Glory Days

Well, we made it! I'm so impressed with the DVLA, who got my replacement licence to me in three days, and HSBC, who got my replacement cards to me [well, to the bank so Peter could pick them up for me, but still pretty impressive]. I didn't even have to panic over the weekend! So, on Monday morning, Ellie and I took a leisurely drive from Salisbury down to Portsmouth to take the 12.00 ferry to Le Havre. As a regular Brittany ferries punter I have to say that, whilst the food and general hospitality is nothing like as good, LD Lines is a pretty good alternative at less than half the price. The ship was squeeky clean, all chrome and shiny hard surfaces, but the staff were friendly enough and with an outside berth day cabin thrown in for our eighty odd quid, we were very impressed. The afternoon siesta provided a welcome cure-all from the excesses of a long Sunday lunch with local friends. By the time we got to Le Havre, we felt ready to hit the town, which in this case was Honfleur.

Peter and I used to skip off occasionally for romantic nights in Honfleur, 'avant les enfants'. It's still as beautiful as it was twenty years ago and, as far as I could make out in one evening, relatively unchanged. I was really pleased for Ellie that it lived up to my hype, especially as, foolishly, I had booked a hotel on the outskirts because it had parking and I didn't want my precious new Bosch lawn mower nicked! It was a glorious evening and after our twenty five minute hike, we were ready to tackle a serious gourmet dinner close to the Vieux Basin. As it turned out, we were in the midst of a 'pont des fetes' and the town was heaving, so we decided to grab the first available table for two right on the waterfront. The food was average, but the view and the ambiance more than made up for it. It seemed impossible to believe that we had left the wet, windy weather of England just a few hours before. It's no wonder so many tourist ads for France picture the boats and the harbour at Honfleur. It's the stuff of paintings and TV commercials, not a quick stopover, but we loved every minute of it.

The following day, we stopped with Ian and Jackie Hoare at 'La Souvigne', not too far from Tulle. We first met them because I always carry a Sawday's French B & B book with me when I'm travelling through France. Ian is half Hungarian and Jackie is half French and they both went native many years ago. Ian is a mine of information about French culture, food and wine. He is also a sommelier and a member of the Bergerac wine fraternity, which also boasts the amazing Patricia Atkinson amongst its number. If you ever want to read a story about a woman's determination to see something through, I really recommend her book. They cooked the most delicious dinner for us, including some cured ham from 'Bernard' [the pig, not the producer] which Ian had been given in lieu of his assistance in designing a website for 'Bernard's' owner. The main course was magret cooked in an oriental style, the recipe of which I'm going to pinch for my summer guests, followed by local cheese and homemade raspberry ice cream. Ian tells me that he now has 180 recipes up on his website, so I feel a spot of plagiarism coming on. We waddled off to bed 'tres content' and a lot more knowledgeable.

After a moderate drive, we eventually got to Bardies on Wednesday afternoon and couldn't believe that everything had gone so swimmingly. The temperature guage in the car had hit 32 degrees and we were desperate to cool off our mosquito bites. As we walked slowly down to the pool arm in arm, a citron vert vision appeared before us. "Mum, the pool's gone green!" Oh, shit, I thought. What do I do now? It's never happened to us before, but that was before our 'jardinier' went walkabout. Tina, our 'woman Friday' has gone off to Glastonbury working for a fortnight and seeing 'The Boss' in the process [oh no, I'm not jealous - much!]. With no one to top up the non automatic water levels, the pump had cut out during blistering temperatures giving the algae a field day. I couldn't believe my eyes. The lime in my gin and tonic, which I needed to recover from the shock, was an identical shade of Trisha Guild green.

The next day the nice man at Ariege Piscines finally rode to my rescue, at huge expense I'm sure, and all became well just as the thunderstorms rolled in. Fortunately, we were due to go visiting because my friend Molly has had major surgery on her back. I spent Friday sorting the house out in anticipation of our imminent arrivals and cooking some tasty morsels to help speed Molly's recovery. The basil that I had planted has thrived on the sunshine so pesto was a must. There is nothing so simple and delicious as home made pesto, for which I never use a recipe. I just toast up a good handful of pine nuts, which I throw into the food processor with a bunch of basil, a couple of garlic gloves, plenty of freshly grated Parmesan and good olive oil drizzled through the funnel. A quick whizz and you're done. Pronto pesto! Divine. I also threw together a griddled aubergine and tomato cous cous salad.

We went to Molly's via the Saturday morning market in St Girons, already demonstrating the fact that the English are not keeping away from France despite Robert Peston. Whilst it's not quite Kensington 'en campagne', it's getting as close to Brits abroad as we used to deride the Gers for being. Our little secret is no more, methinks! I don't want to be a 'nimby', so I'm trying to be positive. It's good for the local economy, nobody could seriously come here if they didn't have a decent smattering of French and more people might read mine and Kalba's blogs [see 'Slow Living in the French Pyrenees' on Blogspot]. We bought masses of bio salad stuff for Molly, olives, cheese and a divine 'croustarde des myrtilles', as well as some 'fraises des bois'. Hopefully, it will keep her going for a bit, stuck up the mountain as she is without a shop.

She lives in Axiat, opposite the Roman church of St Julien. If you haven't yet been along the Route des Corniches, it's a must. A corniche is a road that winds along the side of a steep coast or cliff and whilst this isn't as famous as it's Riviera cousins, with their car ads and movie car crashes. not to mention poor old Princess Grace, it is equally as stunning in a mountain sort of way. It's the old pilgrimage route to Ax which starts at Bompas, 3 km north of Tarascon, and winds its way through Arnave, Cazenave and Senconat up to Axiat, before going on to Lordat and Unac before Ax itself. It is one of the most beautiful drives in the Ariege, and if you are a cyclist one of the most challenging. The Tour de France comes this way periodically so it's certainly not for cycling softies. Axiat itself boasts a church of exquisite proportions, if one ignores the 19th century sacristy tagged on for practical reasons rather than architectural merit. It has a distinctly Burgundian elegance to it, with its square bell tower, and it would seem highly probable that the Comte de Foix, Roger II, was highly influenced by the Abbe de Cluny who had 'donated' it on 25th January 1075.

We were pleased we went and it was great to see Molly looking so well just a week after major surgery. The afternoon flew by. As we wove our way back down the mountain in the late evening sunshine, with Springstein blasting out from the CD player, I couldn't have felt happier. Here I am back in my beloved Bardies with long summer days ahead. The first of our many house guests begin to arrive on Monday, culminating in a big reunion of the class of Hull University'73, our best man's birthday and our wedding anniversary on Thursday. What fun we shall have. Glory days indeed.