We are nearing the end of our time in France (and Spain since we are actually leaving via Bilbao) and it feels like we are just about ready to leave. We have enjoyed a great two weeks of holidaying since the end of the WWOOFING, it feels like so long ago already! So to continue where we left off last time, here are some more WWOOFING recollections……………..
Reflections on WWOOFING part 2
I think one of the amazing discoveries for me at least during this adventurette was that France has some amazingly beautiful and stunning places to visit. I had spent a lot of my childhood visiting France and while I have always thought it was quite a cool country, have never thought of it as being spectacular in any way. But we have been to some incredible places. Starting I think with the Pyrenees, where the mountain scenery seemed to elicit a wow round every other hair-pin bend. Some lovely little villages (and not just the ones that have been made pretty for the tourists) and some interesting old towns and cities. Some of our favourites were Albi, Montpellier, Ceret, Carcassonne, Millau and Montauban. The Cathar country in Aude was also somewhere that we saw as much of as we could (the Cathar castles are really worth a visit) but is definitely somewhere to explore further. We also discovered some really interesting bits of Spain and all the cities that we visited; Barcelona, Tarragona, Pamplona and Girona (they all seem to rhyme!) were beautiful and intriguing in their own ways.
Much of what we saw was just part of where we were living for the six months, and a lot we also went to visit during our days off, which were usually just the weekends. We also managed to squeeze in quite a bit, travelling between places (and staying in the very cheapest and most cheerful of hotels as we did so!). It feels like we used our time pretty well to visit all that was around us without killing ourselves – we’ve realised that it’s easy to try to see absolutely everything and end up just feeling worn out. This is where having a toddler comes in handy – while Tegan is robust, it is easier to watch her for signs of being maxed out on the excitement front and quit while we are ahead.
It seems that we have learnt so much is hard to think what we would’ve liked to have done more of. I think for me, I would’ve liked to have learnt more French (although don’t feel either of us have done badly), but we quickly realised once we started that our priorities changed and shifted all the time. A lot of where we went was determined by where we were able to go, rather than where we necessarily wanted to go, which was tempered mainly by the fact that we were a family, and the fact that it was winter. So we often chose to go to stay with an English family in an area we liked doing things we really wanted to do, over a French host in a different area. It’s definitely a “see how it goes” experience as you just never know what you are going to get when you get there. So flexibility is the key for sure, which is not easy with a 2 year old, but we seem to have an amazingly adaptable little girl so I think we are lucky on that front! I think though if we had had more control over the places we chose, it would’ve made things easier if we had been able to spend longer in each place, and move around less. This is the trade off between seeing everything you possibly can, and spending a lot of time packing and repacking the car! This also was probably quite hard for Tegan, learning different sets of names in each place and different rules. Amazingly though, she got stuck into things and seemed pretty unfazed (she was let off car packing duties though!).
As we didn’t really know what we were going to find when we started out we don’t have any regrets about not doing specific things. However we did discover a bit of an interest in eco-building (or maybe just a love of getting muddy!), so I guess that is something that if we had been able to we would’ve spent more time doing. We also found that some places were like living in a community, which is not something that we particularly thought we wanted to do or would enjoy when we started out. The experiences that we did have though were really rewarding and definitely something that we would like to have had more of. It is kind of strange to think that living in some kind of collective space where you cook and eat together, work together and share all the tasks and responsibilities can be so refreshing. We thought it might be claustrophobic, but in fact it was amazing to live with groups of people who have so much to share and when those people are mostly fairly like minded it some how seems to work. It wasn’t all singing round the campfire exactly but somehow not having a TV and all the other distractions that we usually have, and just having the space to get to know new people and share ideas meant that there was a lot of enthusiasm for working together.
I am not really sure if we have had any particularly negative experiences (apart from “the caravan”! and we just laugh about that now). Whatever we have come across has just become part of our adventure and nothing has left a bad taste in our mouths or made us wish we had never left home. In fact it is the going home bit that is probably the hardest……..
Which is why it is a very good idea to have a holiday before you do!
We started our holiday with a few days at my aunt and uncle’s house in the Lot et Garonne. It was a nice pit stop to say goodbye and to stay in a familiar environment. We visited my Grandparents who always provide us with a nice cup of tea and an ear to bend with our crazy stories. We couldn’t help ourselves however when my Uncle mentioned that he had a fence he needed help with, and we flexed our WWOOFING muscles one last time on a garden fence!
Hammering fence posts
Tegan entertaining her great Grandparents
We then moved on to the penultimate stop on our trip – Urrugne in the Basque country. We have rented a gite really close to the sea and have spent most of the time being generally lazy and visiting some of the local sites. Although this is surfing territory we decided that we were not quite ready to brave the waves but managed to catch a surfing competition when we visited in Biarritz. Tegan has now added “surf board” to her vocabulary, along with the unrelated and even more useless “paege” (motorway toll) and decheterie (recycling point).
We nosed around Biarritz, St. Jean de Luz, Hendaye and Espellette (where you can buy some ridiculously expensive items all related to their local chilli production). I haven’t tasted any of it, but surely they can’t be that special – I have never before encountered such expensive chillis! The area in general seems pretty expensive, although it is hard to tell if this is really the case or if it is just because this is the first time on our trip we have spent any length of time being real tourists. It also raised a question when it came to shopping – did we support local businesses, at inflated tourist prices or use the local supermarkets. I have to say that we did the latter, mainly out of necessity.
We also went to San Sebastian in Spain (we are staying 4 km from the border) which turned out to be a beautiful city. The old, the new and the stormy coast line all seemed to blend well together to make it a very accessible and interesting place, with plenty of running around space for the small one.
We’ve been largely pretty lucky with the weather and even swum in the sea, and got a bit sunburnt. Photographic evidence of this feat and all other instances of me in a swimming costume seem to have remarkably disappeared, but other signs of having a lovely time are available below!
The beach at Biarritz
with some pretty crazy waves (popular with those surfiing types)
Tegan beheading the Easter bunny
Chillin’ at Hendaye
Kojak-etta with her new shades
Daniel Craig’s body double…….Andy hubstar!
On top of a mountain on the border of Spain and France, lovely.
I think it is fair to say that we have had a great last few days, and feel ready to brave the vast amount of repacking and reorganising that will face us when we get back. Before we got too “ah didn’t we have a lovely time” about it all though, we felt the need for one more drama………..
We managed to load our car to the brim, even fitting in an extra 14 bottles of wine in somewhere. And just as the last few things were slotting onto the roof box, quelle horreur, the key snapped off in the lock, with the roof box closed. Now on the face of it this was not a big disaster, we had most of the stuff we needed elsewhere in the car and most of the stuff that needed to go in the roof box was already in there. But, thinking ahead (unusual pastime not commonly undertaken by us!) we would be arriving back in Bristol at 8pm at night unable to get into the box. We would also prefer to have access to some of the things in there, and there was just that tiny worry that customs may fancy a nosey inside.
So, what do you do when you have a snapped off key stuck in the lock of the roof box? Well – we went to the supermarket where we had seen a key cutting shop and told them of our woe, where the nice lady produced the phone number of a locksmith/plumber (don’t know if these occupations commonly go together). To cut a long story short after waiting most of the day for him to be able to see us, he opened the box, and managed to get the broken key out. Genius! We were truly surprised by this feat having assumed that he would have to break the lock, but very relieved. Even more so as the roof box doesn’t belong to us (Matt if you’re reading this you can breath a sigh of relief too!).
So eventually we were on our way with a slightly fractious daughter (calmed with a bit of Easter chocolate) and have made it to Bilbao, calm once more. It seems quite fitting that we are leaving for the UK from Spain, as I think one of our favourite places on our WWOOFING tour was Can Santosha with Siddhu and his straw bale house. For the moment then I will sign off with a little poem that he told us (not his own but I am not sure who penned it originally). My rudimentary Spanish was just about good enough to work it out (apologies for any spelling errors), and I am sure the internet translation god will do a good enough job at translating it into English.
hasta manana si dios quiere
Que descanses bien
Llego la hora de acostarse
Y sonar tambien
Porque manana sera otro dia
Hay que vivirlo con alegra
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