June 26 Saturday Narbonne - St Pardoux Riviere

Thanks to Bruce and Diana who had found the train station in Narbonne and picked us up when our train arrived last night at about 9.00pm. They’d settled in at our Etap Hotel and whizzed us back there to a very welcome cup of tea and munchies. Still a rather average hotel, but inexpensive and cleaner than the last Etap in Menton and well located for getting away smartly for our big day’s travel this morning.
Heading West on a major route through rolling country with grapes, villages on every rise, knoll and vantage point and wind farms on the horizons. We pulled off to the first stop for a stand-up brekkie and fuel up and then on to Carcassonne.
We’d decided to take the time to visit this amazingly restored Medieval City and despite the fact that there is some criticism that the restoration has it all looking a bit too perfect, it is an absolutely captivating spectacle. It’s so much easier to get the feel of medieval life in such a well restored city without having to look at ruins and mentally restore them, though within the walls today the City bulges with tourists and eateries – we found that often the only way you could distinguish where one restaurant finished and the next began was by the different tablecloths and table settings! We found a little patisserie outside the walls where a very elderly, twinkly eyed French baker took pride in crafting us a beaut jambon and fromage roll.
Gretel the GPS was telling us five and a half hours to St Pardoux, so leaving Carcassonne it was Fred at the wheel with head down to tick off the miles. Miles of motorway and several toll gates, increasingly rugged country but easy driving with huge viaducts spanning any steep gorges and all so well treed with wonderful coverings of oak forests.
My turn to drive as we headed into the Dordogne district. Slowly but surely Gretel took us off the main highways and on to minor roads and in fact sometimes we thought make-believe roads, especially when there was grass down the middle. However, we’d chosen to follow her directions, so carried on through fascinating farmland with mown hay, big round bales, crops of grain and walnut groves, all the while with great swathes of oak forests.
And then; St Pardoux here we are! A weir on the river, a quaint stone bridge, past the petanque grounds and clubhouse, then the camping grounds and finally to Liz and Peter’s St Pardoux Cottage. What a wonderful place and how lucky we are to be able to stay here for a week! A stone farm cottage where the full basement once housed the animals (now with a concrete floor and used for laundry and storage) and the upper level housed the farmer and family. Set on a couple of acres of lush pasture sloping up to forest behind there’s a picture book French scene to look out on when the shutters and windows of the bedrooms are flung open.
But, there was no immediate flinging open of shutters and window in our bedroom as a hive of bees had decided that the 20cm wide space between the shutters and the windows was a great place to build their hive! How does one deal with that predicament in France?
On our arrival we’d had a cheery “Bonjour” from a neighbour across the road so he was our first port of call. He had no idea what we were, with much buzzing and miming of flying etc, trying to explain and I think he was feeling a little cautious when dragged into the cottage by a bunch of jabbering, gesticulating kiwis! But he was quickly to the rescue, dashing off to engage our knight in shining armour, the 80 year old, ex-farmer from next door. In no time at all he appeared, clad in his apiarist gear, ladder under one arm, smoking canister in the other hand. Diana and I left it to the blokes and popped into town to stock up with essentials and check out the pizzeria for takeaways for dinner. Meantime, back at the cottage, our wonderful neighbour had brought an empty beehive and placed below the window and teetered at the top of his borer infested ladder with brave Freddie holding the ladder steady for him and for his efforts sustaining an angry beesting right on his eyebrow!!! (photos one day I hope!). Slowly but surely the puffing of the smoke encouraged the bees to move out and eventually we were all at the kitchen table sharing a well-earned drink. A lot of talking but very little comprehension, though I’m sure we managed to convey our gratitude!