TOURS AND HOME

Bonjour,

Re last post - restaurant closed so bread and cheese for my birthday. Still plenty of good meals to remember. A very good salade de gesiers in Narbonne (if goose/duck gizzards are your thing) but the arroz de negro in Benicassim must take the prize.
We had some interesting beer in a one bar village a few miles from the campsite. They served Floreffe Blonde en pression but how a Wallonian beer from the Lefebvre Brewery in the middle of Belgium should end up as the only draught offering in the west of France will have to remain a mystery. But good beer in general is making a resurgence in France and we enjoyed several cask conditioned bottles from the nearby Brasserie de l'Aurore.
We cycled into Tours along the banks of the Loire which was great and a couple of days later the other way which Pauline also assured me was flat although the destination, Montlouis, might have hinted that a few hills were involved.
Tours is a nice compact city with an impressive cathedral inside and out as shown below.

A good little red devil in the stained glass.

The old town.

The former archbishop's residence now the Musee des Beaux Arts.

Having reached the town of Montlouis by bike we can look down on the Loire. No photos of Montlouis which is, probably, the most boring town in France.

From Tours we decided to return to UK on the Caen - Portsmouth route and had our last French meal in the port of Ouistreham; oysters, steak and tarte tatin for me, prawns, chicken and chocolate mousse for Pauline. A couple of days followed in Moreton in Marsh to clean the van and have our first English food and drink, although a curry is a bit of adopted English dish although the steak and ale pie the following night was a bit more British! Some good English ale at reasonably sensible prices, at least compared to France and Spain was savoured and finally home.

So lots to reflect on but we're likely to do similar next year. Many thanks to all those who sent their comments and those who e-mailed separately and all the others who just followed our progress - over 600 views of the blog for this journey. Special thanks to or neighbours Peter and Mary who kept an eye on our house and all the others who were a telephone call away should they have been needed: we couldn't go away for these long trips without your help.

We will no doubt be in contact with you all over the next few weeks. Next blog - not sure when - but there will be one.

Toodle Pip,

J&P

INTO FRANCE

Bonjour,

We leave our camping in Spain,

and move into France. Our first resting place is Narbonne.

a splendid small town with an historic centre. Currently there is a sports photography exhibition at various historic locations around the town. Most of the town appears to have been cleaned and spruced up; town hall above, the main square and part of the cathedral area below.

The cathedral was impressive enough as seems to be the case in most French towns. The photo below is the approach into Narbonne which we cycled to from our campsite. I took a long range shot because only a hundred metres ahead the paths disappeared as there was major reconstruction of the canal towpath and surrounding roads with dust and noise pollution defying this rather pretty scene. The signage suggested that work would be complete by July 2013 - it added that this was stage 5. It neglected to say how many stages there were. It's a bit odd when we read Europe is suffering from recession, that there are so many major construction projects in France and Spain.

Although the weather was warm, for the first 24 hours there were gale force winds which meant our initial cycle from the campsite took a lot longer than it should. But there were vineyards to stop and taste along the way and there was a really excellent covered food market on arrival. Can't stop me then:  just buy pates, rillettes and most of all cheeses. The fridge now full, when opened, fills the van with scents of the formargerie. 

Apart from the language the move from Spain to France has two major impacts. Eating times - rather than take lunch at 3pm, the French eat at noon and often well before. Dinner by 7:30pm rather than 9:30pm. It takes a while to adjust. No time for breakfast! Also prices are way higher. In Spain a 3 course menu del dia including a glass of wine/beer would cost an average of 7 or 8 euros. In France without wine the cost would be at least double. Rather strangely, a bottle of drinkable local wine in a restaurant in Spain costs about 12 euros; similar in France, about 8 euros. Beer is mega expensive in France. A 25cl glass of the pression costs an average of 3 euros, in Spain about 1.30 euros including a tapa of olives or nuts. The beer in France is generally better though and micro-breweries are springing up all over the place. More on this next week. 

Thank you for all your comments and good wishes for my birthday. We shall have to get to the bottom of what Andy is doing at an all girls reunion at a later date! Pauline is about to take me for my birthday lunch or so I hope. The only restaurant within 5 miles of our new campsite was closed yesterday without warning. Otherwise, we do have a baguette and, of course, plenty of cheeses!

Birthday wishes this week to Toby. 

Final blog next week will cover our time in Tours, some unexpected beer and our arrival back in the UK.

Adieu

J&P

BARCELONA Part 2

Hola,

We've made 3 trips into Barcelona and barely scraped the surface. For our future reference, it would probably be best to get some sort of combined ticket to allow us entrance to several venues without queuing for tickets. Also it would be great to see it at night: there are buses all through the night back to our local town so that's on the list for next time.
Park Guell, below, designed by Gaudi and financially backed by Guell, was meant to offer housing in a large park but there were no buyers so now it is just a park.

I suppose it was a sort of Port Merion type experiment. 

Apart from the trouble getting into places, finding places was also quite a problem. A better map would have solved it but we have found the hundreds of policemen in the streets throughout Spain really helpful. They also salute you as you greet them. I seem to remember British police did likewise many years ago but probably stopped when Dixon of Dock Green went off air.

Above is the National Museum of Catalonian Art, housed in a spectacular old royal palace. The interior matches the outside for splendour and the exhibits are exceptional. I thought I had had my fill of old church frescoes, but these have been transferred from old churches which have been demolished and 'stencilled' onto the walls inside the palace with brilliant results. Because of these we only had time for a brief look around the rest of the galleries so it is on our list to return.

Mataro also has its' fair share of Gaudi. Below is his original warehouse building now housing an art gallery devoted to modern Catalan artists.

We also discovered this rather strange dance competition on Sunday morning in the main square. It was quite complex and judges were going from group to group and occasionally waving a team off. It seemed to last several hours so sadly we didn't see the final result. The band were playing some fairly strange Catalan music but the intricacies were lost on us.

The Catalan people although quite friendly are also very proud. I went into a shop and asked for cuatro postres of some sort. The woman looked at me baffled and I repeated. She said, in Catalan, you want one. No! Cuatro. She bustled off to find another assistant to whom I repeated my request. Ah! she said, you want quatre. Rarely has one letter caused so much confusion.

Next stop is over the French border in Narbonne. The penultimate post is next week.

Bona Tarda

J&P