England, my England

Henley-on-Thames

Stanley

So now my time away has come finally and rapidly to an end, and tonight I catch a flight, well three flights actually, back to Nelson, 18,770km away. International travel is so weird. And I’ve been in England in this area of South Oxfordshire for so long that I’ve kind of settled in.

Polo

House sitting here has been a great way to catch up with Hannah and Lydia. Both sits have been within an hour or so of London and even closer to Heathrow. We’ve walked, talked and eaten together, and admired my various doggie charges. I’ve also been able to see my Warwickshire rellies with whom, especially Ali, I’ve also walked, talked (a lot) and eaten (also a lot) too. Plus I’ve met some interesting and friendly locals in the villages and pubs or out walking.

Beautiful Oxford

Stanley on the Thames Path

Tilda on Watlington Hill

The English countryside is as lovely as ever. Extraordinary that even today it remains almost unchanged from centuries ago. Around here in the Chiltern Hills, it is easy to walk in any direction and see nothing but gently rolling wooded hills and peaceful pastoral scenery and from what I’m told so many areas of the country are the same. Every day I’ve walked and loved it. And it's so easy. There are hundreds of miles of public footpaths and bridleways that criss-cross the countryside, many of which are centuries old, and give the public a right to cross privately owned land which cannot be overruled by the owners. So, if there is a right of way, you can follow it through fields, woods, farmland, parks, around golf courses, past stately homes, through farmyards or along the rivers and canals.

What a great time I have had. This combines my love of walking with my love of navigation, for, although there are signs, it is essential to have a large-scale map to plot your route linking up the

The Thames near Henley

various paths and to be able to then find your way for there is a huge network of public ways. Near Henley-on-Thames, the Thames Path which runs all the way from the source of the river near Cirencester to Greenwich in 

Chiltern Gentian

London follows the gentle, clean, green Thames River past colourful canal boats, luxury motor launches, sleek rowing skiffs or just solitary kayaks. On either side of the river are pretty cottages with lawns sloping down to the water's edge or luxurious manor houses with pools, water ponds and sculptures in their gardens. Swans, coots, moorhens and ducks frequent the reeds and rushes along the river banks and overhead red kites, of the eagle family, once almost extinct, wheel and swoop, or whistle from their treetop perches. Where I am now on the northern side of the Chilterns, the walking is through beautiful beech forests, peaceful pasture and between high hedgerows hiding pheasants now that the grain is cut. The wildflowers on the chalk grasslands are delightful: harebells, buttercups, ragwort, Queen Anne’s lace and cowslip, and on nearby Watlington Hill the bright blue Chiltern gentian, unique to this area, is everywhere.

The Crooked Billet, Stoke Row

The walking is so accessible and yet today on a Bank Holiday Weekend, I saw only two people during the whole of my three hour walk. Even on long-distance or multi-day walks, you don’t have to carry much,
for dotted here and there are the famous pubs which welcome walkers and cyclists, and dogs too, with beer and cider, and these days excellent food and gorgeous accommodation. For my birthday lunch, Hannah and I went to The Crooked Billet in Stoke Row not far from where I am staying. Now regarded as one of England’s best country inns, this pub is loaded with history. Built in 1642, it was once the hideout of highwayman Dick Turpin who was romantically attached to the landlord’s daughter Bess. Inglenook fireplaces, low timbered ceilings, flagstone floors and old scrubbed pine tables are just some of its original features. It has always brewed its own beer and even today it has no bar – beer is drawn directly from casks in the cellar but there is nothing old-fashioned about the food - modern, fresh, interesting and absolutely delicious.

Near Brightwell Baldwin

These aren't rosehips!

When I arrived in Europe at the start of June the fields were full of ripening wheat and barley slowly turning to pale gold under the baking sun. Here in England a very cool summer is fading. The hay is baled, the crops are in. Now I walk past fields of stubble; men on huge tractors spread manure then plough it in leaving vast expanses of rich brown soil. Crows flying low follow the ploughs seeking grubs. On the big horse chestnut trees, the leaves are turning orange and their green prickly seeds will soon burst open to drop shiny brown ‘conkers’. Blackberries are everywhere and sweet enough already to eat, and bright red rose hips adorn the hedgerows. Autumn will soon be here. Back in New Zealand, the days are drawing out and temperatures are on the rise. It's nearly spring and my work will start again soon. Time to head for home.                                                                                

A Taste of Italy

From France I flew to Bergamo, Italy. Thirty-five years ago when we stayed here during our one month trip around Italy, Tony and I deemed it to be one of the loveliest small cities of the world. It hasn’t changed. Though the suburbs have sprawled further now and the tourist numbers have grown, the alta villa (old town) remains as attractive as ever, its ancient tall buildings with painted façades overlooking the narrow, cobbled streets and pretty squares with stone fountains and outdoor cafes, the beautiful little churches, the red-tiled rooves, everywhere hanging baskets of bright flowers, the fabulous Italian food, shop windows to make you drool…

But although Bergamo is still delicious, its airport is now a destination for the budget airline Ryanair and therefore a meeting point for my girls and I who, amazingly and after considerable organisation by Hannah, all arrived within a few hours of each other: Lydia from Florence, Hannah from Amsterdam and me from Bordeaux.

What a treat! We shared a tiny white room in a guest house up a huge stone staircase, three beds in a row, and drank fruity red house wine from enormous glasses at the corner restaurant which served pasta that melted in the mouth, while enchanting music played from the archway onto the square next door as a quartet of expert string musicians busked long into the night.

View from our airbnb

In the morning we drove for three hours to Siusi allo Sciliar also known as Seis am Schlern, a tiny village in South Tyrol. And that is normal for this part of Italy. It is only 50kms from the Austrian border and about 150km from the closest German town. Almost all the tourists are Germans and a significant number of Germans live her permanently. Everything is written in both Italian and German: the town names, the signs, all brochures and tourist information. When you greet someone you never know whether to speak in German or Italian, or indeed, English as some of them speak our language as well. For an avid linguist like me it’s a frustrating delight! Just when I thought I had some basic Italian sorted, the shopkeeper or whoever would switch to German assuming, because of my bad Italian, that I was German. If I started talking German (for example at the petrol station where bliss of bliss you give a man your car keys and he fills up your tank with petrol and then takes your money while you stay in your seat – remember those days?), they would address me in Italian as we had Italian licence plates on our rental car. I loved it of course! What better way to keep the old brain ticking over!

12th century castle ruins

Hannah had been here camping in the Spring and knew we’d love it. How could we not? It’s stunningly beautiful. I’d never seen any of the spectacular Dolomite Mountains. No wonder they are all protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site. From bucolic green valleys where sheep graze in the sunshine and farmers rake hay by hand, their enormous, sheer rock walls rise staggeringly steeply to jagged peaks and sharp ridges. All around and in between them are expansive grassy basins criss-crossed by trails and tiny roads, a skier’s paradise in winter, but in summer offering endless walking or cycling with mountain chalets or refuges providing sometimes accommodation but almost always refreshments and food.

One day we went to Merano (Meran), a town about an hour’s drive to the west of Siusi up a different valley. This is an elegant old spa resort set in a basin surrounded by 3,000+ metre mountains and has long been a popular spot for writers and artists who have enjoyed its mild climate. Indeed, the abundance of palm trees, banana plants and bougainvillea give it an almost tropical feel. A clear mountain river races through the town centre and the walkways and cycleways alongside it are a delight. In fact, bikes are everywhere; I don’t think I’ve seen such large and full bike-parks since Beijing, testament to the number of bike lanes, paths and trails throughout and around the town. As I’ve always said, build them and people will use them! 

Housesitting in the Charente

Housesitting seemed like a good idea. I’d be in one place for a while, time to catch up with myself a bit after lots of travelling, cycling and camping. My girls could come and visit, and possibly others. I could get to know the locals, speak lots of French and eat croissants and other delights every day from the local boulangerie. So I put a profile on a housesitting website, scrolled through the posts searching for the best-looking house, the right kind of animals (no pet rats, huge dogs, guinea pigs or dozens of cats – one person had 14!), not too many hard jobs to do, and owners I'd get on with (even though I wouldn't see much of them), underwent an interview on Skype, and suddenly there I was signed up for a 12 day sit in an unknown place called Tillou, a tiny dot on Google Maps somewhere in the west of France, with the nearest town having the unlikely name of Chef-Boutonne. I would have no car and the nearest public transport would be 9kms away in Melle from where you can catch a bus to Niort, a bigger town with a train station. No worries, I thought from the comfort of my Nelson home, it’ll be sweet, I won't need a car, they have bikes, I’ll bike.

The first thing I did when I got here was to revel in having a whole house to myself, a proper bed and a washing-machine (gosh how I love washing-machines!). The second thing I did was to hire a car.

My room is the top left

My temporary home, La Rivière, is a former water-mill house and the remnants of the mill are still standing over the stream, La Somptueuse, which runs around and through the grounds. David and Helen, the owners, have lived here for 15 years. Originally from the UK, they raised their 3 daughters here who, now young adults, are bilingual if not trilingual or more. They have 3.5 hectares including a large garden with lawns, a sand arena for exercising horses and several grazing paddocks. There is a huge garage where David runs a car mechanic business, as well as a hay barn and stables and the house has 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and 2 large living-rooms. It all ticked my boxes so far.

Quite rural, Helen had said in an email. The truth is it’s bang in the middle of absolutely nowhere and absolutely nothing. There’s not much in the village, Helen had said. She was right. There is nothing. It looks as if there never has been. No shops, no bar, nothing. Except for a church which I presume has people in it occasionally. Perhaps I should go and have a look on Sunday. How desperate for company can one get! I have seen almost no one at all for the nearly two weeks I’ve been here. An English couple out walking their dog one day started talking, well I exaggerate; I started talking to them. They were friendly enough, unlike another Englishman walking his dog who wasn’t. But I wanted to speak French and where were all the French?

An old lavoir

This village must have been vibrant once. It used to have six mills: 3 watermills and 3 windmills. When there was a dry summer and the flow of water wasn’t sufficient to turn the big waterwheels, the windmills would take over the work of grinding the grain. Now all the nearby villages are the same. Shut up, abandoned, shutters closed, shops windows blank, even the boulangeries, the hub of every village, producing the humble baguette that icon of French cuisine and culture, not the place where you merely buy bread, but where you see the same people at the same time every day, where your Bonjours of the first day can become long conversations by the fourth, that are even subsidised by the local commune or Council in some parts of the country just to keep them going, are fast disappearing, replaced, horror of all horrors, by coin-in-the-slot machines! Put in a one euro coin and bingo, out comes a warm baguette. Aargh!!

My 'local' supermarket

Or, even worse, replaced, by another horror, the big-corporate-owned shopping malls with their huge hypermarchés which have their own on-site bakers. Finally, there, I found some French people, filling these places on the edge of town on a Saturday morning. Easy parking, everything under one roof, cheaper prices. Who cares that for the tourists the ambience is a little lacking. We noticed this trend especially when we were biking in the Loire. The little supermarket/grocery stores that had been right in the centre of the villages/small towns only 3 years before were there no more, replaced by these ugly gargantuan shiny edifices several kilometres away down a busy highway on the outskirts of town far from the bike trails.

So things haven't worked out for me here quite the way I'd thought and no one has come to stay. It's really been a bit too quiet. Thank goodness I've had Mulligan, the little Jack Russell doggie who is a delight. I’ve never had a dog like him and I kind of want one. He is so smart and responsive, knows what I’m going to do before I do, is never far away (with only a couple of slight lapses when the temptation of a cat to chase proved too much). Every morning we do a good long walk in the countryside right from our front door which we both enjoy although he shows his excitement a little more obviously than I do. Rocket, the cat, lives here as well though spends much of his time in the barn, while the two sheep are pretty independent too and even less talkative. Then there are 7 hens, 1 rooster and 2 ducks who produce far too many eggs, and a huge hothouse with 67 (yes, I counted!) tomato plants already nearly up to the roof which need 15 litres of water a day, as well as 20 capsicum plants, 12 eggplants and 8 cucumber plants, and an enormous outdoor veggie garden with beans, carrots and courgettes. There is plenty to do.

This region of France is a huge agricultural area. Most of the small fields divided by the hedgerows which provided homes for the birds are long gone, replaced by immense expanses of wheat, barley and rye. On our Loire trip to the north of here we passed field after field of golden wheat so ripe and sun-drenched the stalks were almost translucent. Now, several weeks on into summer, the crops have been cut down to stubble and huge hay rolls dot the fields. The landscape is becoming a patchwork of gold, brown and yellow as farmers plough it in to make ready for the next sowing, while in the next field thousands of sunflowers, their faces all turned to the sun (the French word is tournesols!), stretch in immaculate rows to the horizon.

And so, my time in this country is once again at an end and I know that as I leave on Monday I will mourn the parting. It is a country I love. There are things I find frustrating: the inflexibility (“Non Madame, we can’t hopen the swimming-pool in late June even though there’s an eatwave because we don’t hopen it until 1 July”); everything (except for big supermarkets) being closed on Sundays and Mondays, and for 2 hours at least every lunchtime, that is everything: shops, hairdressers, post offices, campground offices, banks, tourist information offices, tourist sites; the poor internet connection in so many places; the lack of technology and mass of paperwork for everything (they still use cheques and registered letters!); the lack of vegetables in restaurant meals (they're there in the markets so where are they all?); the rate of smoking (even though it's less than Greece or Austria, it's still double that of the USA or NZ).

But there are so many things to love: the people, their friendliness, their hospitality, their sense of humour; their beautiful language; their ever-patient acceptance of bad French, no, more than just acceptance, they welcome and appreciate your efforts; their undying love for New Zealand; their 450 varieties of cheese; the crunchy hot bread smell of the boulangeries when you find them, the molten almond croissants and chocolate-dripping beignets; the flowery pretty villages; their sense of history and the stupendous buildings; how everything is a work of art – how they dress, the shop window displays, chocolates, gift-wrapping, flower gardens and much more; how everyone has an interest in and an opinion on politics, philosophy, literature; the Tour de France and the almost worshipful respect for cyclists; the network of tiny roads; their passion and steadfastness in standing tall and in refusing to give up on what they hold dear. Yes, I'll be back. Au revoir.

A former watermill in Tillou 

Today's six windmills at Tillou

A short stay in the Correze

After my Loire cycle trip, I caught a train south and met up again with my sister, Frances, in an area called the Corrèze where neither of us had been before. It’s in the south-west of the country just north of the popular Dordogne region. I realised again how vast this country is when it took Frances over 7 hours of driving (even with some motorways) to get there from Provence. We had booked a short stay here before my house sit further north started where Frances would be dropping me off after a few days.

The landscape here is such a contrast from Provence. Here there is rain. You can see that in the verdure of the countryside, the rushing streams, the waterfalls. It is all narrow valleys and wooded hillsides, leafy forests and rocky outcrops with castles perched on top. The colour of the villages, too, is different. Gone are the bright yellows and oranges of provençale houses, or the smooth white tufa stone of the Loire Valley. Here they are of rough grey stone with grey slate rooves more reminiscent of Wales or Scotland.

This really was a village-visiting trip and we were well rewarded, but the two villages we stayed in were possibly the best of all (thanks Lonely Planet!). First was Gimel-les-Cascades. The village and the hotel where we were staying are perched on the side of a hill above a series of impressive waterfalls which drop over 140m into a chasm called Le Gouffre de L'Inferno. They had had a week of rain when we arrived and it was still raining that night and I could hear the roar of the water from my hotel room.

The village itself is tiny but boy, do they ever know how to do pretty here when they set their minds to it, though a lovely and interesting setting helps of course. There were still almost no other tourists around even though it was early July so the local artisans and the only hotel/restaurant must have to make their living from about two busy months in the year.



My room window is just by the sign (better than a tent!)

Turenne, further east, is also super-attractive. The ruined castle and tower high on the hilltop can be seen from miles around and the houses clustered around the hill have changed little in hundreds of years. At a time when so many French villages are being abandoned, it is heartening to see others where vast amounts of money are being put into retaining the history and heritage and we saw many extraordinarily ambitious projects underway. Here, we even managed to score a hotel with a restaurant whose chef was adept at vegetarian cooking! Thanks sis!

 




Sucettes de fromage (cheese lollipops for appetiser!)

Of Kings and Castles in the Valley of the Loire





Saumur on the Loire River

From Provence I took a train to Saumur in the Loire Valley south of Paris for the start of my next adventure. I was joining Rose and Hugh Griffin from Nelson (Rose is my boss at The Gentle Cycling Company in Nelson) and a group of their friends on a bike trip from Saumur to Orléans, a distance of around 350km completed over a leisurely 12 days including two rest days and allowing for plenty of sightseeing as well as shortish daily distances since, unlike the rest of the group who had a driver with a backup vehicle and were staying in hotels, we three were camping and carrying all our gear on our bikes.

Through the Saumur vineyards

Our route was based loosely on the Loire à Vélo cycle trail that forms part of the great Eurovélo 6 that runs from the mouth of the Loire River on the Atlantic coast all the way to the Black Sea, a 4,000km cycle journey usually completed over a period of 3 months. For our trip, rather than strictly follow the trail alongside the river which can get a little tedious after a while and anyway all cyclists want an occasional hill climb don’t they?, we chose the same route Tony and I had done with Alan and Viv three years ago which leaves the Loire from time to time to visit other areas. It wasn’t too much of a hardship for me to repeat it.


Tufa cliff dwellings

Keeping cool...

The whole of this route is on the UNESCO World Heritage list as an area of outstanding significance for its historic towns and villages, great architectural monuments and cultivated lands, and it’s a real treat for cyclists. There is so much variety. Some days you pass through vineyards on tiny lanes with wide views across the valley, or you fly with the breeze behind you along purpose-built and smooth-surfaced cycle paths along the top of stop-banks by the slow-moving river, or you meander through tiny villages, through cool and shady forests where kings used to hunt, follow a leafy and peaceful tributary of the Loire with ancient water mills and communal lavoirs (public clothes washing houses) that still look as they did hundreds of years ago, then climb onto the plateaux of grain-fields passing crops of barley, rye, wheat and oats which we finally learnt to identify. We stopped at grassy picnic areas and ate quantities of crusty bread, numerous cheeses, pâté, peaches, apricots and strawberries, and some even drank beer and wine (brought there by their back-up vehicle and driver) but I don’t know how they managed to bike afterwards!

Chateau d'Usse (Sleeping Beauty's Castle)

Chambord

There are so many glorious sights in this area that it is hard to know how to prioritise. We limited ourselves to one a day but there are many, many more. The Loire River is France’s longest. For centuries, the country’s rulers built forts and castles (now known as châteaux) along the river’s banks and clifftops due to its strategic position dividing the country into north and south. Even once the centre of power shifted back to the ancient capital of Paris in the middle of the 16^th century, the Loire Valley continued to be the place where French royalty and the wealthy bourgeoisie preferred to spend most of their time, and they renovated existing châteaux or built lavish new ones as their summer residences or hunting lodges. Numbering more than 300, these châteaux cover many different kinds of architectural styles and eras, ranging from the brooding medieval fortress of Chinon spread along the length of a clifftop overlooking the small town of the same name with its many tall narrow half-timbered houses, to the beautiful jewel of Chenonceau all white and glistening, its elegant arches spanning the River Cher and known as the ‘Ladies’ Castle’ for having nearly always belonged to women, to the ridiculously immense and elaborate Chambord with its 440 rooms, 84 staircases and 365 fireplaces. Looking at this one, you know why there was a revolution yet now it’s a major tourist site attracting hundreds and thousands of visitors each year.



Beaugency

But it wasn’t only the châteaux that we enjoyed. Some of our favourite experiences were the unexpected, such as a bustling market in a town square where we bought cheese and crabs and juicy watermelon, or the much less grand, such as the cliff-dwellings built into cavities left from mining the local tufa stone used for the buildings, or the tiny village of Chedigny with its pretty flower-draped cottages and wonderful tea-room on the broad stone terrace of the former parsonage under a shady walnut tree and overlooking a prolific potager (kitchen garden) full of all kinds of vegetables and herbs with espaliered apples forming archways through the middle. We drank coffee and ate delicious moist apple cake (yes, unusual in France where cakes aren’t really a thing) and felt very lucky to be doing this ride.

Then there are the extraordinarily beautiful gardens of Villandry attached to the Château de Villandry, and the Clos Lucé house and garden at Amboise where Leonardo da Vinci spent his last few years under the patronage of King François I who invited him to live in this house as a peaceful space to plan his designs and inventions and, by all accounts, to organise grand parties for the king! There is a secret tunnel between the house and the castle so the two of them could meet in private. The landscaped garden is a special attraction with scale models of various of his inventions and interesting representations of some of his most famous paintings. Da Vinci died here and is buried in the chapel in the gardens of the nearby Château d’Amboise.

One of the things I love about cycle-touring is the simplicity. Not only do you have everything you need on your bike (tent, sleeping bag, toothbrush…) but it is so easy to stop and take photos whenever you want or just gaze at a good patisserie or a field of sunflowers. And even when you arrive at one of the most popular tourist attractions in France, parking is never a problem. There are vast bike parks often much closer and more conveniently located than the car and bus parks and with the cycle path running right up to them. Metal bars are provided to lock your bikes to and no one ever seems to worry about leaving all their gear while they’re away for a few hours. Not only is it of course a very low-cost way to travel, it is also very low-stress, especially with the navigational aids we have these days. You are away from people and busy roads out in the fresh air amongst the scents of the countryside, and you’re getting exercise all day long, which I love. Yes, we were tired every night, but after a shower, a good meal and a night’s sleep, even on a Thermarest mattress, it’s amazing what you’re up for again the next morning.     

Loches from our campsite

Campgrounds in France still seem to be given priority. They are often on prime bits of real estate by the water with fabulous views of the town. The facilities are usually excellent though they lack the kitchens of many NZ campgrounds. Some have fabulous, pristine swimming-pools (with no one around in June) and all kinds of accommodation options as well as camper van and tent sites: cabins, cottages, permanent tents, tents on stilts, bunk beds in a kind of tramping hut arrangement, and more. The ones on the Loire à Vélo route are often especially well set up for cyclists with sites for small tents clustered around a central building that often has sinks, fridges and power points, so essential for recharging your navigation devices!


Steak Tartare - not mine!!

Our airbnb in Blois - a creative solution to lack of bike space!

Our only real problem was the heat. We hit the very unusual June heatwave (everyone was complaining) and it was up to 38 on some days. There were illuminated signs on the roadsides telling people to not exercise and to look after each other because of the canicule. At least when you’re biking there’s a bit of a breeze but when we stopped it was stifling. It was still stifling at 10pm. We would have a cold shower (where we could – in some campgrounds the temperature was set to hot – urgh!), a swim in the pool as late as possible (and there were some fabulous pristine swimming-pools with hardly anyone around), but still go to bed soaked in sweat. At least I could sleep with a tent flap open and Rose and Hugh never used their fly, while others in the group spent nights lying awake in too small too stuffy hotel rooms. And they had no pool!

The signing of this route is improving all the time but there are many bike trails in the area and it is easy to follow the wrong one without realising it until you find yourself alone on a road with trucks bearing down on you. Luckily this only happened to some of our group who seemed insistent on finding the wrong path. A combination of a good map and a good app to supplement the signs worked well for most of us and, unlike last time, I didn’t lead anyone astray, well not too far anyway.