How Harry Couldn’t Cope With A Gravelly Slope and How We FINALLY Found, If Not OUR Place, Then At least A Place In The Sun.

Saturday 13th November: ‘It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive’. (Who said that? Answer as a comment, please.) But if the traveller’s hopes are realised at the end of the journey, then both the hoping and the travelling are rewarded. So we travelled, we travelled up hillsides, we travelled down hillsides, we travelled beside rivers and we travelled through the rain, then trough the drizzle then through more rain, then even when we reached Languedoc, where the Viaduc de Millau should have looked like this:

 

(Photo from 2 years ago) – we could hardly see it! We crossed it in fog! (At a cost of 9e20, the only toll we’ve paid since leaving Garth View.) But still there was that hope … that hope that there WAS sunshine in the south! Carol thought she saw a break in the cloud …. Na, whatever it was closed up and the rain came harder than ever. BUT … round a few more corners, and there WAS a blue horizon! GO, HARRY! Through a tunnel, and that was OUR shadow on the wall beside the carriageway!

  

       

We were nearly at Salagou Lake, where we stayed in 2008, but the site we stayed on then is closed now, so we came round to the other side where the ‘Municipal’ at Clermont L’Herault is not only open but quite busy. We signed in, after an ‘incident’ (see below) and after parking up on a pitch of our own choosing, went back to the town for a big shop. This morning, Saturday Nov. 13th, we enjoyed our first outdoor breakfast:

 

But I’ve missed one of the most challenging moments so far! The entrance/exit at the site in Penchot was on a steep slope, down in – up out, and not tarmacced, just gravelly. Getting in was no  problem, and as usual for a one-night stopover we left the vehicles coupled. So we approached the exit (at about 12noon) without any worries, BUT …. Harry gave up on the slope. Reversing any significant distance with the A Frame is out of the question and, anyway, ‘taking a run at it’ would have been impossible 1) because the approach was a right angled bend and 2) emerging onto the road would have been dangerous. Two more attempts and the conclusion was there was no choice but to uncouple and re-couple on the road. The whole thing took most of an hour, but, never mind – at least the rain held off, having hammered on the roof all night.

Today has been a stay-at-home, catch-up-on-washing day. But we made time to look at the lake and take some piccies. Including a very strange fruit tree, which even a local man couldn’t recognise, the view across the lake to where the other site is, and the village where, two years ago, I said I might like to live! ….

   

  

   

   

Footnote (1) Barrier Rage! Rachel commented a bit back that it was good we didn’t get into campsite rage with the Flying Dutchman; last night it was near-miss barrier rage! We arrived here, stopped at the stop line (as you do), and someone’s hooting from behind. An irate French Female approaches the van ‘On veut entrer’ (We want to get in) ‘You can – you can pass us’ ‘Where can we pass you?’ ‘Here on this side – there’s room for a car between us and the barrier’. By now her husband in the car had worked it out and was already at the barrier, putting the number code in. ‘Oh’. No apology, no ‘that’s all right, then,’, just into the car. I said ‘La probleme EST?’ which probably isn’t French, but only Carol heard it. We went into reception. Man comes thru from back room – simultaneously, Frantic Frogess bursts in the front door – ‘La barriere ne monte pas!’ (The barrier wont go up). I said, quietly, to Carol, but in French ‘I thought we were here first!’ The man said ‘What code have you put in? What name is it? When did you arrive’ Checking the computer …. ‘ah, yes, you were going to leave today – that code isn’t valid any more.’ – ‘We weren’t going to leave’ – ‘Yes, look – till the 12th; you should have let us know if you were staying longer.’ Eventually the code was re-activated, and, again without a word to us, she made to leave. I smiled. She scowled. She got back into the car and looked back at the reception. I was still smiling at her. She scowled again. Fortunately that sort of thing a unusual here. I said to Carol ‘I hope we don’t turn out to be neighbours’. The man said, with a sigh, but a smile as well, ‘Eh bien, M’sieur-Dame?’

Footnote (2) DON’T use SatNav! That new Michelin Guide we bought gives co-ordinates for the sites, so I was dead chuffed on Thursday to put the site’s co-ordinates in instead of just the postcode.   ……

                 

                     

                              

The photos show the spot where we re-coupled yesterday morning. If I’d followed TomTom the evening before, we have ended up on narrow tracks, doing hairpin bends somewhere up that hillside! Fortunately, I’d already said to Carol, having already picked up signs to the site, ‘I’m not turning off this road unless the site is signed.’ She liked my plan …

Now, name this fruit: