Tag Archives: poitiers

Wednesday 29th March 2017 – THE LADY WHO LIVES IN THE SAT-NAV …

… has her head screwed on properly, that’s for sure. Because she’s brought me to another place that was high on my list of places to visit. And so that’s another one crossed off my list.

But first of all, I had a reasonable sleep in a nice comfortable bed even though I was tossing and turning a little for some time during the night. And then after a leisurely breakfast and some work on the laptop, I hit the road.

First stop was for fuel. I found a place selling diesel at €1:17 a litre, which is the cheapest that I have been able to find for a while, and then back on the road I picked up the signs for “Fontevraud”

What’s at Fontevraud is the Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud, and this is quite an interesting building because the Abbey was heavily patronised by the Plantagenet Royal House of England. Aliénor (Eleanor) of Aquitaine, who was the wife firstly of the King of France and later of Henry II of England was a major benefactor of the Abbey.

In fact, she, her husband Henry II, their son the famous Richard the Lionheart, and Isabella, wife of King John, were buried here. While their tombs are still here though, their bodies are not. The Abbey was pillaged during the French Revolution and the remains were despoiled.

nevertheless, it led to a fine interchange with the guy at the cashier’s desk –
Our Hero – “with the Brexit, will the British be asking for the repatriation of the remains of King Henry and King Richard?”
Cashier – “anything still here is the property of the Abbey and nothing can be moved by anyone”
As Alfred Hitchcock once famously said to Kenneth Williams – “it’s a waste of time trying to tell jokes to foreigners”.

I took thousands of photographs, and when I have more time (because I’m rather busy right now) I’ll come back to edit this page and put them on line so you can see just how beautiful it is here.

And so in the beautiful hot sun, I hit the road and headed north to the Loire. And there, having crossed the river on a beautiful girder bridge, I found a place to settle down for an hour or so to eat my butty and contemplate the state of the nation.

Having gathered my wits, I headed off still northwards towards the coast. If I’m going to be anywhere, it’s going to be by the sea and near the beach. I know a little walled town on the coast with a beautiful beach and with an important ferry service out so some of the offshore islands. I mean – you know me. Whenever I see a ferry it always makes me cross.

And so eventually, after surviving two attacks of cramp in Caliburn, we arrived in Granville, in Normandy. I’ve bagged myself a hotel for tonight and tomorrow I’m going to find a holiday flat for 10 days or so while I plan my next move.

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Tuesday 28th March 2017 – I’VE LOST COUNT …

… of the number of times that I’ve stepped out of my life. Just thrown a few boxes of stuff into the back of an old car, said “goodbye cruel world” and moved on.

And yet, as I sit in my little hotel room in Poitiers, I can reflect on the fact that however many times I’ve done that in the past, here’s another time to be going on with, because I’m doing it again.

I’ve long-since come to the conclusion that I can no longer carry on at the farm. I can’t even drag myself upstairs, never mind a pile of wood, water, food, all that kind of thing. I can feel myself going downhill from one day to the next and if I feel like this now, what am I going to feel like in 8 months time when winter starts? Being too ill to move in minus 16°C with no heat and no mobile phone signal to call for help is not really such a good idea.

And so I need to move on now. While I still can. And so for the last week or so I’ve been packing up boxes of my more important stuff and bunging them into the back of Caliburn. And after a visit to the bank at 17:00, we hit the road.

I’ve not taken some stuff that I wanted, and that’s for sure. The furniture that I had set aside, I’m not up to mountaineering across the barn to fetch it (yes, I’m beginning to realise that I’ve left this “moving” lark a little too late, haven’t I?”. And other things that I dearly wanted to take with me – well, I can’t find them anywhere as far as I have looked.

But a few things are notable by their consistency. I’ve always taken with me my LPs and my guitar (the Gibson EB3 bass) and they are all comfortable in the back of Caliburn. In fact, the guitar was the first thing to go in.

Howeer, to return things to their proper order, I had another good sleep last night. Tossing and turning a little as I seem to do these days, nevertheless it’s really comfortable in my bed. And then a nice early rising and breakfasting long before the alarm went off.

After a nice repose, I then attacked the barn once more, looking for some more stuff (that I didn’t find, of course) and making sure that I had forgotten nothing. And then taking down some more stuff to put in Caliburn.

Once that was all out of the way, I locked up the barn completely and then made a start on tidying up the attic and cleaning everything. I did have half a mind to take a pile of stuff down to the launderette to wash but that can al wait for some other time.

After lunch, Ingrid came round to visit me again and we blitzed the attic, vacuuming it and cleaning it from top to toe. It’s never been looking as nice as it does right now, that’s for sure. Everything else was loaded into the back and we sat down for a breather. THis was the first time that I’ve ever been ready well in advance of leaving. usually it’s all a last-minute rush.

Ingrid and I said our goodbyes and I went to Pionsat and the Post Office to stop my post deliveries. But as you might expect, the Post Office was closed. No idea what will happen about that now as I had dismantled the post box before I left.

At the bank I concluded the business that I had started the other day, and then we hit the highway. Me, Caliburn and Strawberry Moose. Only a vague idea of where we’re going to go. At the moment we are just going to drift around until we find somewhere nice to live. Somethind will turn up – it usually does… "it’s called “Prison”" – ed.

But driving through the mountains of the Creuse I was listening to Carole King singing “You make me feel like a natural woman”. Well, as it happened, I was feeling like a natural woman too, but where I was going to find one around there is anybody’s guess.

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Friday 21st June – ADIEU, L’ILE D’YEU

At 10:30 am Cécile and I stepped onto the catamaran to take us back to the mainland – 30 minutes of high-speed sailing across the Bay of Biscay.

And I still can’t understand why they don’t have a coffee machine or something on board. Not only are they missing a major income-generating opportunity (which is not to be missed in these days of economic restraint), how am I supposed to go for 30 minutes without one.

ilr d'yeu france>With Cecile being here, I didn’t manage to re-read my A Night to Remember – the story of the sinking of the Titanic.

I did however manage to retake the photos that I took on the way out to the island when it was obscured by clouds or something such, because the weather on the way back across was so much better.

You wouldn’t have thought so, though, if you had seen this morning.

At 07:30 it was miserable, grey, depressing and drizzling – a typical summer day of course, but slowly it managed to brighten up as we packed.

By the time Cécile’s mother’s next-door neighbour Catherine dropped us off on the quayside it was turning into quite a pleasant morning and we were looking forward to the journey home.

pont de noirmoutier franceAs the catamaran (which I forgot to photograph yet again) pulled closer to th mainland, it gave me an opportunity to take a photograph of the Pont de Noirmoutier.

Noirmoutier is an island and before the bridge was built, there was a ferry that set out from Fromentine. The bridge put an end to the ferry when it was opened in 1971.

What the locals considered to be “excessive” tolls led to all kinds of demonstrations, one of which was suppressed by a famous baton-charge of the CRS in 1977.

The tolls were removed in 1994 following a series of accidents to travellers who knew of the existence of a sunken road between the mainland and the island, but not exactly WHERE it was

Having paid a fortune to a licensed bandit to retrieve Caliburn, we set out through the sun for the journey home, but caught up with the rain at La Roche sur Yon.

By the time we reached Chantonnay it was a howling gale and tropical rainstorm and I felt quite sorry for Cécile who I had packed off to buy the food for lunch while I fuelled up Caliburn underneath an overhead canopy.

At least we managed to avoid being hit by a falling meteorite, a fate that befell the town 200 years ago, but nothing would surprise me in this weather.

After Poitiers though we drove into the sun and the rest of the route was in quite nice weather, which made a welcome change.

In Pionsat, Marianne filled us in with the latest gossip and there was also a music concert going on in the square. Had I not been so whacked, I would have stayed on for the entertainment.

Anyway, I didn’t need much rocking last night, that’s for sure.

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