Instead, for our longest hike yet, we will hike North, duplicating the first part of our trip to La Bonnaire, before branching off to the North-West... right off our map area and onto the next! This unfortunately makes for difficult route drawing, even on google maps. (Sorry about how that turned out below. After much effort, it was the best I could do.) In total, we will walk a relatively flat 6km to Chambost, then drop quickly down to Allières, another 1.5km in distance and 200m in elevation, before returning back the way we came.
Even though we could take a shorter, more direct route by simply walking North along Le Cocon from our gite, we want to avoid the road as much as possible, so we instead head out South down Le Cocon towards Le Crèt, and take our usual route to Le Grand Bola. At Le Grand Bola, we turn North, and follow the trail to Ruisseau du Badier. However, this time we hike the trail to Ruisseau Le Badier only about 1km before taking the left fork in the route to stay high on the ridge, minimizing our elevation change. Taking the right fork would drop us down to the creek running along the valley floor, as we did on our trip to La Bonnaire.
The trail is mostly open and easily navigable as it heads through the light forest, although it does get a little overgrown at one point, forcing us to duck through low-hanging branches.
It eventually spits us out again onto Highway D157. We ignore the route on the right, which would take us to La Bonnaire, and instead follow the highway West about 200m to a confusing mess of an intersection where the North end of "our" Rue Le Cocon improbably meets another Rue Le Cocon running East-West. We follow the rightmost Rue Le Cocon, heading up towards "Le Cocon" signpost, even though we could have also gone straight ahead: both roads meet at the signpost in about 400m. (Clear as mud, right?) Taking the hairpin turn on the left would return us directly to our gite, as the green sign indicates. Good to note, for future reference.
The familiar yellow signpost guides us across Highway D16 and up a very perfectly "Pierre Dorées" path. I charge up it with gusto. Then the path drops back down just as quickly, and follows a crest blanketed by wheat. It's beautiful.
We walk a very direct route, right through the centre of town. The houses are very traditional-looking, with stonework perfectly matched to the church. One fence still sports colorful oversized "flowers," no doubt left over from V-Day the week before. On the opposite side of the church, there is a World War 1 memorial with seven names of Chambost residents inscribed. Although I learned very generally about the World Wars in public school, and I even teach about parts of them at the post-secondary level, this small memorial really brings it home it me why V-Day is so important in France: it seems that people in every little corner of the country were personally touched by the war.
Beside the memorial is a linden (lime) tree with a sign saying it was planted in the reign of Henry IV. A grassy path follows a stone wall away from the church and down towards Allières. On the way, I am again reminded of my dad, as we pass a swingset that looks very much like the one he built me as a child. It's actually very touching to be reminded so much of my dad on this trip, since our hikes together instilled in me a love of hiking from a very early age.
Colin is frustrated, but this is not the first time this has happened. The bakery in Létra had posted a schedule that included being open on Tuesdays, but when we arrived to buy bread on a Tuesday, a handwritten sign on the door informed us that they were "Closed Tuesday." Another time, our host Alban took me to the corner store in Chamelet because I was having trouble locating it. (To be fair, it's less of a "corner store" and more just a "corner" inside the resto that sells some stuff, which is why I could not find it earlier). Obviously, Alban expected it to be open, since it should only be closed on Mondays. However, when we arrived, the door sported a nifty handwritten sign that said: "Closed Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday." After a long moment of looking at it, he simply shrugged and said: "I guess it won't be open for a while." I have learned to never leave the gite hungry.
In Allières, we take the opportunity to track down the Vietnamese Restaurant. You are probably wondering why the only restaurant in Chamelet is Moroccan, and the restaurant in Allières is Vietnamese. I wondered that too. lol. I had asked Alban about it earlier, and he told me they were both opened by the only foreign immigrants in the area. I'm not sure this is true, since I am pretty sure I saw an East Asian face in a yard in Chamelet, and the shopkeep in Létra mentioned a Scot. Still, it is true that the local population mainly appears to consist of Caucasian French people, and foreigners are still a novelty. Not at all like the wildly culturally diverse Vancouver. In any case, it is pretty exciting for us to find a place with chopsticks on the tables, and Colin is distracted from his bakery disappointment by the prospect of Pho.
Outside the restaurant is the typical placard advertising the "Menu du Jour": a three-course meal for 12 Euro. This Menu du Jour is an unusual combination of French and Asian cuisine, including the surprising option of "Pork Chop Suey," a dish invented by Chinese-Americans!! Inside the restaurant, the Vietnamese owners are sitting at one of the tables, eating their own midday meal, while two local Frenchmen hang out drinking at the bar. After a surprising amount of difficulty in obtaining a copy of the regular menu (the owner ends up going upstairs to print one off for us), Colin tries to order the Pho. It turns out they only have Pho on Thursdays. Say it with me now: because France! So instead we order curries.
The curries are decent, but not as impressive as the Moroccan meals in Chamelet. During our meal, I take a look at the two guys at the bar, one of whom seems to be trying to eavesdrop on us, and make some assumptions that they are your typical conservative suburban-type working dudes. However, I soon realize I might have misjudged them, as a few other guys come in to join them, one with spiky bleached tipped hair, sporting a bright pink cropped T-shirt, tight jeans, a rhinestone-studded belt, and fuchsia nailpolish. As the group gets more and more convivial, I am forced to concede that they may be much more liberal around here than I had originally thought. I whisper to Colin, "I think we have found the perfect town! Liberals, gays, plus Asian food--we are home!!!" Immersed in his curry, Colin responds without looking up, "They're not gay, they're just French."
Exiting the restaurant, we notice a small strip of stores across the street sporting rainbow lettering and displaying very similar clothing to the man in the restaurant.
Now that the bakery is open, we buy some croissants, two pain au raisin, and a fabulous looking loaf of pain au Canuts. I use it as bait to move my sore calves up the hill to Chambost. But something happened on the way up the hill...
By the time we reached the fields of wheat, the bread had mysteriously gotten shorter... ;) We pause as a pair of kites fly overhead and I try to capture them with my camera.
Approaching the junction of Le Cocon and Le Cocon, Colin and I exchange looks: the road? We decide to take the shortcut home, approaching our gite directly from the North. The road is narrow, but we don't see any cars. Looking back towards Places Cocon, we admire a lovely house perched on the Crèt de Meltrue and fantasize about who might live there. Just then we do notice a strange pair of animals grazing on the hill below the house: a pure white horse, so graceful as to cause me to look for its unicorn horn, and something darker brown... and much less graceful... what is that?? Yep. It's a llama.
Approaching the gite, we see a familiar vehicle parked on the side of the road. It is Alban hammering in rustic fence posts and running wire for a low fence. He looks hot and tired. We ask him what the fence is for. "The Sheep!" he grunts wearily. He can't seem to keep them from "going on vacation" to neighboring towns, so he packed them up in the camionnette and dropped them at a friend's place until a fence could be put around the entire property. We certainly don't envy his work, and being quite sweaty and tired ourselves, we don't volunteer to help. Fortunately, he doesn't seem to expect us to. As we head down the driveway to the gite, he calls out playfully, "Bonne douche!" :D
This adventure, again, made me chuckle. Methinks you have become much more tolerant and laid back when things don't quite go the way you were expecting. Must be all that hiking in the country air and perhaps beaucoup du pain?
ReplyDeleteWhen I look at the pictures of those beautful golden stone buildings and walls I can see where the name pierre dorees originates. They must be even more glorious when the rising or setting sun hits them. I saw similar golden stone houses in England and our tour was ending in late afternoon. The houses were magnificent.
Have you worn out your runners yet?
When I was in Montreal for that summer we would play "gay or French?".
ReplyDeleteFun for the whole family!