Saturday May 20
Guess where we’re headed today? None other than Saint Médard de Guizières, the place that should have been Saumur, but wasn’t.
Maisie is doing us both ends up today. I’ve planned to go the scenic way, but she has other ideas. She takes us down the A10 - the “Route des Oiseaux” towards Bordeaux. That’s having first directed us over another FHB over the Charente. I’m convinced she’s wrong and stop in a supermarket car park to argue the toss. Of course she’s right. We have to do the FHB.
Our route also takes us past France’s national police college. “Bonjour bonjour bonjour. C'est quoi tout ça alors?” I hear you say. Also, “Gardez-les épluchés” and “Remarque comment tu vas”.
Actually, on the “Route des Oiseaux”, which has as its logo a hoopoe - which is an orange bird with fancy hair that can be seen in the UK, but only rarely - we spot only the one bird as far as I can tell. It looks like a buzzard. Maybe it’s eaten the hoopoe.
After a smooth run down, broken only by an almost digestible cheeseburger at a motorway aire, Maisie laughs as she takes us across country to Saint-Médard. We travel through hectares of neat vineyards. The vines are low to the ground compared with those at home in Shropshire. Must be a name for that style of cultivation Zoe and Mel Evans?
When we reach the town, I refuse to play, even if it means going the long way round until, Finally, some days late, we arrive in front of the console I should have been facing a few days back. The site’s quite full. It has a restaurant just through the gate. At the back of the restaurant are dated showers and functional loos. The gents is a ‘squatter’. No thanks. For the duration, call me Maureen.
Having settled in, we explore the town a little and stop off at the Café de La Republique, which is notable for a couple of things. First is the silver guitar attached to the pumps on the bar and the second is the owner’s blue merle collie, which has a lean and hungry look and astonishing blue-grey eyes.
I try a little conversation, but the owner isn’t playing: “C’est un collie, non?” “Non. C’est un chien…” Or maybe he is: “Ok, oui, c’est un collie.” Oh how we laughed.
The Café de la Republique is No 2 out of four restaurants in town, according to Trip Advisor. I try to book the No1 - Restaurant Le Petit Queyrai - on their Facebook page. I have no idea if I’m successful, but we’ll turn up anyway at the allotted time of 7pm, which I think is probably a bit early for France.
We’re ‘smartish’ because we’ve not really been out-out on this trip yet. We arrive five minutes early and wait. At about 10 past out maitre-d, a man who looks like Stanley Tucci with a hipster goatee slides open the glass door. I explain that we tried to book on the Facebook page. Not a flicker of recognition, although his smile tells me Facebook is probably not the best way to book.
As with most of the people we’ve met, he’s really helpful and we struggle through the menu together, with some help from Professor Google.
The result is a starter of peanut crusted prawns with guacamole and a teriyaki sauce, followed by sea bass with mixed vegetables in olive oil for me and a tuna carpaccio with wasabi and mayonnaise chased by sea bass with pea and asparagus risotto and truffle for Cal. We tried a reasonably-priced Bordeaux white and followed it with a cognac for me and Baileys for herself. All in all, just over £100 which, given the quality of the food, we think is pretty reasonable.
We thank Stanley for his help and patience, stagger back to Betsy and - so I’m told - I crash “like a starfish” on the bed in such a manner that I have to be manhandled into a more comfortable position.
Sunday May 21
Today is blog day. I’ve neglected it all of the trip so far, although we’ve been keeping folks updated via Facebook. Cal’s very good at it. She used to do the Facebook page for Churncote Farm Shop and Butchery and the Cote Kitchen.
I’m finding the writing kind of therapeutic. Although I’m still getting big bridge shivers.
Not sure I’ve done this much writing in one day in years, which reminds me, I have short stories to finish.
In the meantime, I’ve been using the website and app Rome2Rio to plan a big adventure for tomorrow. We’re heading for Bordeaux by train…
Monday May 22
As is usual, everywhere is much further away than you think, so Mrs W is starting to get a little tetchy that we’ve been walking a while and still not come across the railway station at Saint-Médard.
She reaches peak tetchy just as we arrive, although you have to look closely because it looks like a bus shelter at the back of a car park. The only thing that really gives it away is the automatic barriers, currently in the up position, either side of the town’s main drag.
That said, we have arrived about 20 minutes early for the 10.48 to Bordeaux Saint-Jean. I am accused of ‘route-marching’ the lady on a muggy morning, not helped by the just-in-time arrival of a group of fellow passengers who obviously know about this stuff. It’s a theme that’s going to come back later in the day with renewed ferocity.
Bordeaux is about 50 minutes and four stops away. We exit the station into bright sunshine, deciding that despite the to-ing and fro-ing and trying to second guess what the weather would be like when we were back at the bus, we’d still not got it quite right in the end.
We’re not really sure where we’re heading, but we go there anyway figuring out that if the river’s on our right, the city centre must be somewhere up ahead. We get there eventually, but the long way.
Planning this trip, one of the loose ideas was to go to some of the places visited by celebrity chefs Rick Stein and James Martin over three TV series: Rick’s ‘French Odyssey’ and ’Secret France’ and James’s ‘French Adventure’.
Today we’re in search of Rick’s fountain with red water. We found the Fontaine des Trois Graces and it’s every bit as magnificent as it looked on the telly. The water was definitely not red. Maybe Rick was joking about that and it was a few years ago now.
Before that, we’d found a busy brasserie near the Basilique Saint-Michel, a massive church which is currently undergoing some serious renovation.
The waiter/maitre-d (or whatever) at La Mere Michel is a bundle of energy. No matter how French you try to sound, he susses you’re English straight away and offers the English menu, which is sheets of A4 pasted into an exercise book and perfectly serviceable at that.
While we were there, he only got it wrong once and that’s because one half of the couple spoke English and the other spoke French.
We order salads. Cal’s is smoked salmon and mine is a ‘La Fermière’, which is chicken, lardons and walnuts in a tangy mustard vinaigrette. They’re both really tasty, but somehow we feel the need for sweet crêpes to follow.
As we’re eating we see an electric delivery van gliding almost noiselessly by.
Cal says something and I begin to ramble about “well, it would depend where you put the batteries and whether she could carry the weight.”
Cal looks at me confused. “What did you think I said?”
“How would Betsy cope with that?”
“No, I said… How would deaf people cope with that?’
Oh, the irony.
After lunch, we pose for pictures by the Pont de Pierre and I try to get myself run over by a tram en-route to the fountain. I reflect on the fact that tram driver, while tooting his horn, wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down. My fault. Should have noticed the big, shiny, fast-moving thing to my right.
After another short comfort break, disguised as a digestif, we finally track down the city centre.
There’s a street, the Rue Parlemant Sainte Catherine, which has shops. Including Zara. There are Zaras all over the world and, if she could, Cal would visit them all. There’s a Zara at Jumbo in Faro, been there, too.
Herself is tempted by a couple of tops in ‘this year’s blue’ and white. She also fancies some white trousers.
About an hour later she comes out of the changing room slightly par-boiled and irritable.
But, she has a lovely loose summery top-thingy having decided against the trousers, which were in fact jeans.
I notice the time is getting towards departure. We’re due on the 16.58 from Saint Jean, but I have no idea where that is and Google Maps is offering contradictory information.
I route-march Cal in the general direction of where I think Google is pointing.
It’s hot. She’s flagging. I’ve noticed she’s flagging, but not that she’s hot. This is where the big adventure starts to go south a bit, not helped by the fact Cal’s not happy about negotiating groups of stationary men who seem reluctant to move for a woman. In hindsight, I’m not really helping.
Anyway. We eventually make it to the station, though barely talking. And from there to the train, which gets very busy with commuting school kids at Libourne and virtually empty again at Coutras.
The mutual grump continues into the evening, even after arriving back at Betsy.
It’s our first big niggle of the trip, I think. We talk it through, sometimes at a higher volume than others, and move on.
Betsy’s not big enough for a major falling out, after all. And tomorrow we ride - to Saint-Émillion!