Signs

We’ve seen quite a few interesting signs here and some we yet have to figure out. There are the animal signs, which seem to be a favourite: leaping deer (which I’ve already mentioned), sheep, cows, children, elderly people, but none for boars, snakes, birds and other wildlife.

The parking in the street changes every couple of weeks to prevent long-term parking. You have to find the sign for your area to know when you must change over. We were told it happens around 9.30pm, but as we saw today, people already start getting twitchy about 6pm. Suddenly you find that half the cars have been moved and don’t see anyone actually doing it! So, you move your car to avoid missing out on a place... quite funny.

Moving the car gives us an opportunity to clean it out, as it is now on our side of the road. The other day we bought a small vacuum cleaner, which is great to do the car, but as it has a cord we couldn’t run it to the other side of the street.

Other road signs are interesting and we’re slowly getting the hang of them, as well as other road rules which are quite different to NZ. Cars coming from the right out of a street with no intersection signs have right of way, and you can see they have no intention of slowing down. It’s not a problem when you’re in a town where you know the traffic, but I can see it would cause confusion in new places. However, Wouter thinks that the roads signs are mainly clear enough and it comes down to knowing where you have to go.

Last night there was a party down the road and this morning we saw a real estate sign on the house across the road “sold” (vendu). Guess it’s a prank as it wasn’t even for sale yesterday. Talking of Real Estate, they are very reluctant here to tell you anything more about a property unless they are taking you to see it. That’s because the owner always retains the right to sell even if one or more agents are dealing with the property. So the only way you can find out more is to go and see it. We notice the French take house descriptions as seriously as their food as we find properties with descriptions of ‘central eating’ and ‘exposed beans’.

Minervois

Today we had a trip around the Minervois area to check out some places that keep appearing on property searches. So to rule them out or include them in possible properties to buy we made a trip – first to the Pic Nore in the Montagne Noir range, just to the north east of Carcasonne.

We’ve been through places today that Peter Jackson hasn’t even dreamt of yet.... we half expected Frodo to jump out of the bushes at one point where it was very dark, gloomy and thick forest. We saw another leaping deer, which proves the eternal sign on the highways. Heather was in abundance, which brought back a lot of memories for Wouter. Nice to see that purple haze over the hills.

We were using a large scale map as well, so the signposts were often not helpful giving local villages and village dots instead of larger place names, so it was sometimes hard to figure out where we were. In any case, we thought we were probably well off the beaten track as we saw only 2 other cars in an hour, and that in the height of tourist season....

La Tourette Cabardes was very interesting with church built on a bedrock of slate.

The Pic Nore (1211m) is also the site of a satellite relay station, which is surrounded by a lot of high fencing, making it a very important place. Although there was no sign of life behind the wire, we guess they deal with things remotely. Some fantastic views from there across to the southern Pyrenees, but to the northwest it was cloudy and we were above the cloud base, which still made it interesting.

Then we wound our way back down a less goaty track to Caunes-Minervois, via Citou, which was a very interesting road. There were some spectacular rock formations (for those of you geologically-inclined). Mas Cabardes is an interesting town which uses a lot of slate, even for the sides of houses rather than just the roofs as in other areas. This brings back memories for me of the slates of Wales, although here it seems to be more colourful. The other thing we saw on our descent was a wall of rock showering water, so it had a lot of different mosses growing there – very pretty. I imagine in winter and spring it cascades rather than showers.

On to Olonzac (via the Canal du Midi a couple of times, near Homps) and then Minerve, which is just mind-blowing. The first thing you see is what looks like a snapshot out of the Flintstones – a deep gully/canyon, and then hundreds of cars parked at the top, above the river Cesse (dry in the dry season and running in the wet season, and sometimes running underground). The only thing missing was the drive-in and Brontosaurus ribs! We figured that the car owners were rock climbing or walking down in the canyon. Minerve itself seems to rise out of the earth and be welded to the rocks below. Quite amazing.

From Minerve back via Olonzac and on to Lezignan-Corbieres, and then a race home to try and avoid the peak traffic from Carcasonne – too late, missed a turn-off so had to double back and then find the correct turn-off to Limoux. When they do roadworks here, they just black out the names on the signboards so you can’t take that exit or turn-off, but it doesn’t help with finding your way as you have to get off the main road somewhere...

A long day, which started out at 20 degrees due to the cooler weather last night, but soon became 34 degrees during the afternoon (I love air con in the car!) Impressions of today – beautiful countryside to do a full day tour and gasp at the magnificent rock formations and stunning views all around.

Lastly, some more nature pics we've taken over the last couple of weeks - first some barley, then 'Bearclaw' (at least that is the translation from the Dutch name Berenclauw), then Cassy trying to get some cool air on our balcony in this heat we're having.

Le Festival de Limoux

This evening after watching Inspecteur Barnaby (Midsomer Murders in English) Wouter took Cassy for a walk and then came back and said there was a festival going on in the town square. So we headed on down to see some live stage performances by a group doing Latin American dancing, singing, playing the music etc, all with colourful costumes. Very nice. Of course we didn't take the camera but photos would not have done justice to the performance from the distance we were from the stage.

It was interesting to stand at the back and be an observer also of the crowd – in NZ people would have jumped up and been dancing to the rhythmic and mesmerising music, but most people just watched and clapped at the end of each segment.

It’s around 28 degrees here (sorry Aucklanders!) and almost midnight as I write this. It was lovely to walk down to the square, which is 3 minutes away, and just stand amongst the crowd and not feel chilly. But this weather spawns thunder very easily so we have to keep an eye out on our skylight window.

Apparently France closes down in August as everyone goes on holiday somewhere else (if they are from the sea they go to the mountains, and vice versa) so I think the already slow wheels of bureaucracy will grind to a halt over the next 4 weeks – reminds me of NZ in January about 15-20 years ago.

More soon on the property front.

Evening Walks

We are trying to do a slightly different circuit each night when we go for a walk. We are amazed at how many different ‘hidden’ places there are in the area – and we’ve found that also in Chalabre.

In Limoux where we are now, if we go past the church and up the hill, we find ourselves amongst the grapevines. If we go east along the road just past the river we find a semi-rural road behind the railway line with some lovely views across the valley to the other side of Limoux.

Last night we walked along the riverside a bit further than we have been before and found a weir, which seemed to be allowing more water through than we’ve seen in the last few days, so we checked it out. Behind the weir/barrage is a water tower which appears to be generating some sort of power.

And just behind the water tower/mill is a lovely little park, almost hidden away, but a lovely little spot. It has a place for young children to play – safely fenced off from the water. Then around the corner there is a stand which looks like it is set up for stage plays with some old Roman pillars as a back drop. Lovely.

Walking back we could hear a brass band playing so decided to make a detour to check it out. They just finished (maybe there is a 10 o’clock cut-off for making public noise) and they were a group of youngsters meeting up at the local boules club. It looked like they would have a party afterwards at the cafe across the road. Was wrong about the 10pm cut-off as they started up again just after midnight...

We are also diagonally across the road from the NZ cycling team. They sound like a friendly bunch, but we haven’t been close enough to greet them yet and I haven’t been able to find any news on the net to establish what they are doing in the area.

These are the 'boules' courts behind our property:

Limoux by Night

On Sunday we moved house, well, flat/apartment. We are now in Limoux, which is a lovely old town with some interesting history.

It is in the foothills of the Pyrenees and is in the centre of Cathar country. Apparently there were Crusades against heretics in the 13^th century. They have the longest carnival in the world (so they say) and have a Foie Gras celebration each year at the end of autumn, so we may get to see and taste that one.

The area is in a slight dip in the landscape, with surrounding vineyards and sunflowers, and we ourselves are surrounded by churches and a couple of musea (a piano museum, automate museum, museum of local history and paintings – I haven’t been in any of them yet, but we have time enough in between looking for property. This is the church view from our front balcony.

The river is just behind the property and is beautifully lit up at night. There are ducks on the water so we are being careful where we take Cassy as we’d hate him to start hunting them, especially with little ones around. However, we have found a couple of nice spots to take him in the water without disturbing the ducks, and he’s very keen to get wet, as we found out last night to our dismay. I let him off the leash, believing he would come back to me, but it was so warm and he was determined to have a swim and catch the ball – but, we didn’t have a ball to throw so he wasn’t going to come out without a long splash first!

Just behind the garden where we are you can find a couple of cours de boule, where older gentlemen play boules in the evenings. We are becoming part of the landscape as they call Cassy when we go walking and say bonsoir to us.

There is a market on Fridays and in July also Tuesday evenings. Markets are a great place to pick up local produce and get some good deals, but only if you know your prices – sometimes (but not often) the supermarket is cheaper but then you don’t always know where the produce is from, despite the drive to label items with country of origin.

Anyway, we’re almost settled in now and Cassy loves being with us all the time, and we have our own shower and toilet, which is a bit of a luxury until the novelty wears off again! I’m in my element as I can work in the garden, something I’ve missed over the last few months since we moved from Old North Road. So being able to pull weeds, de-lateral tomatoes, and pick kumquats (and eat them for the first time) was a real pleasure.

Take a look at the pics of Limoux by night. A la prochaine.

This is our street and our place is on the left, just past the no entry sign. Our car is the 3rd on the right from the front.

La Tour

Last week due to some technical hitches, we were without internet for a week. We realise how much we have become dependent on this form of communication.

Last week was also the Tour de France in our neighbourhood. There was a lot of radio news (as we don’t have tv yet) about where the cyclists were. We just happened to be travelling in those areas, and of course in our own local town, Chalabre. For days beforehand you could see the preparations – trimming grass verges, road sweeping, cleaning windows, setting up barricades and arrows for the cyclists to take the right direction.

We were stopped by an official who was obviously selling something. In his very fast French he tried to sell me a flag and nougat for fundraising for the Tour. Of course I did not understand one single word, and obviously looked blank, so realising a potential customer could escape he said:

Madam, vous parlez francais? Me – un petit, petit peu

Ok – c’est la Tour de France... me – oui, d’accord

And then the spiel of fundraising, so for 8 euros I got a small French flag and a bar of nougat. The nougat is gone but the flag may be useful to show some sort of alliance with the new country!

We avoided most towns where they Tour was passing through like the plague, as everywhere the Tour was going to be on the day, the town/village/city was abuzz with no available parking, so many people camping out, sitting there drinking wine, eating snacks, baguettes, and other French delicacies.

This plan failed us when we had to make a phone call the afternoon in Chalabre – we knew it was a mistake when we had to park quite far from the centre of town. But like a trooper Wouter toddled off to the phone booth. People were still arriving by the car load parking further and further away each time.

Once the Tour has passed through, everything is packed up and within a few minutes you see no evidence it has been there at all. Until that night, when you walk along the streets and hear the tv’s going at full volume as people watch ‘sport’ to see if they see themselves on camera.

Following the Tour is a contingent of support vehicles, helicopters, caterers, entertainment, etc. So when they stop for the night they have a big marquee (or local hotel) and a night of fun and laughter.

So from our little apartment we could see exactly where the cyclists were in our area due to the helicopters above trying to get the best coverage and lots of cheering as they rode past people parked to get the best viewing place.

Flora et Fauna et Canal du Midi

We’ve been walking the local railway tracks – disused since around the 1970’s but made into public walking and cycling tracks. Some of them are very interesting and go behind farms with crops you can view at close quarters. The other good thing is that you can see a lot of wild nature as you walk past, seemingly unperturbed by humans.

The slugs I’ve already mentioned (see picture), other things we’ve discovered are some lovely flowers which I have no name for, so if anyone out there can help, please do – either Latin, English, Dutch or French name. Actually we found out it's called a Teasel (sp?) used for carding wool - picture under slug pic.

Due to some good detective work I’ve also found out what the seeds are in the poo we’ve been finding. They are a wild cherry – very small – and found all over the place. Something is eating the fruit, pooping out the seeds in large quantities, and the giant slugs seem to be attracted to this. We've been told that it could be foxes eating the cherries but anyone who might know do let us know.

So far we’ve seen 5 snakes – 2 dead, 2 crawling across the path/road, and one dangling from the talons of a hawk about 100 meters in the air. We’ve also seen a few deer around the edges of the forests. Other “wildlife” are the sheep that find their way out of paddocks and onto roads and cows which find their way to local roundabouts and kindly trim any grass or other delicacy growing there.

Some of the roundabouts are interesting – they try to put a theme (usually local) on them, which makes them very distinct. I doubt things like this would survive a weekend in NZ.

We made a trip to some small villages to the north of the Canal du Midi. The Canal looks like it can be a bit of a circus, but if you find a quieter spot, can be really interesting with the comings and goings of boats and barges going through locks – up to four at a time to get to the next level.

There are literally hundreds of hectares of sunflowers ready to bloom – a few are already flowering and are a spectacular sea of brilliant yellow in a green (trees) and brown (barley, wheat and bare land) landscape.

On our way to the Canal we found a poterie in the lower part of the Black Mountains, with hundreds of pieces of pottery of all kinds. We stopped briefly and got away with only a few small purchases – a vase, a casserole pot and two noodle/soup bowls.

Impressions

Today we had to get some groceries and decided to take a different route home, via the Plateau de Saute. We travelled up to Belcaire, which is set up for winter skiers, but under the dark clouds of today looked rather ominous. The temperature at 1000 meters was around 13 degrees, which is I believe about the same as Auckland is having right now.

The Plateau was very interesting indeed with lots of stone homes and wooden chalets in a scrubby kind of nature, and again, surrounded by forests. We are also surrounded by forests (Douglas fir and native species) as well as a range of other crops – maize, more than likely for animal fodder, sunflowers – so far we have seen a few blooming, but in 2-3 weeks time there will be a sea of yellow faces and plenty of opportunity for photos, paddock grasses which have been mown into hay bale rounds.

While they sit there waiting to be ‘wrapped’, you can see in each paddock a falcon or peregrine (not certain until I have a book of birds to confirm) sitting atop one bale, scanning the area for the next meal. My guess from the amount of these birds is that there is plenty for them to eat – rats, mice, smaller birds....

We need to find out what type of animal is making certain droppings we’ve seen in quite a few places now. It seems to be eating some berries or seeds and pooping them out in large quantities.

The other thing which intrigued us is the slug population. If you think you have big slugs in NZ, forget it! I can see that gardening here will be a challenge and will have to plant several decoy lettuces... So far we’ve seen the dark grey and red slugs, but there may be others lurking. Photo to follow one of these days.

Last night we made a walk along a disused railway track – the tracks have been removed and a path created for walking and cycling. It’s easy walking (for one who is recovering from flu) and interesting enough for Cassy with lots of smells and variety of paddocks. It’s also safer and quieter than trying to walk along the roads and we can have Cassy off the leash.

There are plenty of wild flowers everywhere and at the moment just starting to flower is the clematis – very sweet smelling and as nice as the honey suckle. There are lots of wild plants I don’t know, so this will be another book on the list of things to buy, unless I can wait for our library to arrive from NZ.

Some people go to a lot of trouble to make their little spot look beautiful, and they succeed – lots of poppies and other bright flowers adorn the highways and byways, and the local gardens and plots are a real pride and joy. It seems most people have at least a pot or two or some hanging baskets if they have not much room.

The weather is different in that around the Pyrenees you can have some almighty thunder storms. We had one a few nights ago which was bad enough that Cassy wanted to hop into bed with us to feel safe. When there is rain blowing in, we are in the cloud base, so can see the clouds drifting by as they speed (or not) through the tree tops and mountains on their way. We have had rain, although it seems to be not enough for the farmers with maize as we see them watering everywhere. Not sure how the rain affects the area in winter yet. You have to be prepared for any type of weather on any day (luckily, I was a girl guide!) so layers are the answer. But if it’s hot, it will stay hot until there is a break in the weather.

Pictures of where we're staying

History - A New Start

This is the beginning of a new adventure for us.

We decided to leave New Zealand and head back to Europe, from where we both originate, and see some more of our European friends, family, roots, history and of Europe in general.

As we're no longer spring chickens, this required a lot of thought and planning. So after selling our home of the last 20 years in NZ, giving up our jobs, we have made the move to the south of France.

Over the last few years we made a couple of big trips to Europe which aided our decision to make this move. The logistics of moving from 20,000km with people, dog, household, workshop and other detail was a serious task, undertaken by Wouter, who basically gave up working in Feb 08 to focus on the whole thing.

To cut out all the lengthy in between details, Wouter arrived here 11th June and I arrived on 26th with our dog, Cassy.

Apparently collecting us from Charles de Gaulle airport was a tricky proposition, and Wouter saw the terminal from all sides about 6 times before navigating his way through to the right spot. Finding me, was, by all accounts, the easy bit. We still had to collect the dog. This was a bit of a rigmarole, but after visiting a few different offices and desks, we were all reunited, and Cassy was very, very happy to see us and was ready for action.

We're currently staying on a farm of 65 hectares, just outside of Montjardin (Aude), which looks out over the Pyrenees - some of the tops we see from our window are around 2,900m high, and still have some snow as we start some hot summer temperatures. Our hosts have donkeys on their farm, and do donkey therapy - that is, for people who want to get away from the bustle of city life and get close to nature.

We've found the donkeys are very curious and regard other animals as a threat, so we keep an eye on our dog when they are around. They all have their own personality (of course) and there is one 'adolescent' who likes to take a nip if he gets the chance.

Currently we're checking out the surroundings to see where we might like to buy our property. Also, we're finding our French feet - language wise and living in general. Feels like we still have 2 left feet and would certainly trip on the dance floor.....

Some of the local markets we've been to are bright, cheerful, bustling, interesting. One can buy an assortment of foods, clothes, wares, etc on a variety of stalls. Today we went to a vide greniers, which is the 'clearing of the attic' and the equivalent to the car boot sale, in which the whole village participates, including brass band, food stalls and lots of bric-a-brac.

We managed to buy a set of bed-ends and sides, which are made of timber and also to collect the pieces from the owners as our car was not quite big enough to take the large part (this is a minor detail).