(Edinburgh – Bute – London to Toulouse – Durfort – Castlenaudry – Carcassonne – Perpignan)
The story so far: greying backpacker flies from Morocco to Chez Mz Lizzie in Edinburgh to meet up with Western Sydney Principals (Young Ross and the Angry Parent) on a study junket to the UK.
Charles De Gaulle Airport was its usual lovely self, and a 10 minute storm created a 5 hour wait. I thought I´d seen grumpy passengers until our planeload of people witnessed a French family in full arrogant flight, attacking the crew after the 30 minute bus trip round and around CDG until a spare plane was found. The Full-On French Father cracked his head on a bulkhead while abusing the hapless flight crew. The whole cabin laughed out loud, causing that family to sulk silently for rest of trip. We enjoyed it.
Spent the weekend grazing Edinburgh (Harvey Nicks, Trad Scot food restaurant ##, and great pub in Queensferry) until the souvenir-laden WSR Principals took off to Ulster and Mz Lizzie took me on a tour of childhood haunts in Bute in the hot MG.
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## The traditional Scottish food did NOT include the following, which are all on offer in Scottish Take Aways: deep fried and battered haggis and chips, deep fried Scottish Pie (mutton) with chips, deep fried battered black pudding with chips, deep fried white pudding with chips, deep fried cheeseburger - with the cheese IN the burger -with chips, haggis pizza, and for dessert: deep fried battered Mars Bar without chips. All this is washed down with Barrs IRN BRU ("Made from real girrrderrrs") - ~it tastes like a diabetic with cherry flavoured gin and tonic overload has suppied a specimen and had it aerated: the label warns: "includes caffeine and quinine, if spilt this product may stain"... Quite.
At the end of May the BBC reported that a Scottish butcher had developed an IRN BRU flavoured sausage as the ultimate hangover cure. Only in Scotland!
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Bute is off the coast south of Glasgow, and the trip started with drizzle and rain setting in for most of the next week and a half. It´s very green, scattered with ruins of various vintages, and has a reasonable pub at Kilchatten Bay (Haggis stuffed chicken is rather good). Did lots of sleeping, touring and a bit of beach walking as well as a visit to Mount Stuart. This is a marble gothic pile built by the local worthy, not quite finished, with the scariest tour guide I have ever seen: straight out of the Addams Family (as was much of the house). We behaved impeccably and did not take up the offer to hire the place for a wedding or reception. Apparently this was the first step in Paul McCartney´s recent misfortunes...
By this stage I´d succumbed to the "group cold" from Morocco, and was vewy, vewy sleepy and snotty for some days, so the trip south from Edinburgh and into France is a bit of a blur...
We tumbled off the train at Kings Cross. Ms Lizzie doesn't "do the tube" so we took the best 20 pound taxi ride across London, glimpses of Big Ben, Soho, the Mall ("They've put out the flags for ya" says the wag of a taxi driver while skillfully overtaking on the inside lanes through the theatre district). A quick sprint got us onto the Rochester train, and Ms Cathy met us to take us on the train to France.
I'm not sure what I expected of "putting the car on the train", I didn't really imagine a drive through passport check, a dusting down of the car for explosives, then a drive onto a train which is a large two storeyed and air conditioned elongated car park with very small windows. The creaking of the car suspension and occasional flash past of a fluorescent light tell you the train is moving, before emerging 25 minutes later into the driving rain of France.
By this stage I was in VERY SLEEPY WITH A MALE COLD mode, gaining deep sympathy (NOT) from my female hosts ("Is the nose a bit sniffly Petal?", "He hasn't smiled much today has he?") It was time for the ANTIBIOTICS if I was to enjoy much of France in the rain. About 5 hours got us to Chartres by midnight to an identikit Ibis pub. An amazing morning at Chartres cathedral - second time visit and it still overwhelms - was followed by a rest of the day of freeway driving (I'm told: I slept through most of it...). Drives off the freeway for coffee stops gave glimpses of quiet village France, and election posters for the Presidency (just gone) and the Assembly (happening about now). They're far more colourful and personalised than ours with lots of "big picture" leftist and rightist slogans, with scarily fatherly and warm smiling portraits of Jean-Marie Le Pen and his grey haired extremists...
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We looked for dinner in a large commuter town for Toulouse: Montauban. It was deeply depressing to see that even in France, the "big box" tract retail developments along freeways are killing off the old main streets. After a fruitless drive around semi derelict streets, we headed for an "Air": a freeway cafe. The meal was a shocker of overcooked ham, collapsable watery spinach, and a fry up of alleged vegetables of pink-grey hues. The French care for quality cuisine has not had any impact on freeway food it seems, especially when the severe dark-bunned woman ordered us to "Bon Appetit!" We did no such thing.
Did I mention that the weather in France had settled in to a variety of symptoms from drab drizzle to occasional showers? Did I mention that Ms Lizzie, who EXPECTS French sun as an antidote to Edinburgh greyness was expressing, well let's call it mild surprise, and the mildness was wearing thin....
Cathy did us proud for the next 5 days, leading us through 11th to 14th Century France in areas I would never have travelled; Revel, Castelnaudry, Pont Crouset, Carcassonne, Durfort, Les Salvages, and even to Perpignan which is allegedly "basking in almost continuous Mediterranean sun"... we were there on an "almost" day. The quality and immensity of the regional food and wine (although the tripe sausage and veal head soup were not enthused about) was just wonderful, and the local ex-pat society in the Revel/Durfort area was quite unique.
I know that Sydneysiders have a bit of a well-worn reputation for dinner party chat focusing on real estate, tradespeople, building and renovations, but the Durfort crowd takes this to another level. Numbers of semi-abandoned 600 to 800 year old houses are being gradually bought up by Brits, Americans (and increasingly the French) and renovated for retirement or holiday houses. Cathy has one house comfortably (nearly) renovated in Pont Crouset, and has bought a greatly more dilapidated and challenging affair in Durfort. The kinds of houses are the ones you may remember from movies of the French Revolution are the kinds of 2,3,4,5 storeyed and shuttered places that are being gradually rebuilt within their original walls, and there is NO PLAN! The local builders must be deeply, deeply tolerant, and also extremely grateful for the scale and skill of work required. On the way into France, Cathy was still debating whether to turn her house into one or two dwellings. The immensity of the task starts with the internal braces to stop the front wall from falling off, and the "ifs" and "buts" of where to put walls, plumbing, kitchens...., and how to hold the roof on...
The finished houses we saw are spectacular renovations and very comfortable, and the lifestyle of this growing and tight artistic community is really supportive, but I do not know how Cathy sleeps at night, given the scope of the problematic work ahead.
We didn't get a sunny French day, just glimpses. I'm hoping that Ms Lizzie got at least a bit of a glow before returning to deepest, darkest Edinburgh. My first real sun was at Hendaye/Irun on the Spanish border, during the kinds of bureaucratic hassles that only Spanish Railways can manage. I'm typing this on my last night in Portugal, so the following advice seems apt.
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How to Drink Mateus Rose:
Friends of Cathy shared some meals with us and invited us to an exhibition opening and one of many local markets. They have met the Mateus family and give this sage advice:
When the Salazar regime took over Portugal they were less than kind to the old royal family and their friends. The Mateus family were banished, but in their absence, the locals protected their property and refused to let Salazar's troops strip the place. With the return of the Mateus family, they found their property intact, but had little money. A small local winery asked to use their crest and name on a new local wine in return for a small royalty payment to assist the family.
The small royalty has become a fortune, and allowed members of the family to re-establish themselves. The family's view of the wine is evident from this advice:
buy the wine
admire the label and well designed bottle
open the wine very carefully
pour out the contents of the bottle
place a candle in the neck of the bottle
purchase and drink a better quality wine....
