Juliette Greco clones remember these:  the Look; the smell;  the cough.

In order to get to Ste Marie we needed to cross the Petit Rhône canal.  We did this on the Bac du Sauvage or ferry boat.   Completely  free,  the ferry plies its trade every half an hour during daylight hours.    On a Wednesday in January, Gaz and I and Mistress R. Soul were the only passengers.

As we drove deeper into the countryside we passed the many manades, where visitors can stay and take part in the lives of the “cowboys” of the Camargue.   The manades have guardianship over semi-feral horses and cattle.

We started to make our way home as a fierce orange sun began its own journey towards the horizon.  The wetlands around us tck tck tickered and slippy-slithered as the wildlife prepared, some to settle down for the night and others for a night out.

Behind the swathes of golden reeds the white  Camarguaise horses snickered and gently hoofed the soft ground.   Huge black bulls looked over their fences to see who had the temerity to disturb their twilight rituals.

And then, impossibly, a starling murmuration, swept over the car and across the marshland.   The air around us stirred to the beat of a thousand wings and for a moment we were in dark shadow as they passed before the dying sun.

We had opened our windows and it seemed to us that we, alone in all the world, at that precious moment, were privileged to be part of the greatest show on earth.

We could not speak.  There was no need.   We had shared a day that had shown us the best that man and nature can offer. The memory will be there for us when man and nature are at their worst.

And then we will say,

“Remember?”

 

We have taken to travelling incognito.  It is a matter of life or death dear bloggees.  We’re wearing striped jerseys, short black satin skirts with side splits (Gaz looks particularly fetching), berets and a string of onions.   Nobody would recognise us as British.   We start lots of conversations with “listen, I shall only say zis once”.  Honestly I do believe we could fool anyone.

We have rubbed mud over  Mistress R Soul’s number plates and she has a big sign on her back saying “don’t blame us we voted “Remain”.  Oh bugger that’s a give away.   We wrote it in English.  Note to self “back to Google translate”.

The reason for the subterfuge is that we face death or serious injury every time we venture out in the car.  We are particular targets on roundabouts.   Gazzie follows French road law of keeping to the inside lane, signalling his intention to  be there, then signalling right to come off when he’s ready.  Suddenly there are three or four puce faced drivers , with not a signalling finger amongst them, inches, nay centimetres from our car, blowing their horns, gesticulating (I think that gesture is universal) while we just stop in confusion.   Causing more chaos, more anger, more fear.

There also must be a code language, known only to born and bred French people, which tells them the  direction to take, when the signs you’ve been following for ten miles (times 8, divided by 5 for kilometres) suddenly disappear and you’ve driven so many times round the roundabout looking for an exit you run out of petrol.   Even more very angry people.

Then we have the fully automatic petrol stations.  “Oh my goodness, what shall we do?   It’s all in French.  (Natch).  Don’t understand”.  You calm down.  It’s all quite simple.  You achieve your aim of inserting diesel into your car.   “ Diesel?   What’s the French for diesel?   What’s the French for petrol?   What’s the French for “I wanna go home.  I want my mummy”

Calm down, dear friends.  All is well.

Until, on checking our credit card we found 30 euros of petrol had cost 150 euros.   We had a sleepless night and rang the credit card company first thing next day.  Ok.  So here is the system.  The multi zillion pounds/euros profit earning petrol company are so afraid that the little guy is going to think of a way to take more petrol than he has paid for,  that it charges a 120 Euro pre authorisation on the credit card.  This amount can take up to 20 days to be repaid. How can this be legal?

Today we are ordering our Senior Citizen plus Rail Card.

 

 

 

I find him standing there, dagger in hand, a trickle of blood dripping from his thumb to the floor.   His head is bowed, not in submission, but almost in expectation.   Of what?   The honour that is his due?   For what?   I must say,  it has been an epic battle, of Cap’n Ahab and Moby Dick proportions.   So what is he hoping for?    The Victoria Cross?   The Legion d’Honneur?   The Congressional Medal?

He drops to one knee, as if to be knighted for his bravery in …… opening a damned oyster!    I try to be kind, saying “arise Sir Gaz”, but he cannot for the dagger has fallen and anchored his trousers to the floor.

While he is there I begin to think about the whole subject of oysters   My personal opinion is that they are, along with most shellfish, the biggest marketing con in the world.

All that trouble to open them and you are presented with something which looks like a piece of rubber in mucous.   Officianados are “swallowers” or “biters”. Swallowers throw back their heads, open their throats and there goes the oyster, never touching a taste bud.   Biters have covered the oyster in shallot vinegar, Tabasco sauce, chorizo.    Anything to mask the taste.  Oh and then there’s “mind you don’t spill the ‘precious liquor’ from the shell”.    It’s sea water,  people.   You spill it, there are several large oceans to get spares from.

When a growing number of people began to suspect they were being fooled, new claims were made for these inedibles.  The strongest, still believed today, is that they are an aphrodisiac   No proof of this has been found.   And lord knows Gazzie keeps trying them out. And the chances of finding a pearl?   1 in 12,000.

Thinking of eating that many oysters reminds me of that other strange phenomenon, that other rite of passage amongst these shell food seekers.    Picture a seaside hotel breakfast room.  Person arrives tinged in green.    He has that look, the one that  says , ‘I’ve just survived the initiation ceremony to an exclusive club.’

“Up all night.  Sick as a dog.  Rogue oyster,” he says, with ill-concealed pride.  There are looks of even less well concealed jealousy in some other breakfasters.

In this lovely part of France it seems that nearly all restaurants sell “ coquillages” in some form.  The pretty seaside town of Mèze, for instance, has  maybe a dozen restaurants around the harbour which seem only to serve seafood.   It is worth noting that in the UK a dozen oysters costs the best part of £25.   Here they would cost about £10.   It is food (if you can call it such) for all, not for the few.   So no need for pretension.   When we visited Mèze,  on a sunny Sunday lunchtime in January,  most people were eating  oysters and mussels.   I can just about tolerate mussels in a garlic and cream sauce, but I eat with my eyes closed,  because when once I looked at what was in the shell, it appeared to me to be the chopped-off ear of a rather hairy gnome.

Whilst I would still, almost, rather take a 5 minute “W” word than eat an oyster, to please my husband and daughter we shall visit the Tarbouriech restaurant on the Étang du Thau near Marseillan.

It is in a beautiful position overlooking the bay and so successful, humane and environmentally-aware are the Tarbouriech family that their internationally awarded sea food has been named after them.   Tabouriech oysters are prized the world over, particularly the “Pink Diamond”.  Enough.    They are oysters still.

I know that I have, how shall I say, extracted liquid from the urinary tract of France, in previous blogs,  but time has lent me a more balanced view, I think.  Whoever said “comparison  is odious” is right.  To compare France and the U.K is pointless. They are very different and thank goodness for that. For me, what is familiar is safe, what is unfamiliar,  a bit scary.   The more familiar everything becomes, the less scary it is. I am not a great explorer,  seeking new lands and new experiences, I merely want to familiarise myself with the unfamiliar.

In order to decode some of the unfamiliarities we started French conversation classes this week.   “School” is the small dining room at our teacher’s home,  where we are closely observed by her three cats.  In our first week our fellow students were three Brits and an Australian, all of us over 60.    Some of us, well over.

Of course, only French may be spoken.  On that first day, the cats said more than Gaz and I.

The last part of the session is for reading aloud students’ work.  Kevin, the Aussie, read a 15 minute piece, in pretty perfect French, philophosising about his partner’s visit to the A & E department of a Paris hospital, quoting, still in French, Macbeth, King Lear and Dylan Thomas.  This is the Intermediary class!

There is an easy walk, we are told, from our house to the village of Margon.  (Obviously, for me, this is the same as saying “there is an easy way to electrocute yourself”).  As responsible tour guides, however, we thought we should drive the route to make sure it is safe.   We passed the time of day for a while, with this young lady,  making her way along the road beside us.

We planted our carbon footprints over  mile after mile of vineyards (so much wine, so little time) and on, up into the mountains, past chateaux, perfectly preserved, their turrets glinting black against impossibly blue skies.    The  countryside became wilder as we drove  higher, with white water surging out over granite boulders and bursting into a scintillating parabola against the sky.   The ghostly shouts of last summer’s canoeists and white water rafters seem to echo around us as the air became thinner.

We drank coffee outside in the microclimate that is Roquebrun, smelling the emergent mimosa flowers.   I sat quietly smiling and thanking ”whatever gods may be” that I had never, in the whole of my long life,  had the least desire to don a wetsuit.

With the  arrival of daughter on 3rd January we decided to start exploring in earnest (no, we haven’t changed the name of the car or the mode of transport).   We decided on Narbonne and its seaside partner Gruissan as being easily achievable in one day. (We always have to factor in a good 90 minute “refreshment break”.)

Obviously,  the lack of Christmas decs is a local thing   In Narbonne we were blinded by them, all in the best possible taste. Narbonne is a pretty town of ancient honey coloured buildings and a must to return to.

 

But perhaps, even more so, because,  overlooking the town square and all its Christmas gaudiness is a most beautiful building, possibly 1800 or earlier, dedicated to “the women of France”

We chose Gruissan as our refreshment break because it was on the coast   It is obviously a big water sports area in the summer but at the beginning of January the wild birds reclaim the land and swoop around annoyingly, at us, the interlopers. I saw my first flamingoes, standing around miserably on one leg (presumably to try to keep at least one leg out of the freezing water) –  they looked less pink than blue with the cold. In fact we saw one fall over into the water –  obviously trying to warm both feet at once.

Gruissan is famous for two things   One is the fact that there are 1300 wooden houses standing on stilts.   On our visit it looked like some ghostly Atlantis:  grey wooden shacks, risen from the depths of the ocean,  seaweed fanning out from the stilts like shredded stockings,  wooden shutters banging and the wind howling through the empty streets.

However, the other claim to fame is, and I quote Wikipedia here: “Also the home of Gary W. Harvey the reputed inventor of time travel using the ‘magnetic pulse resonance theory’ to excite atoms into a single vibration direction at previously thought unachievable speeds. His sudden disappearance is thought by many to be the result of a ‘journey that went wrong’!!

On Friday last we ate breakfast in the garden.    22 degs and sunny.   We went for lunch with our friends from Gabian – ‘La Maison’ in Tourbes, a local village.   Best food we’ve had since we arrived and not an oyster in sight!   Yippee!

Darling daughter was flying home from Montpellier so we decided to spend the day there.    Another beautiful, buzzy city with great Christmas decs! (last mention, I promise).

Gazzie had done his homework this time.   We got lost going to collect Sara and she was waiting an hour for us to find our way into the airport.  This time we parked on the outskirts of town and caught a tram into the centre   The trams are amazingly beautiful, painted in bright colours and designs by Christian Lacroix.  Cost for three, return tram fare and five hours parking?   Just under 5 euros   What!

Lordy, Lordy I’m not liking the “W” word any better and we walked so much yesterday that my legs are two inches shorter.   Or so it feels this morning. Did I moan?   Did I say, “Gazzie can we please get a taxi?”   Yes I damn well did.    Did he listen?   No he damn well didn’t.

He did allow us our refreshment break though and we chose  our restaurant by the name.    It was called ““Comme un dimanche sous le figuier”. Or “Like a Sunday under the fig tree”.

It was quirky and wonderful inside.  Food was pants!

 

The tough part, dear bloggees, is the saying goodbye.  Tears were shed at Sara’s departure.   Despite resolutions regarding drinking and eating, I have to admit, we screamed with delight when we saw an open supermarket and like the true French we have become, we rushed in for pain. fromages et vins.  And sought comfort in those in front of the fire,

The ubiquitous Santas  hanging from balcony railings, by the thousand, begin to look a little weary from struggling to get into houses with their sacks on their backs. Rather than a jolly Christmas symbol most look as if they’ve been hanged for crimes against good taste.

The Christmas trees remain unvandalised as if even the most eager vandals see little excitement in stealing red and silver bows.   In any case the mischievous wind has taken many of decorations and they cling to our legs as we wander the streets

Despite the number of cookery programmes we watch , we remain at the best,  rather amateur chefs.  Fortunately for us we have found the most amazing local shop.   A sort of Harrods  of the frozen food world.   We have lived out of Picards, for so it is called, through our various illnesses and are finding the habit hard to break.,

We shared a salmon en croute from there with our friends Amanda and Hal on New Year’s Eve.   We played a hand or two of Nomination Whist and were all, save one, in bed by 10.

Gazzie raised a weary glass to Jools Holland on the T.v and waited the one hour time difference for Jools to raise one back,

No matter.   2018 has, without our help, arrived.    To our family, friends and bloggees we send our sincerest wishes for your good health and happiness over the next year.