Friday night
Leave Chambery sans probleme.
Reach town with lots of S's in its name. All signs point to that town. Get ensnarled in residential ghetto. Sven admits it may be the wrong town with lots of S's in it.
It is.
Reach T juntion: Left - 'Toutes directions' (all directions). Right - 'Autres directions' (other directions). That's French logic for you.
Eventually get back on the correct road. Wiggle around the mountains. Some kids have spray-painted over the name of our destination village. Amazing how there are vandals even in idyllic ski resorts.
8km before we arrive: ROUTE BARREE (road shut, sorry). Ah, maybe it wasn't chavs after all.
A big detour on more winding roads later, and 7km in the other direction from our destination: ROUTE BARREE (road shut, haha).
Zees ees starting to tek ze peas. Sven mutters someting about 'locals only' areas where they don't bother with signposts for tourists.
2 hours, 200km and much comfort-eating later, we finally get there having taken a ridiculously long detour as our only remaining option.
We spot a clearing in the forest for camping and drive into it. "Er, Sven, this looks a bit mud-" SCHREE! WHIRR!! We're not moving. The wheels are creating a lovely melange of mud and twigs. Unable to reverse, Sven drives further in. We are now on the forest, rather than in it - the undergrowth is entangled round our wheels and if my window wasn't shut, there would be a decorative array of twigs and branches skewering my eyeballs, hair and clothes kebab-stylee.
I get out and try to push. Nothing happens except the car seems to get taller. A quick look down brings the exciting revelation that I am in fact sinking in very sticky mud. I stand and flap uselessly as Sven attempts dramatic reversing manoeuvres and 23-point turns. It suddenly seems very dark and I swear I can hear wild boar surrounding me. It's all a bit Blair Witch.
We eventually find a sensible spot and crash out for the night. The next day dawns a little later and a lot damper than expected, so we abandon dramatic multipitch plans and drive 2 hours further South to the Dentelles de Montmirail - some dramatic limestone 'teeth'.
A summary of Saturday
- Attempt to be adventurous with food.
- Buy mysterious meatballs from charcuterie. "I don't normally tell people what's inside until they've tried one" says the butcher, encouragingly. He tells Sven anyway: heart, liver, muscle and lung.
- Eat some of said ball before climbing - lung appears to be wrapped around everything else.
- Climb 2 routes. Very hot. Feel sick. Very sick.
- Fall asleep for 2 hours at the bottom of the crag, harness and shoes still on.
- Wake up feeling sunburnt. Feel sick again. Fall asleep for another half an hour.
- Retreat to bar. Feel a bit better.
- Forgetting previous culinary mishaps, order mulled wine, which is listed on the menu alongside grog. Enthusiastically slurp it down through a straw. Turns out to be grog and mulled wine combined. Feel rather ill again.
- Camp by 8th century ruined castle.
Slightly more successful Sunday
Wake up late. Bakery. No guidebook. Sharp rock. 4.5 routes. Hard. Retreat to bar. Ice cream. Drive along same country road as a rally race. At the same time. Survive. Home by 6. Eat spaghetti.
Lessons learnt
- No need to be adventurous with food. Never again.
- 'Vin chaud - grog' is an inclusive 'and', not just two things with the same price.
- The bottom of a cliff in the South of France overlooking vinyards and rustic villages is one of the best places I've ever had a nap.
- Spiders eat horsemeat.
- Climbing is a great excuse for travelling (okay, I already knew that one!)
- Olive trees take so long to grow that it's usually easier to get an old one delivered straight to your garden:
- Nothing beats spaghetti and ketchup after a hard weekend's climbing.
5 comments:
I can't tell for sure from your photo but I'm pretty sure that your meatballs are wrapped in caul.
What's caul? I hope it's not lung!
It's the membrane that keeps your guts sitting in the right place. I'm not sure that makes it better than lung.
How did you discover that spiders eat horsemeat?
Sven had some dried horsemeat and dropped a bit on the ground. He called me over to show a giant spider eating it. Needless to say, I was utterly terrified and it goes to show that spiders are carniverous, dangerous beasts.
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