The above title is an example of the wonderful humour I must endure from my other half, Mike. Although you kind of had to be there to find it funny. Be where you ask? In France of course what else does a girl do with a week of paid holiday, so to the Ardeche I went and I am bitterly regretting stepping on that plane to leave.
Mike and I have had an amazing week
with our usual adventurous and slightly mad exploits from walking down pitch
black caves in a gorge to swimming the rivers and jumping from strange little
holes worn through the rock to plunge into the water below. I’ll confess I
regretted that too because our ears were painful all night!
So it was to Nimes first after my
rather interesting and extended journey to the land of the frogs and I swear I
had landed in Rome; we visited a colosseum, a temple and gardens teeming with
statues, pools and canals. The sun gloriously beat down all day and we had a
jolly old framing
the rock. It was a like a rock jungle for climbers! Then we had a journey down
the gorge road ogling the sights from the viewpoints, before retiring to bed
for a long sleep definitely for me and hopefully to wake up with repaired ears.
time. Back to the Segries PGL centre and I was introduced to many of
Mike’s staff friends most of which referred to me as Mrs Hood which is quite
unsettling but still a little amusing. The little liar that he was had booked
us into one of the chalets for a week instead of bumming around in hammocks like I thought so we set up our little fort for the week
and went off down to a mysterious place called Pont d’ Arc. And at first glance
it was truly magical, an enormous natural arch framing the river beneath and on
closer inspection from the water we found little holes we could jump from and a
sort of chasm you could swim into that quite reminded me of a natural
cathedral. Mike then took me up river hopping barefoot across the rocks to show
me another of his treasures, (the name eludes me), but just up the river was a
great little climbing venue with huge stalagtites and tufas (that's what Mike called them anyway).Not liking my accessorising |
We debated what to do with my last day and the obvious
answer was paddle the river, do what people actually come to the area to do. So we grabbed some boats in the morning and pushed off in the flow. Now I haven’t
paddled in forever! So it was definitely strange being in a boat again
especially going down rapids solo which I have not done much of so Mike and his
friends who we bumped into later must have had a good little chuckle at me
squealing my way down a river they do every day, oh well. Mike played around in
the rapids while I snapped piccies then we carried on through Pont d’ Arc to
the rock jump they do with the kids. Then it was another short stretch to the
get out where it was the start of our trudge back up the river (with a short
stop off in a restaurant sharing a HUGE slab of beef) to the car. What do you
need straight after a paddle? A climb! How right you are. So off we went to Salavas to do some climbing. Although to me the walk up to the place was steep
enough to be a climb itself phew! I doubted the route Mike put me in front of at
first, it looked a little blank for the 4 he was telling me it was however upon
watching him go up and clambering up myself it had so many hidden jugs and
brilliant handholds that were near invisible from below but from above it was like
Leerdammer cheese. We did another few and I let Mike try a few harder ones I
wasn’t bother about following him up before heading off to Vallon to see if the
river photographers had captured us at Peaches B where they take tourists’
pictures (and also to eat pizza mmmmm). They hadn’t got us or we couldn’t find
them but oh well so we went to the restaurant before heading back to the quiet
little car park at Salavas to spend the night. Mike hadn’t booked us the chalet
the last night thinking we could do something cool so we had a little camp out and watched the sky grow dark. Well we actually watched Bolt but that isn't very romantic!
Not much to tell of the journey home other than multiple naps, many loud children and heaves of people in London
before alas back at Newland I found myself, longing to be back in France. I
never thought I’d say that but I suppose when your heart is not with you but
off somewhere else you will always desire to follow it.