Category: Mongolia

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Week 18 (France 13)

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Where were we?

Places! We went to places! Read on…

On the road again…

Where should we have been?

Early last Sunday we packed up again and headed for the main station in Ulaanbaatar for our last booked train. From here on in (weird mental leap here) we didn’t (in March) have much actually booked; plenty of plans and ideas but nothing concrete.

We arrived in Beijing on Monday afternoon and have spent the week exploring this amazing city.  We left it briefly mid-week for a night. In a tent. On the Great Wall of China.

Where did we actually go? What did we do?

St Pierre de Chartreuse

Sunday was a day of torrential rain, but we needed to get out, so we put on lots of waterproofs and drove 5 miles or so down the gorge towards St Laurent du Pont and explored a path recommended by Fabienne, whom we met last week. This path was the original path used by the monks of the Grande Chartreuse monastery before the late 19th century road was built.

The original bridge was the clashing rocks. We were glad to be able to use the 16th century version.

The way was marked by painted blue fishes, and the river was in full spate, which was glorious to behold, as was the beech forest. Ben could not believe he had never been there in the 30 years of coming to the Chartreuse.

Wet river walks aside, the top excitement at home prior to our departure was the arrival of the dishwasher repair man.  Keen readers will remember that the dishwasher broke about three days into confinement and dishwasher repairs were not considered an essential service.  It has taken this long since deconfinement a) for us to ring him and b) for him to come up the hill and see us.  When he arrived Harriet had just taken a batch of biscuits out of the oven.  He had a cup of coffee and several biscuits and… turned the dishwasher on. €48 for the privilege.  Oh well.

The shepherd that relied on this red sky would have been destined for disappointment

If free French lessons and endless pots of delicious jam aren’t enough, our now-not-so-new friend Debbie went further to the top of Harriet’s list by (apparently) being genuinely astonished to discover that she (Harriet) was over 40.  As Harriet is rapidly heading for 43 and a half and hasn’t worn make up in months this was A Good Thing.

Pont du Gard

Anyway, we left the Chartreuse on Monday morning intending to head straight for the Camargue, about four hours South.

The drive was easy and those of us that were looking out of the windows enjoyed watching the landscape change entirely: the beech and fir were replaced by the iconic cypresses, the roofs became flatter and the buildings more golden, Mont Ventoux loomed over the horizon and as if we needed any more Provençal clichés, there was lavender growing in the field next to where we had our picnic.

The plan to head directly South went awry though when Harriet spotted that our route took us within five miles of the iconic Pont du Gard.

Ben had first been here thirty years ago, when there were no railings and you could walk along the top (as parents we were very pleased that is no longer possible), and Harriet and Ben came 15 years later when there was major building work going on.

Now, though, there is a swanky visitors centre, with museum and cinema, and over 1.5 million people visit each year.

Except in 2020 of course. It was both extremely eerie and an extraordinary privilege to have the place almost entirely to ourselves. There were perhaps a hundred or so other people across the entire site. That elusive tourist photo that makes it look like you are the only person there was suddenly easy.

It is also possible to walk down to the river Gardon itself and paddle (or jump, or swim, although as we hadn’t come prepared we stuck to paddling). The water is absolutely clear and the little fish will come and give you a pedicure…

Camargue

The Camargue is formed by the delta of the Rhone, which forks at Arles into two branches. The land is marshy and low-lying and famously home to wildlife found nowhere else in France: flamingos, Camarguais black bulls (no one ever mentions the cows) and white horses and infamously, hordes of particularly vicious mosquitoes.

The Camargue big three

The main town in the Camargue is Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, a small seaside resort of the reassuringly unclassy variety. It is named after the four Saints Mary, two of whom you have never heard of (St Mary Salome and St Mary Jacob). According to legend these saints arrived in France by boat after the resurrection along with their maid Sara. Sara had dark skin and is, apparently just because of her skin colour (even writing this feels wrong now) the patron saint of gypsies. (That’s another word that feels wrong. The French use the word Tzigane which is traditionally translated as “gypsy“. We have done the same but if that is wrong we would love to be educated).

St Sara. The patron saint of bling

In any event there is a huge Spanish and Romani tradition in the town, with massive festivals twice a year, though not this year of course. The famous bulls are bred for the ring, but we were relieved to discover that in Course Camarguaises the point is to snatch a rosette from between the bull’s horns (or possibly shoulders) and not to kill it. The best bulls become local superstars.

Sadly of course the bullring is another casualty of Covid-19 but we were all agreed we would love to come back and see it.

We were staying, for the first time on this trip, in a hotel. We had wanted somewhere right by the sea in the hope that might lessen the threat from the mosquitoes. In any event AirBnB accommodation seemed thin on the ground. Whether that was Covid, short notice or just because there are so many of us we don’t know.

Location, location, location

Staying in a hotel was a useful exercise as it reminded us why we don’t stay in hotels. They are too expensive (not to mention having to eat out for every meal) and we like having our own space.

But it was lovely being so close to the sea. We couldn’t see it, but we fell asleep to the sound of the seagulls (ish, they were very noisy and there was a whiny mosquito too)  and woke to the waves on the sand.

If we are honest, we suspect that the beach was the highlight of the Camargue for the children.  A sandy, gently shelving strand with regular breakwaters and not a sunlounger in sight.  We treated Magnus to a bucket and spade and he was as happy as one of the local clams digging endless holes, making castles and burying anyone who sat still long enough.

The girls, on the other hand, turned into water babies. It may have been the Mediterranean but the water temperature was still only about 15 degrees. Nonetheless they were in it like fish, swimming, jumping and generally enjoying their new and much-longed-for bikinis.  As parents the (2 and a half year) age gap between Magnus and Aurora and Sophie has never seemed wider.

Having said that, on the beach, all four of them seemed closer than ever.  The girls were brilliant with Magnus, keeping an eye on him in the water and actively wanting him with them. This isn’t normally the case and it was lovely to see.

On our second day we dragged them away from the beach and onto a boat for a tour along the coast and up the Petit Rhone.  This was billed as a chance to see some of the wildlife up close. Although it was slightly disappointing on that front, sitting watching the world (and the many herons – which possibly would have been more exciting had we not been so used to them at home) go by was a very happy use of ninety minutes. 

We got much more up close and personal with the birdlife at the Parc Ornithologique du Pont de Gau.  Harriet had been longing to see flamingos and this more than fulfilled her wishes.  As a protected wetland area it is home to many more species than just the pink leggy ones and we also spotted more herons, storks, avocets, oyster catchers, black kites, endless swifts and swallows and many more including a coypu, a large aquatic rodent rather like a giant swimming guinea pig.

We also enjoyed some proper frivolous shopping for the first time this year (all our Christmas presents last year were very trip-ly practical (when will we ever get to use our filtering water bottles?)). As well as the bikinis, Aurora and Sophie got new matchy-not-quite-matchy skirts and Ben treated himself to the first collar he’s worn since leaving Britain. Magnus was hugely tolerant of a morning spent waiting outside changing rooms and was rewarded with a slushie and a bucket and spade.

On Thursday we headed away from Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer towards Aigues-Mortes. This medieval walled city was once on the coast and was the port of embarcation for Louis IX when he set out on crusade. Now however it is some five miles inland and is surrounded by salt flats.  Baleine sea salt, the one with the whale, is extracted here (and probably other places too).

It isn’t the salt itself though that makes this area spectacular. That credit goes to a little algae called dunaliella salina which lives in the highly concentrated salty water. In Summer it blooms, turning the water in the salt pans a spectacular bruised raspberry pink.

The town of Aigues-Mortes itself rises out of the salt flats like a Disneyfied dream.  It’s lovely inside too, all little boutiquey shops and houses with hollyhocks outside and stephanotis climbing the walls.  It’s also (who knows why) stuffed with sweet shops.  It felt a bit twee and clichéd in some ways but it was lovely for a wander and lunch. There’s really not much wrong with a big salad in a plane tree-shaded square after all… and in case it all felt too predictable it also had an All Blacks Rugby shop. Who knows why?

The Campbell girls had hoped to ride the famous white horses too.  This would have been Harriet’s first time on a horse in thirty years and Aurora and Sophie’s first time ever.  Sadly though the arrival of 40 mile an hour winds meant it had to be cancelled.

Come on in, the water’s lovely.

Arles

We left the Camargue on Friday morning.  Our next “big” plan is to canoe down the Ardèche gorge but Ben was keen we should avoid the weekend for this if possible.  This forces us into a few extra days in Provence.  A bit of spontaneous AirBnB-ing saw us booked into a very glamorous and surprisingly reasonable place in the centre of Avignon.   The high winds drove us inland early in the day, and we headed for Arles, based solely on the fact that it gets a specific mention in our road atlas and Nîmes doesn’t.  This turned out to be a good thing as there was a serious police incident in Central Nîmes yesterday and we are very pleased to have been well away from that.

Arles was lovely for a wander and we enjoyed the Roman Arènes, which is now used for bullfighting of both the Camarguais and Spanish varieties.  We also wandered  through the Roman baths and the Theatre. Once again we had these almost entirely to ourselves.

We accidentally followed in the feet of Van Gogh when we found ourselves lunching feet from where he painted his Café, le soir.  Lucy recognised it, which we were most impressed by. (Though it may help that it is yellow).

Spot the difference

Avignon

We arrived in Avignon yesterday afternoon, after a traumatic (for Aurora and Sophie) bus ride from the park and ride (“But everyone will be looking at us with our rucksacks” (They weren’t, and the bus was virtually empty anyway)). The apartment is stunning and extraordinarily central. We can see the Palais des Papes as we clean our teeth.

This morning we visited both the Palais, and the famous Pont d’Avignon (where we didn’t dance but Harriet did do 25 press-ups, much to the bemusement of the only other people on it at the time).

If you look very closely they are dancing

Once again, both were virtually empty and it was an extraordinary experience to have these normally thronged and world-famous places to ourselves.

What were our impressions? What surprised us?

Sophie: Wearing a mask is horrible. It’s difficult to breathe.

Harriet: The overturning postcard stand surprised us all.  Chasing beautiful postcards down a narrow street in blazing sunshine felt a bit like being in a film.

I absolutely loved the Camargue. I loved the sea, the wind, the huge skies, the endless flatness (and yes, I am from East Anglia). I loved the brightness and clarity of the light and the colours. The paddy fields the most acidic green, the sea in the harbour turquoise, the salt lakes and flamingos pink, pink, pink. I found myself noticing the birds and plants more – the oleander trees, the vines, the endlessly wheeling swifts and swallows.

I was very pleasantly surprised that I wasn’t bitten at all. I am to mosquitoes as marshmallows are to my children, and everyone we had mentioned the Camargue to had said “ohh, mosquitoes“. I slathered on repellent several times a day and it worked. Maybe forewarned really is forearmed.

Aurora: Sandy, loads of shops open and masks everywhere.

Lucy: I felt St M de la M was very Spanish which was odd because we are in France. I liked all the walled cities and roman culture though I wish there were more roman mythology things. I thought the Camargue was very pretty and I like the southern france architecture. The Camargue was very pink! – pink water, pink birds and even pink high-viz!!

Ben: Travelling again has been a massive change, and I’ve been surprised how much of a mental leap it has taken to get into the cadence of it. Spending lots of money (after all these relatively frugal lockdown weeks), no washing machine, eating out, even filling the car with fuel have all been novel and a little jarring at times.

The museums, sites, shops, beaches, and all the public places were a worry – how would people act or react – but they have felt very normal, if almost empty apart from the shops, with fairly cursory attempts at post-Covid regulations.

In terms of places and sites I have enjoyed the cities – Aigues-Mortes, Arles, Avignon – and their histories. The ipad guide thing in the Palais des Papes eventually won me over, but the interminable audio guide to the half bridge that is the vastly over-egged Pont d’Avignon was daft.

It’s not all old. This is the new (incomplete) Frank Gehry building in Arles.

Magnus (in five words): Watery, sandy, busy [in Avignon, apparently] salty (because of the massive salt mountains), pink.

What were the highlights?

Sophie : The best bits were shopping and getting my bikini and skirt. I also enjoyed having meals out.

I also liked how there were lots of sweet shops in Aigues-Mortes. I adored being by the beach.

Aurora: My bikini, the sea, staying in a hotel, seeing flamingos, window shopping.

Watching flamingos

Ben: Sitting in the sun as almost the only passagers on a tourist boat up the Petit Rhône was lovely, as was watching the children be children on the beach.

Saying goodbye to all those mountains and hills has been good for my running – I achieved my fastest 10k ever in the Camargue this week, helped by being at sea level and being entirely flat (total elevation gain of 2m). I’ve realised that I need little goals to keep going with getting fitter, and looking for great backdrops for our RSABI 25 pressups challenge has been fun. So far we have had the Pont du Gard, the beach, a boat, the Palais des Papes and the Pont d’Avignon, much to the bemusement of various onlookers.

Meals out have been a treat, both with the children (now that they will eat more than just bolognaise and pizza) and without (happy anniversary to us), and being able to go to any restaurant and immediately commandeer a table for six has been a never-experienced luxury.

15 years!

Magnus: Flamingos, digging in the warm sand on the beach, and jumping in the waves, though I was quite nervous sometimes, was good fun.

Lucy: I LOVE the beach and being in the sea. I have also enjoyed pottering round and going into shops. I was pleased with my Van Gogh knowledge (I spotted the cafe) and I really liked the salt flats. This seems short but I can’t really describe the good bits because I loved all of it. And flamingos.

Harriet: Apart from the Camargue itself? I have really enjoyed the Provençale architecture and narrow streets. It was lovely having a meal with just Ben for our anniversary on Thursday. Weirdly I have rather enjoyed the press-up challenge. I enjoyed the utter pointlessness of the three-minute ferry across the Petit Rhone on the way to Aigues-Mortes (you can go the other way round on the road and it’s exactly the same distance). Every single flamingo was a thrill, whether in the bird sanctuary or just viewed from afar. I loved watching the children looking out for each other on the beach.

It has just been lovely being on the move again.

Any bad bits?

Harriet: I was surprised by how disappointed I was that our horse riding was cancelled. It sounded so wonderful – splashing through the marsh with the wildlife all around.  I hadn’t been that keen (hence leaving it to the last minute) but I wish we’d done it earlier.

I’d forgotten how expensive travelling is. Admittedly this trip was even more expensive because we were in a (very basic) hotel, but eating out, activities, shopping (forgotten about that!) all adds up very quickly. After 13 weeks where our only expenditure has been the boulangerie and a weekly trip to Intermarché the bleed of money out of our account has come as a shock. Even though that’s exactly what the money was there for.

Aurora: Not having Duplo A, not horse riding, not having all the teddies we brought and Magnus being annoying.

Lucy: It was raining today and I was wearing flip flops and looking like a baby giraffe on the (very slippy) streets of Avignon and I found it a bit boring waiting for Sophie and Aurora to try on every bikini in the shops.

Magnus: I got tired on the Pont d’Avignon and had sore feet because of blisters from my flip flops. Sharing a room with mummy and daddy was annoying, and there was sand in my bed and it was too bright and there was no duvet in the duvet cover. It was so boring going shopping for bikinis with the girls, but in the end it was finally OK, because they got bikinis, even though there were 26 million in the shops, and I did get a bucket and spade and a slushie.

Wild flower of the week: the mallow, in every gutter.

Ben: The Pont Bénézet (the famous one in Avignon) is massively over-hyped. It is half a vaguely interesting bridge.

Although I love seeing my happy family being happy on the beach and in the sea, I’m not personally a beach person – too sandy, hot, windy, wet, salty, suncreamy. I’ll stop whinging now – it has been a great week.

Within five minutes of arriving.

Sophie: Something that I would change if I could would be Magnus having a single bed not double to himself, so Lucy’s sleeping on the floor, in the house we’re in right now. [Editor’s note: This is Lucy’s choice]

What about Covid?

Part of the point of this little holiday-from-our-holiday was to see how travelling in a Covid-19 world is.  The honest answer is: Variable. All the tourist sites we have visited have been oddly empty.  On the one hand this is lovely – we really can get the perfect camera angle any time we want – but on the other they can feel very sterile and unreal without the buzz of others around.

We were worried too that we might not feel welcome: that we might be viewed with fear or distrust, as outsiders and potential carriers of the disease.  This has not at all been the case.  Perhaps not surprisingly, half-empty restaurants or quiet shops are desperate for our business.  Hand gel is everywhere but the requirement to wear masks (which is obligatory in public transport but up to individual shops) seems to be getting less and less and we certainly see very few on the streets. The only tourist site where mask wearing was strictly enforced was the Palais de Papes.

Covid remains a hot topic of conversation and attitudes to it seem to vary enormously. Most people seem to display a sort of resigned optimism: all they can do is carry on and hope things improve, but we have also had conversations with people who don’t believe it was as bad as they said, people who think we should still all be in lockdown, and one woman who said she’s given up swimming in the sea because of it. We never got to the bottom of that particular piece of logic. 

What did we eat?

Artichokes. But not this one

Although Harriet’s elderflower smelt amazing while infusing, once completed it was rather insipid and disappointing. A new recipe and the all-important citric acid are in the post from Essex.  Now we’ve just got to hope that the elderflowers aren’t all over by the time we get back.

Being in a hotel meant lots of meals out. (Restaurants here were allowed to reopen last week). Having not eaten out since Vienna (treating Granny) and only once or twice on the trip prior to that (for budgetary reasons), this was a bit of a shock.

Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer isn’t a particularly gastronomic destination but Ben and Harriet had a lovely meal out on their anniversary and prior to that we all enjoyed a variety of foods including octopus, Camarguais beefburgers, tellines (which may or may not be clams but were totally delicious either way) and a lot of pizza and ice cream.

The local treat is Fougasse d’Aigues-Mortes, a sort of sweet focaccia-type bread with orange flower water. It is supposed to be eaten as part of the treize desserts (yes, that is what it sounds like and yes, it is a thing) on Christmas Eve but, as with mini eggs and hot cross buns is now available all year round (bah humbug). We failed to find an open boulangerie in Aigues-Mortes but one in Saintes-Maries did us proud.  After all that effort, it was, in the words of Magnus: “a bit like soap“.

It might have been better if we hadn’t bought the orange hand wash.

Lucy asked, mid-week, why there aren’t any blue foods.  She was proved wrong at a restaurant in Arles.

Does the world really need blue (or indeed pink) cauliflower?

Continuing our tradition of eating as many baked goods as we can, in Avignon we tried pompe d’huile from Bella Ciao,  a self-proclaimed boulangerie d’utopie.  It was pretty good but honestly in utopia we’d hope for something with chocolate in. 

What about the tadpoles?

Who knows? Fortunately for them it’s been raining all week in the Chartreuse so they won’t have got dehydrated.

But keen tadpole-watchers will just have to come back next week to find out how they have coped without us.

This was last Sunday. Will they have grown (legs)?

What’s next?

Tomorrow we leave Avignon and head back north, stopping on the way with Harriet’s uncle and aunt.  We plan to canoe down the Ardèche gorge on Monday and will probably head back to the Chartreuse after that.

More long term though this dip of our travelling toes in the water has made us realise that travel is possible.  At present we can’t leave France (they wouldn’t let us back in) but that may change in the next week or so. The plan is to see what happens when Macron addresses the nation (again) on Sunday and make our decisions after that.

The big picture though is that we will be on the road again soon (hopefully). It won’t be where and how we planned but it will be an adventure.

Where will we go next?
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Week 17 (France 12)

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Where were we?

Toujours ici.

Where should we have been?

We arrived in Ulaanbaatar late on Saturday and settled into our AirBnB flat just behind the city’s Sukhbaatar Square. The next morning, Magnus’ 9th birthday, we were up and out bright and early to meet our guide who took us out of the city, through the Gorkhi Terelj national park to the Chinggis Khaan (how they spell it here) statue. We had prepared ourselves for it being big, but even so we weren’t quite prepared for how big. In the evening, at Magnus’ request (Mummy, please can I not have yak milk on my birthday), we had burgers and chips in Ulaanbaatar’s best burger restaurant.

The next morning we set out, heading north and west out of the city for our most adventurous adventure yet – six nights of off-grid travel, exploration and family stay booked through Eternal Landscapes. Highlights were our extraordinary guide and driver, the families we stayed with, the yaks and camels, the stars and the sheer enormous emptiness of the landscape.

The best bit of all is that we haven’t cancelled this. So we really will be going one day. We’ll let you have the details (and the pictures) then.

Picture from Pixabay. For more Mongolian pictures visit the Eternal Landscapes website….

What did we really do?

Magnus’ birthday

Despite our best efforts we were unable to buy yak milk at Intermarché in St Laurent du Pont, so we had to resort to just a “normal” birthday. Insofar as anything about any of this is in any way normal.

Magnus had gone to bed in his swimming trunks on Saturday night so as to be ready for the pool first thing on Sunday morning, when it would finally be usable. Unfortunately for his sisters, the route to the pool was past the pile of presents, so swimming was, perhaps inevitably, delayed.

There are moments in our parenting life when we are struck by how old are children are becoming or, conversely how young they still are. Magnus’ nine-year-old birthday delight at lego and toy cars was an inescapable reminder that despite the teenage attitude from his sisters, he is, still, just a little boy. He couldn’t have been more delighted with his haul. Especially as it included a copy of the Beano with his cousin as the Beano Boss.

He did manage to drag himself away from his cars to be the first into the pool. Before breakfast. It was predictably glacial so there was definitely more jumping in and getting out than actual swimming.

We had planned to do his favourite walk, up Charmant Som, but a chance encounter in the boulangerie had informed us that the day before the cars were parked for over a kilometre down the road from the parking. So we went for his second favourite instead.

Lego occupied most of the day. It was hard to tell which of the males in the house was happier about this.

And in the evening, we had an actual party: burgers and chips (as requested), cake, singing, and guests. It was lovely and lasted far later into the night than any of his birthdays have in the past.

He thinks being nine is going to be fun. Can’t ask for more than that.

And the rest?

It has been a much quieter and less structured week this week. This is partly due to the weather, which has been fairly consistently wet and which has put paid to any long walks (an hour within a kilometre of the house is doable in the rain, a 15+ kilometre hike up a hill less so). But we also think a malaise has set in. We are all less energetic, less motivated. We haven’t pushed this this week but we do need to make sure it doesn’t become a habit or a pattern.

The rock harvest bore fruit (Sorry couldn’t resist that entirely wrong mixed metaphor) when we were invited, all six of us, for dinner with Jeanne and Raphael, who we had met while knee-deep in mud. Jeanne was born in Vietnam, and although she left at the age of 17 she treated us to the most amazing Vietnamese feast. We had tempura prawns and vegetables, followed by enormous bowls of noodle soup with chicken and crab, followed by sticky glazed pork so tender you could pull it apart with your chopsticks, and rice. Finally, in a nod to her adopted country, crêpes suzette and chestnut and chartreuse ice cream.

Every mouthful was a treat and the children thought so too, wolfing it down in huge quantities. Only Magnus struggled with being up past ten p.m. and ended the evening with his ice cream while snuggled on a succession of laps. We finally rolled back down the road in the dark, clear skies overhead, and into bed at just before midnight.

Over dinner the subject of music came up and Raphael mentioned that he had once tried to play the violin (his words). Harriet’s ears pricked up and she wondered if this meant he had a violin he wasn’t currently using and would be prepared to lend. He disappeared up to the attic and came back with an ancient case. The fiddle inside was short of two strings and a bridge and the bow nut didn’t work at all. But he assured us he could fix it, and fix it he has. He turned up the next day with a fully strung violin. The bow can’t be tightened or loosened and we are sure a luthier would wince at the set up but it works. Lucy and Harriet had a happy hour or two. It will remain to be seen if either of them is brave enough to attempt the Mozart and Bach sonatas he also brought round…

The mood in the house turned rather more political this week following the murder of George Floyd. The girls, with their Instagram and Tiktok feeds informing them by the minute instigated several discussions which we were glad to have, even if far from glad about the circumstances.

One of the pleasures of this trip has been, for some of us at least, taking a deliberate decision to ignore the constant depressing stream of news from politics in general and UK politics in particular. This has become increasingly harder in recent weeks and both Ben and Harriet found this, and matters in the States, affecting moods this week.

The weather hasn’t been all bad and there’s been plenty of pool-side fun. Including quite a lot in the rain. (The photographer stayed inside).

Our heavily pregnant Instagram friend Fabienne and her lovely six year old popped round for a cup of proper English tea on Thursday so we could meet In Real Life. She was as lovely as she seems online (no catfishing in the Chartreuse) and the children got on too, despite Lucy being on far from her best form.

Magnus has spent quite a bit of time with his new friend Sam, including managing despite the weather, to borrow a bike and head back down to the pump track.

Harriet was throughly spoiled to receive not one, but two, parcels. One was expected – but no less welcome for it – books from her mother to feed her voracious reading needs. The second was entirely unexpected. Her employers, Douglas Home & Co, had arranged for a box of chocolate goodies to be sent to each employee to cheer them up during lockdown. As Harriet is currently not on the payroll receiving one was hugely touching.

Disappointment for Harriet though on Magnus’ birthday when she lost a bet with Ben about whether there would still be visible snow on Chamechaude. Despite glorious weather (and the occasional heavy downpour) it was (and still was all this week – when not obscured by cloud) still there. Most irritating.

Yesterday. Grrrr.

Wild flowers of the week were the rampions, with their amazingly symmetrical curly ended petals, and the columbine. It sounds much nicer than bindweed, and in the verges really isn’t doing any harm.

Ben and Lucy headed down the hill to Grenoble on Wednesday. There was some debate about whether we should all go – Aurora and Sophie want to go shopping for “nice clothes” – but we decided that a post-Covid-19 shopping trip with everyone in tow didn’t enormously appeal and we weren’t at all sure what the shops would be like. Instead it was the intrepid duo who headed in with Ben’s broken iPod (cause of damage then unknown). The good news is that it is a damaged battery, which is not anyone’s fault but just one of those things. The bad news is that the entire iPod will have to be replaced. It’s under guarantee but Ben’s 25,000 tracks are not stored online but at home and so cannot be downloaded from here. We are also not at all sure that they can be transferred from the old iPod to the new one. We may have a rather quieter next few months.

This week’s stars of the garden are the pink roses, which have added an intoxicating scent to their already considerable charms, and these extraordinary alliums.

Now Magnus is nine it was time for the post lockdown, much needed, haircut…

And…the most exciting for last…we had an actual drink in an actual café. Cafés and restaurants were permitted to reopen from this Tuesday and the Hotel Bar Victoria, just next to us, reopened last night. We had a celebratory ice cream after our cleaning this morning. It felt wonderful.

How was it?

Good bits:

Magnus: MY BIRTHDAY! The pool is here, going to the pump track with Sam, elderflower.

Sophie: I loved making pizza. I also liked playing in the pool. The Vietnamese meal was really great. The rain was fun too. I found an old ski jumper of my uncle Tim’s (says Daddy), and I love wearing it.

Lucy: Magnus’ birthday obviously, I found it really fun and had some interesting conversations. The pool being up and running. The dinner party was really good especially the food and… HAVING A VIOLIN!! Having ice cream today was nice too.

Aurora: Magnus’s birthday, going shopping with daddy, having my first iced tea in ages, finally getting to go in the swimming pool, getting 100 followers on tik tok, seeing Millie and Sam and the amazing Vietnamese meal.

Ben: Sociably, it has been an excellent week, apart from a frustrating time with Houseparty on Wednesday evening. Magnus’s birthday, Jeanne’s dinner party, Fabienne’s visit, even Magnus’s haircut and an ice cream at the reopened Hotel Victoria across the square – a real pleasure from normal conversations, although it feels abnormal given our collective previous 3 months. It has been exciting to plan some travel for next week too.

Being right about the snowy patch too…

Harriet: Magnus’ birthday was a great success: and possibly the first day we have (ever?) had without any bickering at all. I was enormously touched to be sent a parcel of treats by my work. It is such thoughtful thing to do in general – is this because a majority of the management are female? – but especially given my particular (and particularly odd) circumstances. It has been lovely seing the kids in the pool, even if I haven’t braved it yet! I loved having a drink in an actual cafe and a good chat with Sandrine who owns it. I am hugely looking forward to going somewhere else next week (spoiler alert).

Bad bits:

Lucy: The weather and not much else, I’ve had a load of homework but that’s about it.

Aurora: Not having Duplo and Magnus being hyper and really annoying .

Sophie: I didn’t like the rain sometimes apart from when we were in the pool.

Magnus: not going to Charmant Som, the weather.

Ben: The weather has not helped, but a lack of longer walks, and a general laziness from us all, has made some of this week feel like a waste. The passage of time shows itself in so many ways, but I was struck this week by finishing my initial tranche of Loratidine, one of my hay-fever medicines. I have more, but in my head, these were for the very end of our trip. Just another sign of where we should have been by now. 

I am horrified by the news coming from the UK and the USA. The decisions taken by those that have been voted into power in both countries appals me. Their mendacious and aggressive rhetoric is hideous. 

As for the UK, I am not sure I want to return to a country whose character looks both destructive and shameful, and it is increasingly unrecognisable from the one I thought I knew. That’s not to say there aren’t many wonderful friends and deeds and thoughts and actions there, but the trend and direction taken and acceptance of the situation frightens me. 

In the US, there looks like there is less acceptance of the status quo, both in spite of, and because of, the response of those in power. More power to them. I hope that the ground shifts in a positive way. It needs to. 

Harriet: I have been feeling what I think a psychologist would call ” disassociated” for much of this week. I don’t really care about much and I can’t be bothered, whether that’s with current issues or future plans. Mustering up the energy to engage seems beyond me much of the time. I’m not sure if this is because it is very hard actually to have future plans and without them the present seems directionless and without point.

It feels as though we are marking time here until we go home. Going home itself is not an aim but an inevitable, inexorable marker of failure. A retrograde step. And that’s before we get into my feelings about the present and future disaster that is the UK government. Is the country even one I want to be part of?

That aside, I wanted so much for this trip. I wanted to change, to grow, to become – in ways both tangible and intangible – the person I am going to be for the rest of my life. And now I feel that the going back will be not just physical but metaphorical. I will be back where I started.

I don’t know what I want, and I don’t know what direction I want to be going in, but I know (or maybe I just think I know) it isn’t that. So instead I sit. In stasis. Going nowhere.

More mundanely (or perhaps it’s part of the same thing) with the end of confinement we have lost our structure and we seem to be drifting more. Days pass without much happening. The children (and we) seem to be spending more time on our phones which isn’t good for any of us.

What did we eat?

Birthdays mean baking. So we had cake, millionaire’s shortbread, biscuits and moderately successful flapjacks made with the homemade golden syrup.

The elderflowers are out too so we risked some very strange looks from passers-by to gather them and even stranger looks in the pharmacy when we asked for citric acid.

Our cordial is made, but cooling, so we haven’t tried it yet. Without the citric acid it is more likely to ferment so expect reports on our elderflower champagne to come…

How are the tadpoles?

A side effect of having a nice clean chlorine-filled swimming pool is that we no longer have a ready supply of manky un-chemically-treated water with which to fill up the tadpoles. In direct contravention of all the advice on the Internet they have therefore had to take their chances with tap.

So far they seem to be fine (the rain will have helped), but they remain very elusive. Maybe they’ve all hopped away…

What’s next?

We have been mulling all week over the possibility of going further afield in France. We were hesitant about being unwelcome, or finding that things were shut, and we’d also agreed to babysit some rabbits next week for our friends who are going away.

But a general feeling of frustration, of boredom, of needing something to happen, plus the news that the weather here is going to be awful all next week forced a spontaneous decision while the children were having their French lesson on Friday morning. We are booked into a hotel in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, on the coast of the Camargue, for four nights from Monday. Where we will go after that remains to be seen.

There has been a palpable lifting of spirits. The rabbits will just have to take their chances*.

*another neighbour is looking after them. We did check.

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Week 16 (France 11)

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Where were we?

Same as always.  Or feels like it.

At least it’s still beautiful

Where should we have been

Last Friday we got back on the train in Almaty for our longest journey yet, 73 hours not including a four hour change.  We arrived in Novosibirsk on Sunday morning and had a few rather scratchy hours on the platform before getting on to the actual Trans-Siberian railway for our journey to Irkutsk.  We are getting good at the long distance travel now and a day and a half passed relatively quickly with Uno, Quiddler and Netflix…  We arrived in Irkutsk very late on Monday night and headed straight to our accommodation, which had been chosen entirely on the basis of proximity to the station.  The next mornng we were up and out for the easy one hour bus journey from Irkutsk to Listvyanka, on the shores of Lake Baikal. 

Lake Baikal. Largest and deepest freshwater lake in the World.  Image from pixabay.

We had agonised over the timing of this part of our trip and had ended up having to cut it short to maximise time in Mongolia, so we sadly did not explore more of the shores of Baikal or into Buryatia (the area of Russia to the East of the lake).  Instead on Thursday we headed back to Irkutsk for our early morning departure to Ulaan Bator.  We arrive this evening. We are beyond excited.

What did we really do?

After our long, long, lost in the woods adventure last week, we had another full day out in the majestic Chartreuse on Wednesday, climbing Le Grand Som. At 2026m, it is not quite the highest mountain in the area (that’s Chamechaude at 2082m, which is the pointy mountain which appears all over anything we post), but it is probably the most formidable. We took what we understand to be the most approachable (but longest – it took us over seven hours including stops) of the four possible routes to the top, from Ruchère, about 30 minutes of wobbly driving from the house.

Highlights were Sophie spotting what we think was a marmot above us on some scree (although as it was rather larger than we expected it may have been a confused badger out for a midday stroll in the hills), finishing a Netflix movie over lunch at 1700m, dancing a Tiktok at the summit, making snow angels (yes, really) and Magnus enjoying his new walking shoes. In fact, Magnus enjoyed the walk so much it was declared his 5th favourite walk ever. (His 4th favourite walk is down to the river and back so the competition isn’t what you might call stiff).

Wild flowers of the week were, in no particular order: wild laburnum trees (probably stupid of her but Harriet didn’t realise they grew wild), the very odd, non-photosynthesising (really) birds nest orchid, globeflowers (buttercups on steroids), alpine pasqueflowers, and what looked like wild rhododendrons but are apparently rusty-leaved alpenroses.

On Monday we left three of our four children entirely unsupervised and headed into Grenoble. Magnus, who, you may recall, gets on splendidly with the windy road down the hill, was brought with us; mostly to prevent danger to life and limb if we left all four of them alone. We popped into Decathlon (again) so that we could get the shorts we entirely failed to buy for him last time.

Then on to the independent republic of Carrefour.  A supermarket so large you can see it from space. (It is possible that not all of that is entirely true).  Even as someone who enjoys a foreign supermarket this wasn’t much fun.  It was too big, too confusing and too hot.  It also, oddly, didn’t have lots of things that we can buy in the smaller Intermarché in the nearest town: no oats and no Special K, although it did have 75 different types of mustard and the world’s most expensive fondant icing (at €17 per kg).  It is strange too what “exotic foods” are available.  They had marmite (which we didn’t buy) but not golden syrup.  They, again, didn’t have tahini (which seems odd when you consider France’s history of involvement (to use as anodyne a word as possible) in North Africa) but they did have Thai curry paste. Great joy when we brought that home…

Is there really more of a market for lime marmelade than tahini?

In good news though, Magnus wasn’t sick.

He may, however, have come close to dying of boredom. Incidentally all those plastic bags are the biodegradable sort. The meat wrapping sadly isn’t.

Having finally managed to get Lucy back onto the school roll she has been inundated with school work. We’ve had various technical difficulties with some of it (her school-issued iPad is in a box in Kelso) but she has done what she can with a surprising amount of enthusiasm. It has been lovely seeing the quality of the work she produces.

Months of anticipation were nearly satisfied on Friday when the pool men came. This provoked a brief foreign-country-etiquette panic in Harriet (Do you offer French workmen coffee? Do they drink Nescafé? Answer a) yes and b) that might be a cultural step too far. They got a cafetière). As we type the pool is full of chemicals and still unswimmable in. We wait, tantalised, for tomorrow morning when we can use it. Sophie and Aurora say they are going in before 8 am. Given that the temperature will be about 12 degrees we expect that they will be out before 8 am too.

So near…

With a nearly nine-year-old requesting millionaire’s shortbread and a failure to be impressed by the versions without golden syrup, Harriet had a go at taking on Tate & Lyle’s finest. It was remarkably easy and turned out looking very much like golden syrup. It doesn’t, however taste much like golden syrup, being noticeably lemony (that’ll be the lemon juice). The first batch of millionaire’s made with it is nonetheless in progress.

You know what they say about the proof of the puddimg..

We enjoyed some good shorter walks too although one was enlivened by a bit of minor drama when Aurora lost her footing while clambering about in the river. No harm done but she was rather shocked and distinctly unamused to be wet.

Before the fall…

This week’s garden highlights are the roses. No idea what sort they are.

Pink ones and yellow ones (technical terms)

We had some real world intrusion in the form of the potential loss of over £1000 from the refund of our Russian train tickets. Having cancelled on the basis that we would get a full refund (less £90 fee) now the moment of payment has arrived (late) the company (who will temporarily remain nameless) seems to have multiplied the deduction significantly more than ten-fold. We have emails confirming how much they will pay and are in “discussion” with them about the change, but if we don’t get a positive resolution soon you can expect to see us going Defcon 1 (names included) all over Twitter.

Partly as a result of that dispute and partly because we are aware of the imminent expiry of our Russian visas (cost also in the squillions) we took a difficult decision this week and have made a claim on our travel insurance. This might seem like something we should have done months ago, and we did indeed contact the company in our first week here. However it turns out that we can only claim if our entire trip is “curtailed” (which of course in reality it has been since we arrived here in March). If we claim under this condition it brings the policy to an end and leaves us uninsured. This is not so much of a worry if we remain in France but is, of course, more of a problem if we travel further afield. Our decision to make a claim is therefore an explicit and long-resisted acknowledgement that the curtailment is not temporary, as we had hoped. It is very unlikely that we will get any further on our trip. This year at least.

We suspect it may not be a straightforward claim

In better news, one of Harriet’s wild-pipe-dream-1950s-parenting hopes for this trip was that we would all read to each other. Courtesy of JK Rowling this has actually, and rather to our astonishment, happened this week. She is releasing a new children’s story, The Ickabog, online in daily instalments. It has become part of our routine and we are enjoying the drawing prompts too.

The late lamented Mrs Dovetail. By Magnus

A real sign of normality returning to the village nearly moved Harriet to tears on Friday evening. The printed weather forecast which is normally a daily feature outside the tourist information office is back. It seems like (and is) such a tiny thing but having not been there for nearly three months its return really did feel momentous. Restaurants reopen here next week too.

And the fountain is back on.

Our walk on Thursday was less impressive on paper than Grand Som but in reality no less exciting. We drove down and across the gorge of the Guiers Mort and up into the Forêt Domaniale de la Grande Chartreuse where we headed up a (in some places terrifyingly) vertiginous path. There was, once, a road to the Col de la Charmette and after crossing the ridge and descending through the ancient beechwood we followed this back through the gloom of the long Tunnel des Agneaux to the car. We had brought head torches (Ben and Harriet had walked it once before without) but nonetheless it’s amazing how scary a dark drippy tunnel can be when you can’t see more than 10 metres in front of you.

There was no Trivial Pursuit this week. This may or may not be connected to the fact that we have acquired a Netflix account. Recommendations please?

How was it?

Good bits

Magnus: I liked Grand Som and getting the pool running again. My new shoes were absolutely awesome. I am really excited about my BIRTHDAY!!!!!!

Those shoes must have done the trick

Sophie: The pool man coming was great because it means we can go in the pool tomorrow. I liked the view from the walks. And I love mine and Aurora’s new room.

Lucy: I enjoyed our walk up Grand Som it was very pretty and I had some good chats. Staying at home with Sophie and Aurora was fun. I also liked the Ickabog and doing Minecraft with Sophie, Aurora and Magnus. And having the hammock back up.

Aurora: Helping Mummy with Magnus’s cake, staying in the hammock for ages, watching the pool get cleaned and the TikTok at the top of the mountain.

Well what else would you do when you reach the top?

Harriet: Ben wondered last week if we should lose the “good bit”/”bad bit” distinction and for me this is true this week: my good bit is also a bad bit. I think I have, finally, accepted that it is likely, if not inevitable, that this is as far as we will get. This is a bad thing for obvious reasons, but it is also a good thing as it means, despite what I say below, that the actual bad moments have been fewer and further between. There has been, I think less raging at the situation in which we find ourselves and more acceptance. This is probably better for everyone.

Less philosophically, we have done amazing walks this week. The views never stop getting better, wherever we go. I love the sounds and smells too. It is all so fresh and green and alive. The wildflowers, whether familiar or less so, are a constant source of pleasure.

I have really enjoyed reading to the children and I have loved seeing them work collaboratively on Minecraft.

Ben: In 30 years of coming to the Chartreuse, I have never climbed Le Grand Som, and it was fantastic to do it with my family this week. One of the silver linings of the Covid cloud has been our chance to explore new places, climb new mountains and walk new woods. Our walk above Chartreuse de Curiere on Friday, while slightly vertiginous at times for me, was magical. The beechwood, the birdsong, the feeling of centuries of almost untouched nature – I am loving being in these places.

Bad bits

Aurora: Fighting with everyone, not having Duplo A.

Ben: Screens in general [he taps into a small screen…]. I know I’m spending too much time on a screen, and I’m pretty sure we all are. When there is something which needs to be done, from setting out the lunch table, to a small amount of academic work, or getting shoes and socks on, there is inevitably at least someone on a screen, and a necessary nag to get them off. Sometimes it’s me. And when the screen is a valid “necessity”, for insurance correspondence, or creating or printing academics, or even watching a film, it is too small, too fiddly and not as good as an alternative laptop / TV / etc.

We are also over three weeks past the midpoint of our trip with very little prospect of moving on. This is not a good thing.

Sophie: I don’t like how there were some bits on the walk where you could fall off the cliff. Also I found the tunnel creepy and that’s it.

Harriet: The bad bits are the same old, same old really, a bit like many of our days here, no matter how beautiful or varied our walks. While I have now accepted that this will probably be as far as we get I still have moments when I am terribly sad about that, and moments when I am very bitter and angry. I find thinking about where we should have been hard, but I also don’t want to let go of that. Perhaps I fear that if I let go of it then we really won’t ever go.

Most mornings I wake up to a sinking disappointment that we are still here.

Lucy: The mahoosive workload I have from school and just general scratchiness.

Magnus: Sophie moaning on the walks (all of them).

She does like it sometimes.

What did we eat?

We didn’t eat it as such but Harriet is rather pleased to have made her own golden syrup. Even if parts of it were more difficult than they should have been:

You could even call it partially inverted sugar syrup (Credit: Harriet’s brother, Seb)

On the heels of the children’s surprising approval of turnip daal, we made it again. Though with just the one turnip this time:

We accompanied it with naan bread, always a winner, but we were a little nervous about this naan as the yeast for it had sat in the car while we walked up Grand Som. We weren’t sure what seven hours in a hot car would do to all those little live yeasts. Turns out they were ok.

When the yeast mixture is frothy…

How are the tadpoles?

In a word, elusive. In two words, camera-shy They are definitely still there but we barely see them. The current theory, to add to the one about them staying away from the sun, is that as they are maturing they are much more aware of what is around them. We are now potential predators, so even if they are on the surface as soon as we approach they tend to disappear under the water.

They still have no legs though.

This one decided to pose…

What’s next?

We just don’t know.  If we are not going to go anywhere other than France, we need to have a plan of things to do here before we just drift our way through to August.  Any suggestions welcome.

We do though still remain committed to going anywhere we can if that ever becomes possible.  It just doesn’t seem likely that it will in the near future, if at all this year.

In the short term, tomorrow is Magnus’s ninth birthday, so we have presents and plans for that.

Is this as far away as we will get?