SATURDAY 2^nd JULY Posted 3 weeks later.

London

Hey — we’re still on holiday. But now at home. Time here to give credit to our 10 year old diesel Citroën, which effortlessly covered 2,790 miles (4,490 km) without missing a beat, in comfort, coolness (thanks to the recently recharged digital air conditioning) and reasonable economy — 43 mpg. Its current value according to Parkers Price Guide is £1,000.

Buy one. It’s well worth it.

Waiting to board the ferry at Calais

FRIDAY 1^st JULY Posted 3 weeks later.

Saonnet – Bayeux – Caen – Dozulé – Pont-l’Evêque – Beuzeville – Pont de Tancarville – Bolbec – Yvetot – Tôtes – St Saëns – Neufchâtel-en-Bray – Blangy-sur-Bresle – Abbeville – Autoroute A28 to Calais – Seafrance ferry to Dover – London. 516 km / 320 miles.

A warm, still, cloudless morning, the sort of day that the month of July would pay a fee to market itself. We breakfast in the garden in the sunshine. Nick doesn’t care to drive six miles to pick up four croissants and I hope I manage to conceal my disappointment. We go to say goodbye to the donkeys, who seem very amused by Milo.

Off through country roads more like Dorset than our image of France, until you see the architecture. Of course, like every country in western Europe, the modern domestic architecture stinks. It’s ugly and out of place, and the corners that have been cut are readily apparent. Most of the beautifully restored houses are foreign-owned; the French share with the Americans a distaste for living in the past.

A really hideous and huge concrete building disfigures the skyline on the north périphérique of Caen. I suspect it might be a university or a hospital. Abandon hope all ye who enter there.

As we approached Pont-l’Evêque (Bishopsbridge) there was another sudden architectural change — timber framed houses appeared, with reddened rather than blackened timber as in the U.K. “Look out for cheese promotions,” I warned Von, but there were none. Was this also Flaubert’s Pont-l’Eveque as in Un Coeur Simple, where I was stymied by the French word ‘genuflexion’, so I looked it up to discover it meant ‘genuflection’ — which I then had to look up in an English dictionary? There was no sign of it. I later resort to Wikipedia: it was both places. Yet the local tourist board evidently had no idea there were two reasons this one tourist knew for visiting Pont-l’Evêque.

A 2pm we stop at Neufchâtel-en-Bray for The Last Lunch, traditionally our end-of-holiday blow-out, but this time we are driving and a little pressed for time. So we take the business menu — the Menu Affaires — at a pleasant little restaurant called Les Airelles. As well as using a 1987 Michelin map for getting around France we are using a 2002 Red Guide. Egon Ronay used to warn against using out of date Ronay guides because they might ‘promote indigestion’, but we have a delicious lunch of mousseline d’avocat, foie de veau, gazpacho and rumsteack followed by a plateau de fromages with — you guessed it — Neufchâtel and Pont-l’Evêque.

The old N roads are lovely, with each town boasting its attractions:

Bienvenue à
ROMORANTIN-LE-PARKING
Ville fleurie
Sa circulation bouchée
Ses camions énormes
Ses piètons ivrognes

We have to rush to get to Calais because Von is anxious about the time spent getting the dog through his homecoming check and leaving enough time to fill the car with products from Majestic. We sail at 18:30 and I repeatedly assure her that they are now so efficient at loading that you can turn up 10 or even 5 minutes before departure and drive straight on, as we did at Dover. But she is rightly cautious, and wants to allow for the full half-hour, plus time for the dog. In the event the dog check takes 3 minutes and is done by Gwyn who has to hold the microchip reader over Milo’s chip for the man in the passport cabin, who won’t get out. Fortunately the dog appears to have the same chip he had when he came out. So we get into line 35 minutes before the 18:30 departure time. Then we discover the departure time is actually 18:40. Ah well. 18:40 comes and goes. The boat finally sails nearly an hour later, at 19:35. No reason is given for the delay. I ask at the info desk on board.

“Zaire was a technical problem wiz de 2 o’clock sailing.”
“Was it this boat?”
“Yes, sair.”
“Are we going to sink?”
“No, sair.”

So I go away, mollified but not satisfied. The boat is packed with six busloads of screaming schoolchildren, running around and crashing into each other and us. One is shouting particularly loudly, and even seems to be yelling “Yvonne! Yvonne!” She turns, and it’s Chris Engelmann and his wife Birgit from Hilden near Düsseldorf, on their way to the Goodwood Festival of Speed in their souped-up Porsche 911. We go to the bar, and I tell Chris “I only have a €10 note.”

“Thank you,” he says, “I’ll have a beer and Birgit will have a prosecco.” Luckily I also have some loose change and they don’t have prosecco at the bar. Also they have no draft beer. Two small cans of beer and two small glasses of white wine come to €16. Not great value.

Chris and Birgit were staying in Portsmouth but didn’t want to drive along the coast, so they followed us to the M25 before turning off to find the A3. We got home, flaked out and exhausted, at 9.30, to find the lights on and a Frenchman in the house. Damien had been looking after the cats and Timothy the Tortoise while we were away, and had forgotten to go home. No problem; we were grateful to him for doing it. I was less pleased when we collapsed onto the sofa and I discovered he’d drunk all my beer — AND my whisky! Growl. Not happy. He sat there apologising. I was too tired to get annoyed, and simply asked him to replace it. I had some Spanish hooch instead, which I was too exhausted to finish anyway, so Damien went home and Von cooked a delicious spaghetti vongole — first decent meal I’d had for two weeks — and so to bed.

THURSDAY 30^th JUNE Posted 3 weeks later.

Saonnet

Von spends the night kicking me so I wake feeling even grumpier than usual. Splendid croissants and lots of freshly squeezed OJ make a real difference.

We go shopping for fish at the market in Le Molay Littré, and Milo gets spooked by something. He is very anxious on the lead all through the market. Padi never acted like this. There’s a new Mini parked in the market; we are all surprised by its ugliness, it looks like a small Hummer. It is considerably larger than the old Peugeot 406 family saloon parked behind it.

Nick, Susan, Von & Milo at Le Croix, Saonnet

Back to La Croix to put the fish in the fridge for tonight’s dinner, then off through drowsy summer lanes to Port-en-Bessin where we have lunch en plein air. I have to ask for the awning to be pulled down to protect my fragile little head from the blistering heat of a Normandy summer sun.

We tour the lanes admiring the chateaux from a respectful distance while Nick and Sue regale us with anecdotes about their friend Jean-Luc, who turns out to be a holder of the Legion d’Honneur and the general who led the French attack on Iraq. He wears new socks every day, emblazoned with cartoon characters. Mentioning that we’re looking for an espagnolette for our french window in London, we get to visit a brocante and then an amazing place called a Dépôt Vente, which I had never encountered before. Apparently they exist throughout France. People lug their unwanted goods there and set a price. Then Brits go there and buy them, although one can negotiate. The stock largely consists of giant armoires big enough to hold the clothes of an entire family, but hidden in a corner I discovered an ancient pair of espagnolets, as they are called in France. The only source of espagnolettes (English spelling) in London is the locksmith Franchis, where the one they offer retails at £430 + VAT. These two are for sale for €8. Not many second thoughts, then. We buy them, even though they need a bit of work.

Milo goes to the vet in Bayeux for his pre-ferry check. A pretty little French vet is delighted to be able to practice her English, and murmurs all the right compliments about him. Throughout the trip everyone has remarked on how Clean he is. €55 to get the requisite stamps in his passport. We pass on the Bayeux Tapestry as we saw it in 1976, and don’t need to see it again. Been there, done that.

We tour the Kennedy estate. They have a terrific gîte with four bedrooms which they’re not too bothered about letting, which seems a shame as it’s really peaceful and is bathed in setting sunlight. There is also a wonderful dilapidated dépendance, ripe for restoration but needing €70,000 to carry it out, always a hurdle. All in good time. In a field at the back they have three lovely donkeys, Qiqi, Tisane and Emma, named after opera characters. I have to take this on trust, since I don’t know my Parsifal from my Melba.

Von & Milo meet Qiqi, Tisane & Emma

Susan, Von and Gwyn shell peas in the evening while Nick cooks sea bass. Getting back up to speed (we haven’t seen them for over a decade) Nick tells us of his lecture tours on cruise ships in the Black Sea, the correct pronounciation of Sebastopol (SevvaStopple, a Tertius Paeon not the Anglicised Secundus Paeon) and the wimpishness of British book publishers (Susan is an editor). Susan describes being prescribed morphine by a doctor who could. She said that coming down she itched frantically for two days. Wisely, we pass on the Arquebuse for tonight and Gwyn & Nick doze in front of BBC satellite telly instead.

WEDNESDAY 29^th JUNE Posted 3 weeks and one day later

Celon – Argenton-sur-Creuze – St Gaultier – Migné – Mézières-en-Brenne – Chatillon-sur-Indre – Loches – Cormery – Autoroute A10-A28 round Tours, Le Mans, Alençon – Argentan – Falaise – Thury-Harcourt – Aunay-sur-Audon – Villers-Bocage – Caumont l’Eventé – Balleroy – le Molay-Littry – Saonnet. 416 km / 258 miles.

Derek and Jenny leave before we do, and we peek into their room. It is fabulous, with a great four poster bed, so when you go to Le Canard Au Parapluie Rouge be sure to request the four poster room.

But Milo has disappeared.

Martin thinks he knows where to. We jump in his Renault van and slowly quarter the village, driving away from the main line railway tracks, thankfully, and towards the Route Nationale and the autoroute. We cross the RN20 and turn off the road towards a soccer field. There they are. Ruby and Milo, firmest of pals, over half a mile away, heading off to an adventure in deepest France. They look astonished to have been found out.

There was rain overnight and the temperature has plummeted to 63°F. But by the time we reach Loches an hour after we leave, it’s up to 75°F.

St Gaultier on the Creuze is an extraordinarily pretty town. Wish we had more time to stop and look around.

Between Migné and Mézières-en-Brenne we drive through the Réserve Naturalle du Chérines, which has to be a major bird-watching site. On the map it is all lakes, few of which you can see from the straight fast roads. Mézières is also a lovely little town dotted with châteaux. Every village has a tragic little war memorial, but they all look as if they have been stamped out of the same mould.

The recommended Loches is indeed pretty. We stop for a coffee; it’s market day so we buy a petit rond (goat’s cheese) and a terrine de canard aux abricots for our picnic. We walk up to the citadel and peer into the undecorated but remarkable interior of the church of St. Ours (Saint Bear?), described by Viollet-le-Duc as having “a strange and wild beauty, unique in the world” (I had to google that).

Loches

The whole of Europe has fallen to sleeping policeman frenzy. In France they are called Passages Surélevés, and are slightly less violent than the British and Spanish ones. Pernicious, dangerous, damaging, expensive and unnecessary. Apparently each one in Islington costs £18,000 to create. But potholes have the same effect, and they cost less than nothing — the council simply has to stop repairing the roads. Which, in the UK, most of them have.

What a nice touch: the notice reads “For you to rest awhile or write a postcard”

The last sunflower fields peter out just north of Le Mans, and we have our picnic in a romantic lorry park in an autoroute aire just north of Le Mans. It was good to see signs pointing to the villages of Mulsanne and Arnage, now models of Bentley commemorating the glory days when teams other than Audi won Les 24 Heures Du Mans. We did enjoy another local village called Sillé-le-Guillaume, which translated into English must be Silly Billy.

In Caumont l’Eventé is a sign pointing to ‘La Souterroscope”. Now that’s worth finding out about.

Saonnet is in an area called Le Bessin, or basin, so called because the water table is only about a metre below the surface and the whole district is a sort of huge floating island. We found Nick and Susan’s house immediately, but there was no sign announcing it so we drove on into the village, or lack of one, and phoned to say we were lost. We were right the first time, and returned in a few seconds for a very warm welcome.

They have a lovely house dating from the 1760s; the only downside for me was the terrifyingly steep staircase. I think I need therapy to overcome my irrational fear of heights. We feasted on a traditional coq au vin, and rounded the meal off with a glass or two of the Arquebuse I’d found in Aix-les-Bains. Nick and I discovered Arquebuse on one of our regular visits to Villa Flora at Torno, on Lake Como, on our drives out to the Bologna Book Fair many years ago. After dinner we would sit at the bar and read the bottles from left to right, like a sentence. Of course we had to sample each bottle. Every sentence has to finish, and Arquebuse was the inevitable full stop. 43° proof, it is made from 33 types of grass as far as we can ascertain, and it tastes like a haymaker. Two slugs and you’re down. What a drink.

I think we then went to bed.

TUESDAY 28^th JUNE Posted 3 weeks later.

Rodez – Decazeville – Figeac – Lacapelle-Marival – St Céré – Bretenoux – Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne – Quatre Routes – Ste Fortunade – Tulle – Montargis – Chamboulive – Treignac – Chambret – Domps – Eymoutiers – Peyrac-le-Château – Bourganeuf – St Dizier-Leyrenne – le Grand Bourg – Dun-le-Palestet – Crozant – Eguzon – Baraizer – Celon. 345 km / 215 miles.

We’re driving through the Lot region, marked out by square towers topped by pyramidal roofs with flared bases. We stop in Lacapelle-Marival, another breathtakingly pretty village for a coffee and to find some pain artisanal. Lovely coffee shop facing the castle with its pretty garden. Gwyn goes in to order the coffee and falls head over heels on the uneven steps coming out, twisting back and grazing knee. Boo hoo. And I was sober. But Von has emergency TCP and Elastoplast. All better.

Sympathy for hurty knee in Lacapelle-Marival

There is an abrupt change from red pantile roofs to grey slate in the space of just ten kilometres south of Tulle, between Quatre Routes and Ste Fortunade, a clear divide between north and south. There are isolated exceptions, but the change is sudden and decisive. It’s around the 45^th parallel, and talking of which, some roads in France have signs announcing the parallels. It’s a nice touch, and one that we could cheaply adopt, for who knows — it might stimulate some child to ask “What’s that all about?” and thereby learn something. Impractical, romantic and hopeless, that’s me.

On the 9^th June 1944 the Nazis killed 210 inhabitants of the town of Tulle. There is a street commemorating the murders and the town was decked with posters urging people to remember them. Later we are informed that in Tulle in August 1967 Geoffrey Wheatcroft and our friend Nicholas Kennedy (with whom we’re going to stay in Saonnet) were accused by the hotel management of towel theft, just as they were about to drive off. The subsequent luggage search proved negative and the towels were found under the beds, where it was assumed the maid never dusted. 1967? I couldn’t afford to stay in hotels in 1967. I still can’t now.

We find a field off a quiet road for our picnic, and it really is pretty and peaceful — nothing to remark on, just a green field bordered with oak trees. Very tranquil. Milo loved it.

I forgot to take any photos so I nicked this off Le Canard’s website

We arrive at Le Canard Au Parapluie Rouge (The Duck With The Red Umbrella) at Celon, a B&B run by Martin and Kathy Missen. It is very hot indeed, in the mid 90s. They have a plunge pool and we gratefully cool down. I then go in for a zizz and just as I am dropping off Graham, fotoLibra’s sales guru, calls from Devon, bless him. Too zonked really to take in what’s going on. His children are going into Great Ormond Street. Hope they will be helped.

Martin has movie star good looks and a great Wiltshire brogue, and Kathy is a pretty American from Ohio. They met in St. Thomas in the Caribbean, where they ran a resort for 15 years. Milo meets their dog Ruby, a lovely bitch with a touch of Viszla about her. They’re not too sure about each other at first, but read on. That will change.

Oh, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby!

Delicious dinner (indoors — it has just started to rain) cooked by the Missens is taken with Derek and Jenny, a cheerful retired couple who live in Malaga in the winter and Lancashire in the summer. This is the path of their annual migration. Jenny is not feeling great and retires early. It must be me. I think I must be very boring.

Long-eared owl chicks gently call to each other all night through the rain. Very peaceful.

MONDAY 27^th JUNE Posted 3 weeks later.

Madremanya – Figueras – Le Perthus – Perpignan – Sigean – Béziers – Pezenas – Clermont l’Herault – Lodève – Millau – Séverac le Château – Rodez. 391 km / 243 miles.

Von doesn’t feel at all well. Doesn’t feel like a parting swim. So we pack and set off to drive to Rodez. Many thin, suntanned prostitutes sitting on white plastic chairs by the side of the road on the Spanish side of the border. As finding a place to sit on our picnics is becoming a problem, Gwyn has a wizzo idea. He will drive slowly into the prozzy’s layby and while he is negotiating with the lady Von will nip out and nick her chair. Idea vetoed.

Le Perthus still one long shopping mall despite the disappearance of customs and borders. Prices still vary, I guess. It’s getting hotter as we go north, for some reason. None of the villages we pass through seems to have a boulangerie until we finally find one in a derelict petrol station, of which there are even more in France than there are in the UK. I buy bread and apricots, and the man counts out my change: Sing Frang for Cinq Euros.

We curve past Béziers and stop for a picnic on the popular shore of a reservoir, the Lac du Salagou outside Clermont l’Herault. It’s marked as a green road on the Michelin map (= picturesque) and with panoramic views, but it isn’t — it’s hot, brown, dusty and litter–strewn. A large sign prohibits dogs, and behind it a French family, all with mahogany forearms and faces and pale grey torsoes, sport with their Alsatians in the lake.

Von spots a forest fire on a hillside on the opposite shore. A helicopter arrives, and circles the site of the fire. I think it’s just going to fan the flames, but then two small yellow aircraft arrive and dump powder — it can’t be water — on the fire. Within ten minutes there’s not much more than a small plume of smoke. A yellow biplane arrives and circles excitedly. By the time we leave all is clearly under control. Very efficient.

There are good reasons for sticking with the old Routes Nationales. They’re free, traffic density is surprisingly low, and you get to see la France insolite, and they’re free. They’re also usually straight, so we only go on the autoroutes when we’re pressed for time or we want to see some spectacular engineering feat like the Millau Viaduct.

Which is just what we wanted to see. We drove over the viaduct on the autoroute — approaching from the south it’s well hidden, and only comes into view a kilometre or so before we’re on it. Frankly, driving over is no big deal, it’s when you pull off into the Aire that we can see what an astounding construction it is: the highest bridge in the world. Eiffage is widely credited with its construction, and I suppose it is much more of an engineering than an architectural feat, but there was no mention of the Brit Norman Foster who scribbled the design on the back of an envelope, although we didn’t go into the museum.

Milo at Millau — look at the shadow the bridge makes

Note as we turn off the autoroute: the castle at Séverac le Château is magnificently sited.

The temperature hit 100°F again as we checked into another bland sales reps’ hotel at Rodez. We have to compromise if we want to do a holiday like this. The hotel corridors are nice and cool, but the room is boiling. There is air conditioning, but there are no controls. The Management Will Decide. The same cheerful woman was at the reception in the evening and the breakfast bar in the morning. She happily provided a small amount of ice for us. Von points out these hotels are basically self-running. There is one member of staff, and the cleaners come in and hose down the rooms every day. That’s it.

Long half hour walk uphill in blistering evening heat from the Deltour Hotel Rodez-Bourran in the commercial suburbs to the mediaeval city centre. Collapse into chairs outside the first brasserie we see. Good view of the cathedral tower, though.

The enormous bell tower at Rodez

Again another interminable wait for service in France. When it finally comes, we have a good Aligot aux saucisse, and a poor tuna steak. Aligot is mashed potatoes with butter, crême fraiche, garlic and cheese. It is smooth and intriguingly rubbery. Delicious but possibly not too slimming. A French / American married couple at the next table — he lives in Paris, she in Vermont, and it seems to work for them — recommend we visit Loches. We walk back downhill in the hot darkness. Milo very well behaved.

SUNDAY 26th JUNE Posted 3 weeks later, on my 65th birthday
Madremanya

Finally got out of bed at 09:20 with metaphysical hangover. All is lost. There is no hope. We are doomed. Von is either dead or in the deepest migraine of her life. Cup of horrid tea improves matters very slightly. Faint signs of life from Y. Pretty poor cup of coffee (must be the water; it doesn’t taste great here) improves matters a little more. Toast and apricot jam aid still further. Finally feel brave enough to try and fix Milo’s sun shade in the car and then to venture up to the pool, where we Have To Try Be Nice to Lucy, Philip and sweet little Moya, who have just moved into the next door shack, so we are no longer alone. Throwing up in the pool might be discouraged.

Shaunagh doing her Mamma Mia! number

We slope back to the shack and set off to Shaunagh’s Hangover Brunch. I am not allowed to wear my swimming shorts, so I put on my specially hot cream trousers. We stop at the Super in Bisbal to get hooch, eggs, dog food etc. Temperature in Super car park: 104°F. Arrived after everyone else. All the paella had been eaten. About the same number of people as there were last night, perhaps a few less, a mere 70 or 80 for lunch.

The house from the pool

Meet Hugh and Claire. Claire’s father died yesterday (aged 94), so instead of spending a long weekend as planned they flew out this morning and are flying back tonight. They are renting Torre Ronsat in 2 week’s time, filling it with 17 people. We sit under the shade of the pergola by the pool with Hugh, Claire, Nicola and David from the Palaces. Soon the disco man arrives and sets up a monster groove. I can no longer hear what people are saying, so I relapse into rosada.

Milo is dubious about the delights of the pool

Milo makes friends with everyone, as usual, except Lola, Crispin & Shaunagh’s rescue dog. It is so hot, and the pool is filled with youngsters. The self-important man from last night goes round the pool tickling the toes of the sunbathing beauties. They don’t know him or who he is. That is serious dirty old man territory — even I can see that’s inappropriate behaviour. What a prat.

I need a dip badly, so we make our farewells. S & C are off on Tuesday to spend 10 weeks sailing round the Greek islands. It sounds glorious in theory but about 9 weeks too long for me. I mentioned this and a shadow briefly flitted over Shaunagh’s face. I wonder how she feels about it?

As we leave, Lola changes her mind about Milo (a woman’s prerogative), suddenly decides that he is the only dog she has ever loved and off they set on a joyous, noisy romp for ten minutes through the olive groves. How he can have such energy in this sapping heat amazes me. They run in tighter and tighter circles, Milo barking happily. He has never yet met a dog that can’t run faster than him, but he adores chasing. They finally collapse in the shade together but sadly we have to separate them and Lola watches her beau bumping away across a dusty field in the back of a car.

Get back to the shack in the boiling car, almost jog to the pool and dive straight in. No messing about. Gloriously cool. Then a big zizz in the shade. Peace. Magret again for supper. Who’s complaining?

SATURDAY 25th JUNE Posted 3 weeks later.
Madremanya

Bright sunshine. Lunch with Liz & Chris at Ses Brises, Llafranc. What a lovely house, what a stunning location high on the coast just below the Faro de San Sebastiá overlooking the bay of Llafranc.

Von in the garden at Ses Brises

Almost as good a view as we have in Harlech — but not quite, although there’s a lot more sea action going on. Liz and Chris are leaving on Tuesday to drive Chris’s elderly Porsche 911 from the Costa Brava to … Calcutta, India, via Istanbul, Afghanistan (the safe part, he assures me) and Nepal. The car has been fitted with truck tyres for the journey, which is about 12,000 km / 7,500 miles. Personally I’d rather stay at Ses Brises.

A sleeping policeman carefully hidden in the shade in the village does in one second for Milo’s sunblind, which had taken me three hours to install.

The folly at Torre Ronsat

In the evening Shaunagh’s 50th birthday party at Torre Ronsat. Yes, it’s a folly. I pronounce it definitively. Champagne (none of yer Cava muck) in the olive grove by the folly to start. I meet a self-important man who works in a field I know something about, having written five books about it. He’s working on his first book which may be published by a well-known publisher. Or not. He is apparently far more important than me, and cuts me dead.

Ace of Spades window in the folly. Was it built out of winnings in a card game? Or was Hector Guimard involved?

Dinner for 90 with 10 people to a table, 9 tables.  I sit at Shaunagh’s right hand. There’s flattered I am! Talk to a woman about taking a dog on holiday. She points at Milo, lying next to Von at Crispin’s (Shaunagh’s husband) table. “That dog with that beautiful woman is on holiday too.” Feel absurdly pleased.

Crispin sailed single-handed across the Atlantic for his 50th birthday, and wrote an excellent book about it, Where The Ocean Meets The Sky. Doing his publicity tour, he encountered a pretty little local radio reporter who was getting rather too effusive about his achievements (Crispin is a good-looking, muscular 6’ 5” former Oxford rowing blue). Luckily Shaunagh was there to chaperone him, and the reporter just about managed to include her in her general excitement, bubbling at her “Did you ever in your wildest dreams think that your husband would sail the Atlantic single-handed?” Shaunagh fixed her with that basilisk stare we all know and love and stated “My husband does not feature in my wildest dreams.”

Get to bed at 02:30.

FRIDAY 24^th JUNE Posted 3 weeks later.

Madremanya

The day dawned grey, warm and still cloudy. OK, right. Walks, touristica stuff, get out and about. We went to the prehistoric village ruins at Ullastret, which had been abandoned after a Roman attack in 187 AD. Von nervous every time Milo ran up to a wall, waiting for him to leap blindly over. But he was sensible. Lots of grain silos and impressively large and deep stone-cut cisterns. Massive views all around, a well-chosen site.

What’s that horizontal niche in the Ullastret wall about?

The sun was now out, and it was getting hot. We headed for Toroella de Montgri with the intention of climbing up to Castell del Montgri — not from the town at the foot of the hill, that would have been insanely reckless, but from the Santa Caterina hermitage I’d spotted on our new map which was reachable from north of the castle, and about 1,000 feet up, so the distance we had to climb would be halved. We bumped down a rocky dust road towards Santa Caterina but after a couple of miles found the route barred to cars. We’d have to climb much the same distance. By now it was noon, 88°F and the sun was getting stronger. Worse, we’d forgotten to bring water either for ourselves or Milo. We looked at each other, and the air-conditioned car bumped slowly back down the track.

One winter’s day we’ll walk up to the magnificently sited Castell del Montgri, visible across the whole Emporda region and a replica (built eleven years later) of Harlech Castle.

We managed to get lost in Palafrugell looking for the beach, until a closer study of the map revealed the town was a mile or two inland and there was no beach at Palafrugell. So we drove round Llafranc, packed with holidaymakers, not a square inch on the beach, nowhere to park.We finally found a place right at the top of the town and walked down to the sea front. If this was a Friday in June, I shudder to think what a Saturday in August must be like.

A quiet Friday in Llafranc in June

We found a pleasant enough bar on the seafront where we could have a beer. The beer came with a tapas menu, so we thought “Why not? Let’s have a snack.” Von chose some type of whitebait, I had salt cod (bacalhau).

Before the Bellacosta rip-off

We waited so long for it I was forced to have another beer, but when the tapas finally arrived, it was surprisingly delicious, and in reasonable proportions too. The cod was really good, perfectly cooked and melting. The bill came — and it was triple what we were expecting. My Spanish and Catalan is nonexistent, so I went inside to find an English speaker. He pointed out we had been served the full restaurant portion of the dishes, €15 instead of the tapas at €5. I pointed out we had ordered the tapas. Had I been Jack Reacher instead of inadvertent Gwyn, I would simply have pulled his head across the counter and broken his neck with a single twist, but there I was, a fat white elderly tourist with no vocabulary of argument. We ordered from the tapas menu, we were served the whole baloney. No argument about that, it was big and good, but we thought we’d just found a great bar, not a rip-off joint. But we were wrong. Friends, be warned: if you order at the Bellacosta bar in Llafranc, get a contract in writing first. The patron knocked off the cost of one beer. RIP-OFF ALERT!

Back to the shack, swim, more magret for supper. Watch a DVD of The King’s Speech on Enola Gay.

THURSDAY 23^rd JUNE Posted 3 weeks later.

Madremanya, Catalonia

Blob out day!

We’re going to do nothing, just find the pool and sit by it. Sunny in the morning, so Gwyn goes into La Bisbal d’Emporda to buy bread and briox from Sands, and fill up two 2 litre plastic water bottles with Rosado at €1.20 a litre and Tinto Crianza at €1.60 a litre. Why stint ourselves? Go for the posh stuff. Bought a local map in the bookshop. I tried to buy a duck at three separate butchers but all they had was magret. When my turn came I called for ‘Magret’ but a large, square woman stepped in front claiming she had been there first. She had presumably materialised through a closed door. So instead of getting the prepacked magrets and leaving, a 20 second transaction, I waited while she ordered a rabbit to be skinned, butchered and deboned, then wrapped round some unidentifiable filling and tied up in six separate morsels. Then the butcheress disappeared, came back with a sack of mince, cut it open and started hand rolling meat balls for her. Enough. After 15 minutes of waiting I spoke loudly and forcefully. “Dos magrets, por favor!” The butcheress shrugged, tossed me two vacuum packed magrets, took my €15 and carried on making meat balls — with a 20 second interruption. The square woman glared at me. ‘Arrivederci,” I said. Wrong country, I guess.

Outside in the narrow echoing streets was a small boy with the worst present anyone could possibly have thought of giving to a ten year old — a working toy loudhailer.

Back at the shack it was grey and cloudy. Von had discovered the pool, which she said was fabulous. But she was seriously anxious and worried. The pool is at the top of the hill with a steep drop at its southern end down into woods, and the pool at that end is surrounded by a two foot wall. Milo had run exuberantly into the pool area, seen the low wall and sailed blissfully over it, not knowing there was a 20 foot drop on the other side.

All Von heard was a thump and then — nothing. She ran to the low wall and peered over expecting to see a dead or at least seriously injured dog. As Milo limped back into view she called out to him – and astonishingly he sprinted up the shallow curving steps as though nothing had happened. Do dogs have nine lives too?

Milo demonstrates the depth of his fall

As I walked back down the gravel path from the pool I heard a footfall behind me. I turned with a smile, expecting Von, but there was no one. I must have turned the wrong way. But there was no one on my other side, either. Odd. But then the second time I walked the path I heard the footsteps again, and again I turned and saw no one. This was very strange. The third time I heard the unmistakeable sound of bicycle wheels on gravel, so close I jumped sideways to get out of its way. There was nothing there. This was beginning to get disturbing, and I walked …

As one who looks behind, walks on
And no more turns his head
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread

I made sure I walked with Von the next time. She heard nothing, and as she laughed I heard the footsteps again and glanced at her with eyes wide open. She assumed I was faking it. But I wasn’t. I heard someone. Or some thing. It happened every time I walked down that path, and once it was expected, it ceased to be worrying and simply became a curiosity.

Partly cloudy — but all to ourselves

There was intermittent sun in the afternoon, but it was generally a grey, cloudy day. We stayed by the pool till early evening, then retreated to the shack where Von made a lekker dinner of magret, washed down with the second bottle of Chateau de Java.