Things for which I am thankful – Travelogue 3 – unlimited by numbers, gratitudes…
After three days in Mohern, we continued on our way to a village a few miles outside the city of Lyon (B on the map) and itself, on the banks of the River Saône where we would spend four days exploring. First off, I have to say – WHAT A BEAUTIFUL CITY IS LYON!!! We drove through the city on the evening we arrived despite warnings from the hosts about traffic, but actually, being caught in rush hour offers the chance to look around which as the driver, I am not always afforded. On this excursion, we also drove up and over one of the ridges of the city away from the river and saw that whilst not as delighful as the (no doubt expensive) riverside areas, the city is still pleasant enough. Rochetailee-sur-Saône is crowned by a Chateau which is now a motor museum but I picture it here to give a flavour of the architecture…
The first whole day, we drove a short way down the Saône to board a ferry/bus that took us as far as the old city quarter…
Barbara and I sailing down the Saône including a hapless photo-bomber. I really must work on my selfie smile!
I managed a sketch of this from a Cafe across from teh Old Quarter but didn’t quite finish it so took this for reference…
Lyon considers itself the gastronomic capital of France (though I am sure other cities would dispute this) and one of its most famous chefs is Paul Bocuse whose restaurant was close to us. He is responsible for developing the Nouvelle Cuisine in which a selection of small “refined” dishes replaced the heavy sauces and large dishes which had dominated French cooking.
The splendid facade of Paul Bocuse’s restaurant…
Returning to the car after taking these photographs to show Barbara, I told her that the great man, pausing from his labours on the balcony, had given me a wave – she believed me for a moment before zooming in and realising it was another piece of Trompe l’Oeuil – Paul died in 2018 but for a moment, I had her fooled!
Sometimes, it is only when you review your photos that you spot things you had not realised were there – here, the shadows of vegetation mingle with the fabric pattern of Barbara’s trousers…
I couldn’t resist shooting this little video of a strip club which seemed curiously out of place in the Old Quarter but wait till you see the name of the pottery shop next door…
(The Angry Pixie – presumably at having to share the street with a strip club!)
Another lovely shop sold vintage items – appropriately, for the Old Quarter which included, light fittings, photographic rolls of film and all sorts. Take a peek at their website here.
Some gargoyles for Cai…
On our last day in Lyon, a Saturday, we drove to Les Confluences Museum – a very futuristic piece of Deconstructivist architecture near to the confluence of the Saône and the Rhône rivers. Notice the difference between the French and English use of confluence – in French, it is plural because there are two rivers whereas in English it is singular because the confluence is a thing in its own right. (no wonder English replaced the French as the international language) Sorry to any Francophiles but English is so much easier to learn (though not to speak or write perfectly) sufficiently to be understood. Sorry France – the world has spoken…
Here is Les Confluence with the Saône river in the distance to right joining the Rhône river in the foreground. An array of houseboats too…
This one, moored in front of the museum is perhaps a houseboat or pehaps a tour boat…
Les Confluence Museum in all its Deconstructivist glory…
Taking a tea break from present shopping in Neuville-sur-Saône – shoppimng is hard work – honest!
Finally, we set off back towards Rotterdam and the ferry back to England, but we broke it into two six hour drives, stopping for two days in the Champagne region near Rheims. The motorways were free flowing with little traffic and the French drivers (99%) were well behaved as regards the speed limits. We continued to see many wind-farms – at times, we could see 100 or more in all directions in an area similar to the Downs near Misky (but much more extensive). This is just the kind of area where English nimbys (Not In My Back-yard) would protest loudly at the mere mention of windmills… Europe has embraced the need for energy security and freeing itself from Russian gas and oil…
The Marne River runs through Champagne – grape vines in the foreground….
I had never seen Walnuts growing but they were gently falling each day at the Airbnb we were staying at. You can see how the shelled nut is cocooned inside a soft casing…
A bit blurry but a picture of the red warning lights on the massive sea wind farm off the Hook of Holland which gives an impression of the profusion…
And so back to England – normal gratitudes will resume next weekend…
Pilgrim has a difficult birth but his brain is too young for it to leave scars his mother’s body is not so lucky pilgrim will be her last baby
pilgrim has a special place in his mother’s heart And she weeps when kids at school call him not special, but runt and she hugs him tighter
Pilgrim walks his own path with few companions in real life but books and films fill his imagination with places, heroes, villains vanquished and true love found, he is not lonely
Pilgrim breezes through college blossoming in the fresh soil where no one knows his story finds friends, and adventurers of the mind though love as yet eludes him
Pilgrim charts a course for his future he is not afraid to take the lonely road in search of knowledge of the world what he discovers, under northern skies will change the world for everyone
Pilgrim’s reports are not welcomed by everyone but he has seen the truth and slurs and spurs of fortuneers hold no power over Pilgrim who pushes truth to power regardless
Pilgrim finds love amongst his supporters a heart attuned to his values body set to walk beside him Pilgrim sees how life has led him to this place, his love – in and out of the world
Pilgrim led the way thousands followed in his footsteps…
Things for which I am thankful – Travelogue 2 – unlimited by numbers, gratitudes…
Home to Hull – Ferry to Rotterdam, A – Mothern near Strasbourg, B – Lyon, C – Champagne region and back to Rotterdam and the ferry back to Hull! Some 1,400 miles…
Grateful to still be able to make such a road trip at the advanced age of 71! Getting to Rotterdam was easy – 1.5 hours drive to Hull ferry port and an ovenight ferry which left us most of the day to get to Mothern near Strasbourg. This is in the North-eastern corner of France just over the border from Germany and was a good 7 hour journey with stops – the longest leg of the holiday so glad it was first…
Mothern is a fairly small village on the banks of the Rhine which divides France form Germany and much of the centre of the village is half-timbered buildings like this…
The Rhine at Mothern is already impressive in size but actually, not very interesting to look at…
Mothern was about 40 kms from Strasbourg and we spent our first day of three, visiting the city that houses the European Parliament.
Here there were also many half-timbered buildings although I never found anyone to ask about the age of the buildings – I have a feeling the technique was used far longer than in England – perhaps due to the abundance of timber in the area…
The building below was once a barracks but what really intrigued me, once we got close to it, was that all the details around the windows are Trompe l’Oueil – something I once did a bit of in one of my past careers…
For our second day in Mothern, we crossed the Rhine back into Germany (we travelled down through Germany – see last week’s account of German drivers) and headed for the mountains of the Black Forest.
The Black forest is the home of the eponymous gateau which gained Europe-wide popularity in the ’70’s (they grow a lot of cherries here) so naturally we had to go in search of some! Upon arriving in the town of Freundstadt, we discovered that they take Sunday closing much more seriously than in England so the only eateries open were ice cream parlours and so we had to settle for a Black Forest ice cream dessert ( liberally soused with Kirsch) and so eager were we to tuck in, that we forgot to photograph the desserts first and had to resort to photographing the menu – still it proves we are not of that generation that feel the need to photograph and share everything they eat – lol…
Freundstadt lived up to its name (literally Friend-town) as a Turkish couple who have lived in Germany for thirty years, invited us to share their table as the place was packed, and then paid for our desserts too – many thanks…
On our third day, we decided to head north into a national park (more forestry) and since you have to put a destination into the satnav, I chose a castle that was marked there, although I didn’t zoom in to examine the destination…. Eventually we turned onto a small road which became a track in the woods and wound up through the woods – increasingly rough – the centre vegetation giving the underside of the car a good brushing…
We were in the middle of nowhere – the fabled destination to which a satnav will famously take you given half a chance… Discretion being the better part of valour, I eventually zoomed out to see that the track continued to spiral up a hill to the alleged castle -(goodness knows what sort of ruin it was) and we decided to turn round and go back. We stopped to photograph animals in some kind of sanctuary/farm near the start of the track.
No idea what sort of porkers these are but perhaps some kind of rare breed…
These are miniature goats, the kids are about the size of a small dog. Both they and the pigs were munching on windfall apples from nearby trees…
Lastly some endearing donkeys…
And that is where I am going to leave this travelogue till next week- after all, you can only absorb so much of other people’s holiday pictures…
I wasn’t sure if I would write this week as we are now on holiday in France, Misky suggested taking notes for later posts and Clark also said this is a tradition in the TToT but I have a lot of thoughts about the journey and decided to write them as a travel piece without numbering the grats (or hypograts)…
I conceived and planned this holiday quite quickly – it had to fit in before a reunion weekend with my school friends of 50+ years ago in October plus an important inspection at work, and even though the time of anticipation was small, there was still that countdown which seems to slow time, but eventually the last day of work came and went, my boss’s parting call “Take care – I still need you in my life!” Take that as you will…
We decided to take the overnight ferry from Hull to Rotterdam again, as we had earlier in the year when we holidayed in the Netherlands. I am always reminded, when finally catching sight of theRiver Humber, of Hull’s great Metaphysical poet, Andrew Marvell, who famously wrote the attempted seduction poem, “To his Coy Mistress” which enchanted my imagination when studying it at school but which I now take, at the age of 71, as a wider reflection on the shortness of life generally, and the need to make the most of it – very metaphysical… In the poem, Marvel says to his would-be lover, “Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide Of Humber would complain.” and a muddy tide it is, the waters never other than murky… You can read the full poem here, and a poem in which I introduced the lady’s somewhat indignant riposte, here! Indeed, when we arrived at the ship and looked over the side of the dock, she appeared to be resting on the mud with the tide still ebbing and as the hours neared the departure time, a strange small ship was loitering on the seaward side of the ship – a ship that I looked up (Oh, the joys of the internet!) and discovered she was the UKD Marlin – a trailing suction hopper dredger! UKD presumably stands for United Kingdom Dredger – who knew? And the UKD Marlin was just itching for us to set sail so she could go about her vital business of hoovering the RORO berth clear of Humber mud!
The good ship UKD Marlin getting about her business as we head out down the Humber…
The Captain of The Pride of Rotterdam had welcomed us aboard with the news that the wind would be rising from the South-west to be gale force seven in the latter part of the crossing, and so we could expect some rolling during the night. Visiting the toilet in our cabin in the wee small hours of the night, I was momentarily spooked by the unexpected movement of the red emergency bell pull. (the check-in lady had kindly upgraded us to a disabled cabin so that Barbara could use her boot-scooter on board and have room to park it in the cabin) Then I realised the movement of the bell-pull was a result of the said rocking and rolling of the ship and returned to my bunk to be rocked in the cradle of the deep until we passed the sheltered waters beyond the Hook of Holland. You may find this video of the spooky bell-pull’s movements oddly relaxing…
The ferry docks at eight in the morning and on that occasion, we had only an hour-and-a-half drive to our destination – a reflection of how compact the Netherlands are, but yesterday, we had a drive of six-and-a-half as measured by the satnav. Of course, that doesn’t allow for holdups or breaks, and the reality was nearer eight-and-a-half hours! First off, it took nearly two-and-a-half hours to leave the port – due to our shooting-ourselves-in-the-foot exercise (Brexit), we are now obliged to use biometric data to pass into Europe which means getting out of your car, entering a booth and loking into a camera as well as placing your fingers on a fingerprint scanner and so we crawled along in a queue of cars, eager to be on our way with a long drive ahead of us. Curses be on Nigel Farage who led the campaign to take us out of Europe and who still gets paid a pension from his stint as a Member of the European Parliament – oh the irony…
Eventually we were on our way and had a choice of three routes, courtesy of Google, with six hours minimum on the table. We decided to take the middle route, figuring that an extra half-hour was neither here nor there – this would have taken us through five countries – imagine that! Netherlands, Belgium, tiny Luxembourg, Germany and finally France. A half hour in, the implacable lady that is the voice of my satnav, stated that delays on our chosen route would result in additional driving and we could save twenty-two minutes by switching to an alternative route – I decided to accept, though without time to stop and inspect the new route since we were on a motorway – it turns out that Google simply took us back to the “mainly through Germany” route so we missed out on our five country marathon – c’est la vie…
Freedom of movement between European nations in the Schengen zone means that crossing into Germany is marked merely by a roadside sign – blink and you could miss it! What I could not miss, was a change in the culture of driving. all the way through the Netherlands, the speed limit had been no more than 100kms per hour (62 miles per hour) but once in Germany, on their famously named “autobahns”, the speed limit sometimes rose to 130kph (80.77mph), which drivers took not as a limit but as a challenge to achieve or exceed. In England, the national speed limit on motorways is 70 mph, although, in practice, the speed where traffic is free-flowing is often nearer 8omph. Not only do drivers in Germany achieve the speed limit but they aggressively tailgate anyone who gets in their way of reaching their goal! The result is, (and we were travelling on a lot of two lane motorways), that you end up with a big difference between the fast outer lane and the nearside lane where lorries and those who want to travel at a more modest speed are, and this makes moving out into the fast lane quite hazardous, calling for bouts of sudden acceleration to match the speed there. This different culture kicked in the moment we crossed into Germany…
To begin with, we were driving under grey skies with even the odd drop of drizzle, but as the day wore on and we progressed South, the skies cleared and the temperatures soared until even driving with the windows open did not relieve the feeling of driving in an oven… The landscapes at the journey’s outset were also rather beige, if not grey, lots of featureless factories arrayed in Dutch neatness, and when finally we hit the countryside, it was flat and uninspiring, but by the afternoon, we reached the Mosel wine-growing area where small vineyards were arrayed on the slopes of volcanic rock. Speaking of rocks, we stopped to stretch our legs at a “Rastplatz” (Rest place) called “Blau Stein” which conjured up an image of beer steins overflowing with foamy lager – something which, considering the heat, would have been most welcome at that moment (if I wasn’t driving) but sadly the most this rest pace had to offer, was somewhere to stop, and toilets. There was, however, a large boulder painted blue and I realised the error of my fevered imagination, not a beer stein, but a Blue Stone lol…
From that point on, the landscapes became more exciting, extensive woods, almost mountains and masses of windmills! There had, of course, been lots of wind-power in evidence in the Netherlands where windmills have been in vital use for centuries, but Germany too, has embraced the wind farm as a way to cut down on CO2 emissions as well as to reduce dependence on Russian oil and gas in the age of global warming and political heat. In England, there are still many objections to on-land wind farms, which I find extraordinary given a year which has seen five heatwaves one after another. I think that all these NIMBYS (Not in My BackYard) should be forcibly relocated to live right next to one of the remaining coal-fired power statioins to see how they feel about windmills then. I feel that when the generation that grew up with the Teletubbies comes to power, they will embrace windmills and feel inexplicably comforted by the sight of them…
Evetually, still with an hour-and-a-half to go, we crested a rise and saw before us the broad sweep of The Rhine valley which moment, put me in mind of Keats’ poem describing Cortez first seeing the Pacific Ocean from “a peak in Darien” and so I felt the need to record the moment with a video…
Finally, at 7.10pm, we arrived at our AirBnB – a maisonette in the garden of out hosts who were most welcoming. The garden is at once familiar, a bramble trained along a fence, rhubarb and blackcurrant bushes and novel – peach and fig trees and a grapevine over a trellis. We disgraced ourselves by locking ourselves out whilst having a last cup of tea (alright, it was me – my fault) but it was only 10pm and we had no choice but to rouse our hosts ( Nous sommes desolais…) and get them to let us in – and so to bed…
So that’s it folks – Day One of our French road trip…
