Well it wouldn’t be an adventure if all went according to plan (is the way to look at it I suppose!). We left the relative calm and security of Sarrancolin to our next destination near St. Etienne d’Albagnan all full of excitement and wonder at the beautiful scenery that we kept meeting along the way. Added to this was 29 degrees of hot sunshine, what could go wrong?
Well, if you believe in fate, karma or any of those signs that something is not quite right then I suppose getting lost around Toulouse was a bit of a giveaway. I blame this entirely on the French inability to name any of their roads in any sort of coherent fashion, or be in any way consistent with their road signs. That and the fact - that I fell asleep whilst Andy was driving (note – must only do this on motorways due to afore said navigational impediments) meant that we got off the motorway and ended up going back the way we had come on a main road. The result was that we got to our WWOOFING host after dark (about 6pm) feeling pretty tired, but still positive.
The road up to the “house” was incredibly bad – about half an hour of winding unsurfaced roads that ended up literally in the middle of a forest. We arrived to a whole host of people doing various things in the dark, and after standing around kissing some of these people in the dark (in the French greeting sort of way!) and exchanging names went into the house for food. The house was actually a kitchen with a room above it and about 10 people or so people were sat around a long table about to eat. It took us a while to work out that these were mostly other WWOOFERS. Andy thinks the first sign that we were not going to fit in entirely was surely the fact that he was the only one not sprouting a beard (although he had a pretty good unshaven stubble to be proud of). The food though was lovely (if a bit chestnut centric) and once we’d eaten there were murmerings about getting our caravan sorted. We knew that we were staying in a caravan, but didn’t know that everyone else was in caravans too (with the exception of an Israeli couple and their baby) and that the caravans were dotted around in the forest. Still, we thought that all would look better in the daylight – ha, how wrong can you be?
Lets just say that the caravan was one of the most revolting places I have ever had to sleep (and that includes at least one cow shed in Nepal, and a trekking lodge with a nasty pair of old underpants on the bed). I can only put the photos here for all to see (they may not do the horror justice though) and say that even I (yes, even me) was speechless when I got through the door to see our accommodation. We finally got Tegan to sleep and basically got in our sleeping bags, slept a night on a very ropey mattress and left the next morning unsure what to do next but very sure we didn’t want to be there. Comfort zone well and truely exceeded!
The mattress and dining table. Note also bits of tree holding up the ceiling, and the designer curtains.
The other end.
This caravan definitely hadn’t been anywhere for a while (various bricks holding it up).
We trundled down the hill to Olargues a beautiful small town nearby and found a lovely bar to have coffee and croissants. It was here that we spent the next night in a B&B and most of the day trying to find somewhere to go next, or at least rearrange our timetable a bit. It was also here that we met Theresa a fascinating “local” English woman who had been there 30 years and was just fun to chat to, and entertained Tegan. And here that the wife of a local restaurant owner managed to hit the side of our parked car by somehow mounting the pavement and denting the side of the car that was next to the pavement. It seemed impossible that someone could get a car into the space if they’d tried, never mind by accident, but there we go! Happily, Mr restaurant left his business card and we went to see him in his little (and rather posh looking) restaurant in a nearby village to sort out the details. Should’ve asked for a free meal while we were at it…………..
Yes – she got her car between the metal railing and our car (dent just in front of the right wheel).
We happily pottered around Olargues in the hot sunshine that day, not feeling too worried that no one seemed to want to take us on for the next few weeks. We managed to bring forward our December WWOOF to 15th Nov, it was just a question of what to do in between then and now. The B & B was lovely but not really economical for more than one night, however the idea of a holiday seemed quite appealing at this point mind you……….
So the next day we found ourselves sat in the car in front of the B&B with the map in our hands wondering where to go next! We decided to point the car in the direction of the Ardeche, based on the fact that I had never been to that bit of France (nor did I really know what was there) and that I had a friend there that we may be able to call if we maybe needed a bed for the night. We had called all the WWOOFING hosts in the neighbouring districts and had had no luck at such short notice, although spoke to some very friendly people, including one or two who had heard some bad things about the place from which we had just escaped.
We drove along in a sort of Pooh Bear way, not really knowing where we were heading and not overly concerned. We stopped at a town called Bedarieux for lunch, described quite rightly by the Rough Guide as “unremarkable” and Andy suddenly had the idea that we should go to Millau. This is a town famous for its giant feat of engineering – the Millau Viaduct, and it was sort of in the general direction we thought we may want to go. So off we went, quite pleased I think to actually have a destination.
Millau turned out to be a nice, large town with all the facilities we needed and we stayed three nights in a “Fast Hotel” – cheap and cheerful on the outskirts of town. It was actually pretty lucky that we ended up taking a pit stop here as it was when we got into the town that we noticed a small drip, drip, drip of petrol coming out of the car. I feared that I had done something terrible to the car whilst driving along the last “not quite road” as I had in fact grounded the car a couple of times! We found a Peugeot garage just down the road from the hotel, although by the time we got there it was shut. Fortuitously as it would turn out, we went round the corner to Laselle Pneus (a branch of First Stop- like KwikFit at home) and a really nice mechanic sorted everything out. The problem turned out to be wear and tear to a pipe going from the petrol cap to the tank and was not my fault (phew) but just corroded with age.
Over the next couple of days we recharged our batteries, and looked into more options for places to go phoned more WWOOFING hosts in some other regions. Again, no luck – a combination of the time of year, short notice and the fact that not everyone is keen on having children along for the ride. We almost forgot to revisit HelpX – another website that we had looked at, similar to WWOOFING but with less emphasis on the organic farm element. Ah ha – success! We are now off to a place in the Cevannes for 2 weeks, to not learn French as the hosts are English, but it will provide us something to keep us occupied for a couple of weeks!
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