Provence - Grignan (la Dome) and Bedoin (Rhone-Alpes / Ventoux)
Thursday 13 August 2009
Today we moved on from Le Vigan to the village of Grignan in that part of Provence known as "le Drome". This was a drive of 100 miles starting with the familiar D999 through Ganges, continuing Eastwards along it to St.Hippolyte-du-Fort and then using the D982 to the pretty town of Anduze, another place we had visited in 2001 when we travelled there and back on the steam railway from St.Jean-du-Gard. From Anduze we routed via Ales and Bagnols-sur-Ceze to cross the Rhone at Pont St.Esprit, making for Bollene. Then we used the handy, very straight D26 / D17 / D59 / D458 (it's the same road but in true French style swaps these numbers around with abandon), past the nuclear power station by the Rhone (we remember flying over this in a Cessna 152 in 1988!) and finally taking the D541 towards Grignan. Our chosen campsite, Camping Les Truffieres, lies just South of the town on the D71 towards Chamaret, and is well-signposted from the D541 - we found it without difficulty.
The journey was devoid of proper laybys or "aires-de-picnique"; remarkably so for France in fact - we had done over 70 miles when R spotted picnic tables in some trees on the D6 just before Bagnols and we stopped for lunch at a table in a small wood. It would have been far too hot to stop anywhere without shade:
Camping les Truffieres is another very nice site; the lady who welcomed us at Reception was cheerful and friendly, speaking mostly in English (because she liked to, she said); but she seemed a little worried by the size of our outfit with the trailer and towed Smart - we assured her that it would fit into less space than she might imagine. She gave us the choice of three pitches still vacant - we walked around the site to look at all three and chose the largest, almost totally shaded by trees (just a little sun filters through) and very quiet:
The other two possibilities were not only smaller but also near the swimming pool and so inevitably noisier, especially at this time of year. We were soon well established on our very pleasant pitch and hooked up to a 10 amp electricty post hidden in a hedge seemingly miles away but just within range of our cable. Yet again our tester showed the supply to have reversed polarity as it had at Millau and Le Vigan, so we again used our "reversing lead" to correct it. From our experience it would seem that 80-90% of French campsite electric pillars have reversed polarity (neutral and earth reversed).
Les Truffieres is quite a small site in a wood so that almost all the pitches are well-shaded. We like it - the owners and the people at the little bar / restaurant are possibly the friendliest we have encountered anywhere. The main disadvantage is the limited scope of the sanitation and washing facilities in a single block. They are kept very clean but are limited in number and you may well have to queue at the more obvious times - for example there are only 3 loos each for gents and ladies. The design of the facility has that strange feature, already experienced at Cognac and Millau, that you can stroll round the corner of either the gents or the ladies "side" and find yourself in the opposite one, quite possibly surrounded by members of the opposite sex who seem not the slightest bit bothered!
We considered a swim and walked round to the pool with our things, but we were put off by the numbers already using it. The pool itself looked very nice but was once again crowded and noisy. There were no adults in the water; the only people over 20 were sitting or lying on loungers and were clearly the parents of some of those in the water. We have come to the conclusion that this scene is almost inevitable anywhere in the high season.
So we reserved an outside table at the campsite restaurant for 7.30 and had a bit of a siesta. Our roof fan does little to reduce the inside temperature of the motorhome, which soon stabilises to be identical to the outside, but if you have it blowing air in, and set on its maximum force, you can at least lie on the bed directly under the fan and this does make things much nicer. We leave it on at night - it's the only way we can get a good night's sleep when it is so hot!
The meal was simple but very enjoyable - two courses, plus aperitifs, wine and coffee for 49 euros - the wine was 13 euros of this. Not especially cheap but about the average cost in France for what we had. The restaurant also does a good selection of elaborate salads and pizzas which can be eaten there or taken back to your pitch.
It took a while to get to sleep with an inside temperature of 30C (at 11pm). We left the fan blowing down on us and eventually drifted off. Bedclothes or any other sort of clothes at night are definitely not recommended in this climate! Happily, the mesh screens which we keep in place covering all windows, roof vents and the door, make a good job of keeping out almost all insect life including the many sorts of "biters" round here.
Friday 14 August 2009
After breakfast we walked the mile and a half to Grignan via the "Grotte de Rochecourbiere" - this is not so much an obvious cave (the entrance is hidden behind a plaque commemorating its discoverer) but a large indented rock cliff. Grignan is a fascinating and impressive village with its large hilltop chateau and its assocation with the famous 17th century writer of letters, Madame de Sevigne:
We explored on foot in the fierce heat - this was exhausting and yet again we felt too hot to eat lunch and settled for cold drinks at a bar in the main square. Then we found the tourist information office and bought two tickets for tomorrow night's concert in the "Collegiale", the large church attached to the chateau; the concert features choral pieces mainly by Haydn and Mendelssohn and we shall look forward to it.
By now the chateau was open to visitors again after the usual lunchtime closure of almost everything and we paid for a guided tour. This was interesting only because we asked for and were given English descriptions of the main things to be seen; the guide spoke in very fast French and was extremely difficult for us to understand. If you tour the Chateau de Grignan and do not speak French fluently (and more to the point, understand fast-spoken French) then we would recommend getting the English blurb and making your own way round (the cost is the same, 5.50 euros per head, whichever you do). But the chateau is well worth looking round one way or the other as it has a fascinating history and is a fine building. As well as the chateau and its Collegiale Church, things to see at Grignan include the main square with it's fountain and the communal "lavoir" (washing place) not far away down some steps. These "lavoirs" feature in a number of the villages in Provence; most of them were constructed in the 19th century.
Scenes of Grignan, its Chateau and surroundings:
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Another exhausting walk of just over a mile took us back to the campsite by a more direct route. We considered a swim to cool off but found the pool very crowded and noisy again so we settled for another siesta under the fan. We had very little in the motorhome with which to make supper but couldn't be bothered, in the heat, either to go food shopping or to find a restaurant (of which there are many in Grignan). So we got takeaway pizzas from the campsite restaurant and ate as much as we could of them - they were good, but far too big to finish. At least we got an early night and this time had a good night's sleep thanks to the roof fan - we're not sure what we'd have done without this device - slept outside probably!
Saturday 15 August 2009
Today we walked in the other direction, Southwards, towards the little hamlet of Chamaret:
There is a good route on paths, tracks and small roads and it's easy to follow because of the landmark of Chamaret's high ruined medieval tower - you can see this from miles around:
There was some shade on this walk but also long stretches in the baking heat of the sun. You can pay 2 euros to go to the top of the tower when it's open, but we arrived at 12.15, during its lunchtime closure (12.00 - 14.30):
We were not going to wait over two hours for it to reopen - in fact you miss very little by not climbing to the top as the views are equally stunning from the tower's base. Chamaret is a pretty little place:
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but there's not much else to see there, except another communal "Lavoir" - an entirely different design from the one at Grignan and also worth finding:
After walking back to Camping Les Truffieres we again felt very over-heated; fortunately the pool was far from crowded this time and we enjoyed a lovely cooling swim. A light lunch at our pitch and a siesta (these are becoming a habit) just left time for a quick dash in the Smart to an enormous Leclerc at Valerais (about 15 minutes drive from the campsite). Here we filled up the Smart with petrol and did quite a big shop for food and provisions, including large quantities of bottled water of which we are drinking several litres every day. We got back to Les Truffieres with just enough time to change and set off for the concert at Grignan.
The concert was billed as starting at 6pm in the large church attached to the Chateau, known as "La Collegiale", but we were warned by tourist information to arrive early, no later than 5.30, and preferably 5.15. We parked the Smart in a shady, and free, place at the bottom part of the village (all the places higher up are "payant" until 8pm) and walked up the steep, narrow streets to the church, trying not to get hot (it was still 37C - in fact the temperature seems to peak at about this time). We arrived at the door at 5.15 to find a notice saying that doors opened at 5.30. But a nice man beckoned at us to go in; we found the ticket desk already set up, presented our tickets and had the choice of almost any seats we wanted.
This classical choral concert was given by a choir from Vaison-la-Romaine, a medium size town about 40 miles to the South East of Grignan. It was called the Choeur Europeen, clever naming giving it an international flavour; however we suspect it performs mainly in its own region. It has made two CDs and both were on sale - we bought one (10 euros), a perfomance of a little-known Mass by Puccini (better known for his operas). The choir was to be accompanied by three, or at times four, string players from the Cevennes region (members of the "Orchestre de la Chambre des Cevennes") and the organ. The organ at the Grignan Collegiale is well-known among those interested in such things as it was built in 1662 and has been carefully and perfectly restored. The programme was to feature mainly Haydn and Mendelssohn.
What to say about this concert? It's a difficult question as neither of us want to be over-critical of an amateur choir in France; like most amateur choirs they had almost certainly put in loads of work at rehearsal and we are sure that most of the audience numbering about 140 (better than you'd expect to do where we live in Cumbria, that's for sure!) absolutely loved what they heard. That's why they wouldn't let 'em go without two encore pieces at the end!
So that's good enough, isn't it? We needn't say any more. We need not, yet perhaps we should record that the concert started late, at 6.15, was preceded by quite long speeches from a variety of people and punctuated by more of these at times; however the conductor's introductions to the pieces were genuinely useful and he spoke clear French fairly slowly. He is Claude Poletti, the choir's regular director. As for the perfomance, it was good in parts, but suffered badly in others; it would be kind to attribute this to the heat (which reigned even inside the church) but we suspect it has more to do with the membership's high average age, the age-old sin of "heads buried in copies" and a severe imbalance between women (numbering 28) and men (numbering 10). One felt especially sorry for the three tenors (no, NOT those three tenors!) who bravely did their manful best! There was a young soprano soloist with a lovely voice but who stared at her music most of the time and made no eye-contact at all with her audience. Not even when singing "Oh for the Wings of a Dove" in German.
Extraordinarily (in R's view at least) this French choir chose to sing Mendelssohn's well-known "Hear My Prayer" in its little known and infrequently performed German version "Hor mein bitten". The first time we have ever heard that, and from that one experience, this was not a good decision. The choir's diction was poor even when singing in French (Faure's Cantique de Jean Racine was, almost inevitably, one of the encores); it was awful in German (even the soloist couldn't improve matters here) and only just about OK in Latin (in the opening Haydn Missa Brevis, a little-known late work, that was one of the choir's better efforts). The very resonant acoustic of the Collegiale didn't help the singers and contributed to the difficulty of hearing words, but diction, projection (looking up) and awareness of phrasing would all have helped, especially in this building.
The organist was excellent and the organ sounded wonderful - it would be nice to get a CD featuring it. The string players were fine and the arrangements competently and thoughtfully scored. We're pleased we went to this concert and on balance we enjoyed it, but it's a shame that better performances in England seem to be much worse supported than similar programmes in France.
We had booked a table for 8.30pm at what is supposed to be one of the best restaurants in Grignan (Le Poeme de Grignan). This is in the current and many previous editions of the "Bottan Gourmand" and the "Guide Michelin". In spite of the encores and the speeches at the concert we arrived there at 8.15pm and didn't emerge again until 10.50pm, a long dinner taking over two and a half hours. This wasn't because we chose to eat so slowly - the service was appallingly slow! There was nothing wrong with the food; indeed it was very good, the warm souffle dessert being especially commendable. And the single waitress was most helpful in recommending a relatively inexpensive wine from a highly-priced list; a Crozes-Hermitage 2006, still over-priced at 32 euros but excellent nonetheless - M had most benefit from this as R had to drive back. There seemed to be only three staff there - said waitress, a slightly indifferent-seeming young man who occasionally brought things to a table, but for the most part just stood around and let his female colleague do the work and, one assumes, the chef. For a total bill of 120 euros including that 32 euro wine, the service was unacceptable but it was too hot to protest (even with
air-conditioning) and we felt we had enjoyed the meal in spite of the flaws, a bit like the concert you might say! We made our way back to the Smart, downhill this time, the temperature a mere 30C at 11pm, and drove the mile or so back to Les Truffieres.
Sunday 16 August 2009
The Smart hasn't done much work for 3 days - just the runs to Leclerc and into Grignan, so we decided on a longer trip in it today. As well as wanting to look around this part of Provence, another reason for staying near Grignan was that it makes feasible a day trip to the Ardeche, a region we explored in the late 70s, about 30 years ago!
To access the Ardeche we made for the small town of Donzere just South of Montelimar and used the narrow but long suspension bridge across the Rhone, then through the pretty village of St.Montan on the twisty D262 to Larnas. Here we stopped to look at the 12th century Romanesque church which is remarkable in that it has survived with very little having been changed; and this is in spite of several threats to change it or even demolish and rebuild it. The most serious of these, in the 18th century, was successfully foiled by a novice monk who worked entirely against his lords and masters and by means of clever manipulation, staved off the threats and kept the original building intact. As a result this is a fine example of a genuine 12th century church in Provence, superior to many better-known examples: indeed it is not especially famous. It is prettily situated and was open when we got there (although of course it was a Sunday). It is well worth a visit:
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From Larnas we continued to St.Remeze, then West along the D4 to Vallon Pont d'Arc, which as anticipated was heaving with people and traffic. The same could be said of the famous "Corniche" road above the Ardeche Gorges on the Northern side, from Vallon to St.Martin d'Ardeche. In spite of the traffic this drive still impressed with its many fine views of the main gorge and the river far below, including the Pont d'Arc (a natural rock arch spanning the river):
and the Cirque de la Madeleine (where the river forms a huge "ox-bow" surrounded by high limestone cliffs):
The Smart proved very useful once again in being able to stop where other cars could not, yet without blocking the traffic:
enabling us to take several pictures; we haven't driven this road for many years. We crossed the Ardeche at St.Martin and made for Montclus on the D901, then turning South on the D990 and right (West) on the smaller D167 to Mejannes-le-Clap. The D167 leaves the D990 by means of a handsome bridge across the River Ceze and we remember this from the 1970s as a nice and fairly unfrequented swimming place. We'd hoped to stop there for a swim but it was crammed with cars and bodies in all directions. Cars were still arriving and trying unsuccessfully to park; the small stony beaches by the river were covered and even the river itself was full of swimmers and canoes. Admittedly it was 30 years ago, almost exactly, that we came here to swim almost on our own, but it was high season then and we were quite shocked by the change.
We found a shaded pull-off for a picnic along the road to Mejannes, toyed briefly with the idea of using the long dirt track just East of Le Clap to access the river, and thought better of it, continuing until we passed the road heading North from Mejannes towards the river - this leads to Camping La Genese on the Southern bank of the Ceze; still in existence, signposted from Mejannes and still a naturist campsite (one where you don't wear clothes for anyone unfamiliar with the word or at risk of confusing it with "naturalist"). We were tempted to go down there for old times' sake, but the road leads only to the campsite and has no other river access so there's no point in going unless you are camping there. We had thought about using the site again this year but from what we remember of the access road and the site itself, things could be very tricky in a largish motorhome. In 1979 we, and our daughter Ruth (then aged 7) camped in two small ridge tents and wore nothing much for two whole weeks in the sun.
From Mejannes we headed South to the medieval hill-top village (there are a lot of these, aren't there?) of Lussan:
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We parked in the car park on the way up, as recommended by signs, and spent an hour or so walking round.
This was also nostalgic: in 1979 while camped at La Genese, Ruth had suffered from an allergic condition (we never discovered what triggered it) and alarmingly blew up like a balloon - the effect was made even worse by her being in the sun. The campsite had advised us of a doctor at Lussan and we rushed there. He gave her a large dose of anti-histamine intravenously with some follow up pills and advised a week completely out of the sun. It worked and she deflated within hours but hated having to sit in a hot tent while Mum & Dad went to the pool!
Thirty years on we tried to find the surgery but failed - we think it has probably gone. Although almost everything was shut, it being Sunday afternoon, we found a nice small cafe open with a shaded terrace and had ice creams and cold soft drinks:
From Lussan we drove East to La Roque-sur-Ceze, our last-ditch hope of a swim, or at least a walk by the river, but the whole area around the rickety bridge just upstream from the Cascades was as crowded as the first place we tried, if not more so, and the parking was "payant" at 3 euros (not a bargain at 6pm), so we drove back to Les Truffieres using small uncluttered roads and the Rhone crossing at Pont St.Esprit, this time using the older, smaller bridge, another long suspension affair.
Arriving back just after 7pm we enjoyed another barbecue after a tiring but very enjoyable day of exploration. Tomorrow we leave here for Bedoin beneath the Southern slopes of Mont Ventoux.
Monday 17 August 2009
Packing up at Les Truffieres was straightforward though we left loading the Smart on the trailer until we had reached the general parking area outside the entry barrier, to avoid blocking anyone's access on the site itself.
We ignored our TomTom satnav - although it knew the destination well enough it demonstrated its usual complete lack of understanding that it was directing, in effect, an articulated vehicle 12 metres long and 2.35 metres wide. Our route was a long way round, using major roads via Nyons, Vaison-la-Romaine (the town of the choir) and Malaucene to Carpentras, before turning North-West on the D974 to Bedoin. Although this used apparently main roads, the surfaces were generally in a terrible state - we have known dirt roads far smoother than this so-called tarmac in dire need of repair. Generally we are finding that the state of French roads, other than Autoroutes, of course, is much worse than that of similar roads in the UK. Also the towns of Nyons, Vaison and Malaucene were very tricky to pass through in our outfit, being narrow and full of traffic with the usual dearth of any useful signposting in the towns themselves.
There are some things we do much better than the French.
Carpentras was a real nightmare, a perfect illustration of the French approach to signposting in all towns of reasonable size which can be summarised as:
(1) Do not mention any destinations other than very major places usually a long way away or tiny villages very close at hand.
(2) With the possible exception of Autoroutes and very major trunk N-roads, do not mention any road numbers on signs at all until the actual start of the road in question, usually in some obscure place on the outskirts of the town.
(3) Even then, try as hard as possible to put the information on the side of the sign that the hapless motorist cannot actually see, presenting said motorist with an array of blank "backs of signs".
The result - we got lost of course! We saw several bits of Carpentras several times. We got carved up repeatedly by rude, boorish, bad-tempered, impatient and just plain bad drivers (yes, we're afraid they were all French - well, a little English Smart is "fair game", isn't it?). Oh, and we had to back-track at times, an exercise that often involves involuntary exploration of an industrial estate or business park - well, it's not easy to turn something 12 metres long and articulated. Eventually we found our way out and were very briefly rewarded by a few seconds glimpse of Carpentras' famous Roman acqueduct (not a patch on the one in Segovia in any case) - there was no hope of stopping for a better look.
But the worst of this journey was yet to come! Today was the day we put a crease in our nice shiny motorhome. As creases go, it wasn't a very big one, about a foot long in the front part of the nearside fibreglass panel just where it widens behind the cab. It is also, mercifully, not very deep. We also split the front nearside habitation window. We arrived at Bedoin, in any circumstances a narrow village to traverse, to find the Monday market just beginning the process of packing up (it was about 2pm). The campsite (Belezy) is signposted in the village our directions said, and so it was, straight up a road half-blocked with stalls and sporting a big yellow "Route Barree" sign. Another big yellow sign saying "Deviation" pointed right up a side street also full of half-demolished stalls and traders no longer trading but busily packing up. Unable to reverse (getting the hell out of there would have been very attractive) we had no choice but to turn right. This was not an easy manoeuvre as access space was far from wide and the turn was through 90 degrees with a trailed Smart on the back. On our left as we turned a trader had parked his largish hatchback with its back facing out into the street, its front against the kerb. Sadly its tailgate was raised also as M. Trader was busy packing his stuff in it! The rest is easy enough to guess. R was concentrating on the overall width and was several feet from the rear bumper of the trader's hatchback. He didn't notice, indeed couldn't see, the projecting top lip of the tailgate about 6 feet above the ground - he couldn't see it because he was on the right of a motorhome with right-hand-drive! The rear view mirror showed nothing behind. If he had been very observant he might have spotted the open boot of the hatchback, but the whole situation was very stressful and he didn't make the connection. The motorhome did make a connection - with the projecting edge of the raised tailgate and the first either of us knew of it was hearing the crunch! The French trader was extremely uncharitable (why are we being so kind?) and having checked that a fiberglass panel and perspex window had done no damage to his tailgate edge (on a very tatty car, by the way) told Marian in aggressive French that she should learn how to drive. He hadn't worked out that the driver (R) was on the other side, but we don't suppose that would have changed his attitude. Anyway he wasn't a bit bothered; we extricated ourselves quickly without further ado and stopped up the road to assess the damage (looks slight to us but you never know, do you, once the bodyshop / insurance racket gets going on the situation). We put in a quick call to Caravanguard just to let them know and they made note of it, but understood that any repair and claim process will have to wait until after our return to the UK. M made a fantastic job of a temporary repair with the good old duck tape and the wound now resembles an honourable battle scar to go along with the dust and dirt of 1750 miles travel (so far). The window, also with its tape bandage, is fully operational. It could have been a lot worse.
The slight difficulty remained that having been "deviated" we now had little idea how to get to Belezy. A call to the campsite and a conversation in Franglais with a very helpful lady at Reception, together with a bit of deductive map-reading, did the trick - we found the road to Belezy, albeit from the other direction, and we were soon parked outside Reception.
The full name of the campsite is the "Domaine Naturiste de Belezy". Yes, this is a campsite where you take off your clothes for a good proportion of the time.
We first got into "Naturism" by accident in our twenties when we visited the Istrian bit of the former Yugoslavia (happier days for that part of the world). It was a fortnight's "package" at a hotel near Porec. We soon discovered that the best,least-crowded and cleanest beach was for nudists, round the corner from the main beach which was crammed with sunbathing bodies and a bit grubby. The nudist beach was lovely, backed by grassy dunes and pine woods. All you had to do was walk past a sign saying "For Nudists" in several languages! R remembers having to work hard to persuade M that it wouldn't be full of voyeurs and exhibitionists and M remembers her disappointment all those years ago that no-one seemed to look at her in particular, even though she had a pretty stunning figure! We have never been very "philosophical" about naturism - for us the advantages are practical, and pretty obvious in a hot climate. We don't really do modesty! Since that first beach experience we have used other similar beaches in France, Greece and Spain. In 1979, with Ruth (then aged 7) we camped on naturist sites in France for the first time, including La Genese on the Ceze (see above - previous day's entry). Although we don't approach this scene, as some do, with almost religious fervour, we have found the social atmosphere on the sites we have used to be superb, with a great mix of families and couples, and with lots of activities - sports, games, culture, music, crafts and so on. Naturist sites seem to be well-organised for the most part and have rather more rules and regulations than the average "ordinary" campsite. But there also seems to be more consideration for others on the part of most campers.
This was our first visit to Belezy though and we had slight reservations about it simply because the booking paperwork was so prolific and there seemed to be an awful lot of rules, albeit all of them perfectly sensible. We need not have worried because in practice everything is very "laid-back" and it would be difficult to be stressed by life here, as long as you are thoughtful about your fellow campers. More about Belezy later.
We checked in (we had pre-booked as early as May for these 7 nights) and we were allocated a very nice, large and shaded pitch near all the social facilities and the swimming pools:
Our pitch at Belezy:
We were given lots of information about all sorts of activities going on in this next week. It took us ages to get settled as we misunderstood the unusual arrangements for parking - you leave your car in a guarded area inside the barrier in a marked space corresponding to your pitch (when it's less busy you can keep the car at your pitch but this isn't allowed for most of July and August). Eventually we understood what we had to do, though we were not sure (and don't think they were sure) what to do with our trailer! We just left it in a shaded area of the guarded car park. It was nearly 5pm before we were settled with electricity connected and our awning in place. We had to borrow a huge extension cable for our hookup as the pillar was about 75 metres from our pitch. You need long leads at Belezy. We were lucky - they seem to have only one big extension reel and we got it.
There is an abundance of wildlife in this area and we share our pitch with a baby robin who eats all our crumbs and a red squirrel who plays in the trees. Both are surprisingly tame - the robin evaded the camera but the squirrel was happy to pose. There are no restrictions here on taking photos of naked squirrels!
We had eaten a picnic lunch en-route (just after Carpentras to celebrate our feat of navigation there) and planned a barbecue dinner - only gas and electric grill barbecues are allowed here - not charcoal ones. We took off our clothes (don't worry, this is a family-friendly blog) and headed for the pool. There are two pools in fact, a smaller one intended mainly for children and beginners, and a large one (just a bit less than Olympic size) for everything else. Kids are welcome in both pools, but a very good feature is that the large pool is divided by rope and float barriers into a swimming area (lane swimming only allowed) and a more general "play and relaxation" area. This is brilliant as kids can do their thing and anyone (adults or children) who wants to swim properly can do so without disturbance. Oh, and without costumes of course! Interestingly we thought the way the kids and teens behaved here was much better than any of the other pools we visited this holiday and with them having just as much fun.
The swim was wonderfully refreshing as the heat continues unabated. Afterwards we went back to the pitch and barbecued our pork steaks.
Tuesday 18 August 2009
Belezy is great! So much so that we spent the whole day here today. The site has already exceeded our expectations. There is a restaurant and bar with a big terrace -the menus look very promising and good value. There is an excellent shop selling far more than most campsite shops. We looked up our list of activities and found one of them very interesting - every week they try to put together a small choir from among campsite residents; this rehearses a programme of songs in various languages, the rehearsals being on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings, each lasting about an hour and a half. They were directed by Johan, a friendly and competent Dutchman who has a great sense of humour and appears to speak about five languages. The idea is that the choir then presents a concert at the entertainment area on Friday evening! We went to the first rehearsal at 10am and had a good laugh, but amazingly we made some real progress with six songs (a seventh is being added tomorrow), singing in French, Italian, English and Dutch (the first experience of singing in Dutch for both of us!). The songs are fairly simple and several of them well-known (Morning Has Broken, Plaisir d'Amour) with some simple harmonisation. This morning we were about 6 sopranos, 8 altos, 3 tenors and 2 basses. We were uncertain of the "dress code" (or should that be "undress code"?) for these rehearsals (or indeed for the concert - just a bow tie and nothing else perhaps?). As people often wear clothes for similar activities here we played safe and R wore shorts while M wore a not entirely modest sarong. In the event, all the women were clothed in one way or another, but the men were all nude except for R in his shorts. He says it was bizarre singing in a choir containing 5 men and being the only one with any clothes on. He couldn't take his shorts off as he hadn't brought a towel (it's naturist protocol to put a towel on a seat if you are nude!). So he took them off at the end of the rehearsal to walk back to our pitch!
We had another swim in the big pool followed by a short session of sunbathing. We find it too hot to stay long in the sun, so we sit under our awning for reading, writing (this blog) or M's embroidery - she is doing a map of the South West Coast Path. This took up the afternoon without any problem.
After another barbecue supper (lamb steaks this time) we went to the Mas (old Provencal farmhouse) where all the cultural, artistic and entertainment activities take place. There is a large paved area outside under plane trees where concerts are given regularly, some organised well in advance, some quite impromptu and many just put together informally by people camping here. Films are also shown regularly on a big outdoor screen put up at the time. Our list of activities and the several notice boards around the site advertised a classical music concert starting at 8.30pm (anyone reading this who doesn't know us should realise by now that we are keen on classical music!). The performers were three string players (a classical trio - violin, viola and 'cello) and a pianist; to be accurate two pianists, a man who played in the first half of the concert and a lady who took his place at the piano in the second half. We heard a little-known viola sonata by Mendelssohn, a piano quartet also by Mendelssohn and two 20th century French pieces, one by Chausson the other composed by a female contemporary of Debussy called Bonis, and then in the second half, the better-known Dumky Trio by Dvorak, a more challenging piece. They brought it all off with some aplomb, especially as we imagine they had known each other and been able to rehearse together only for a short time! The concert was free to its audience of about 60 people, and was of near-professional standard. It was quite an experience sitting in front of this magnificent old farmhouse, surrounded by Mediterranean vegetation and flowers, in the warmth of a Provencale evening, listening to marvellous music played well and with feeling; another experience we won't forget.
There are amusing aspects to attending a concert on a naturist campsite, however. We had arrived early for the performance and just caught the end of the players' final rehearsal. The lady pianist wasn't involved at that point so there were two male string players and one female (the 'cellist) and the male pianist in rehearsal. The violinist, a tall and amazingly slim gent, wore nothing at all; the other men wore just shorts; only the lady 'cellist was fully clothed. Not really a "dress rehearsal" then, more of an "undress rehearsal"! However they all dressed quite normally for the performance. The audience displayed a wide variety of dress modes from smart casual to nothing at all!
We considered an after-dark swim (the pools are open until 11pm and floodlit after the sun goes down) but chose an early night instead.
Wednesday 19 August 2009
We breakfasted in good time to get to the choir rehearsal at 10; the additional song is "Tulips from Amsterdam" which we have to sing in Dutch, English, German and French in that order. It's great singing in Dutch! The whole thing was a lot of fun once more and we are improving (we think!). We then went swimming; again it was very refreshing and helped give us an appetite for a very light lunch - it is just too hot in the middle of the day for us to eat very much. A wine-tasting organised by six local producers began at 5pm and we wandered along. The producers are competitors of course and were happy for you to taste as many of the wines on offer as you wished, in the hope that you would buy one of theirs, although there was no obligation or pressure to buy anything. For the tasting you had to give a deposit of 3 euros each for nicely engraved wineglasses (Domaine de Belezy) and at the end you could either keep the glasses or return them and have the deposit back - most people chose to keep them, as we did. All the producers poured generous helpings for tasting no matter how many of their wines you tasted and this was even so for the more expensive ones. Three producers had "overspill" buckets in case you didn't want to swallow the lot, but three did not. As we tasted most of what was on offer, the inevitable result was that we were both already somewhat "under the influence" by the time the tasting finished just before 7pm. To make matters worse we had already booked a table for dinner at the campsite restaurant and - yes - we ordered a bottle of local red wine with it. Well, they do say that when you drink too much, you never know when to stop!
The wine-tasting was well-organised though and enormous fun - most of the vendors had a great sense of humour and tried out their English as we tried our French. This became very technical Franglais with lots of detail of grape-varieties (cepages) and their percentages, how well (or otherwise) a particular wine would age and the usual faintly ridiculous descriptions of how the wine should taste (blackberry and chocolate on the nose with hints of strawberry - that sort of thing; but the French at least do this more poetically than the English). The wine was variable but the best was very good - it was all Cotes de Ventoux of one sort or another. Most of it was good value for the quality and keeping characteristics. We bought 11 bottles in total of which two are for the "drink-now stock" and 9 to take home (the Smart's going to have a lot of wine on board). The drink-soons were superb roses (Vin de Pays and by far the best roses there among many); the take-homes were all reds. The roses and six of the reds were around 6 euros each - not exactly cheap but this was all classy stuff. The three other reds were a real extravagance at double that price (i.e. 12 euros a bottle), but this was the only producer with an official organic certification. Sadly this had the usual effect on the price! What chance does the organic movement have as long as this goes on? We bought these three bottles not because of a "bio" label but simply because the wine was well worth its price. We hope we were not over-influenced by the alcohol we had consumed at that stage!
We donned clothes for dinner (this seems universal practice). The restaurant meal started well and continued well with one exception towards the end. We had a nice table on the terrace and our starters (crudites for M, very good fish soup for R) were good, as were our mains. We both had lamb chops with chips, beans and other veg (unidentified but it tasted OK). Service was excellent, the menu offered a good range of choices and reasonable prices. That unwise final bottle of red was pretty decent (we think) but it was getting more and more unwise to trust our judgement of anything thanks to the "affluence of incohol" as we might have said at the time.
But then came that exception - nothing short of paralytic inebriation could have prevented recognition of R's "creme brulee" dessert as a culinary disaster! Beneath an acceptable if slightly soft and sugary crust (in itself not unusual, sadly) lay a curdled mess. Heated too quickly, says M. R acknowledges his error in not returning it at once, and worse, trying to eat it. He would like to blame his alcoholic state, but in fact confesses to a moment of weakness. Complaining was absolutely the thing he should have done the moment his spoon broke through that sugary crust.
We can recommend the Belezy restaurant with the qualification - don't order "creme brulee" or if you do, and it's wrong, send it back!
We staggered back to the motorhome at 8.30pm and decided a one-hour siesta was in order before we went to the Mas for a rock concert due to start at 9.30 and going on until 11pm. We woke up a few minutes before 11! The concert was probably pretty good, so we cursed and went back to sleep.
Thursday 20 August 2009
Having spent two whole days at Belezy without leaving the campsite we thought we should have an excursion today. But this had to wait, of course, until after our third choir rehearsal at which our director introduced another song, a French version of the 1950s Doris Day hit "Que Sera Sera"; it retained one line in English - "What will be, will be". And we are, definitely, improving! Then we drove the Smart to the summit of Mont Ventoux using the famous route on the Southern side of the mountain that forms probably the most famous stage of the Tour de France, and on which Tommy Simpson died just a few hundred metres from the summit, on 13 July 1967. The road is still a Mecca for endurance cyclists the world over.
Mont Ventoux:
We have driven the Midget over Mont Ventoux in the other direction (ascending on the Northern side, descending to the South); this was in 1995 and we lost most of the brakes on the descent when the front disc pads disintegrated leaving the calipers to grind directly into the discs. This did little for stopping ability but somehow we got all the way to our booked hotel between Lyons and Macon using just the handbrake for the most part. Arriving at the hotel on a Friday evening for a two-night stay, we had called the rescue service who in turn contacted a classic car garage in Macon. They collected the car two hours later, ordered the parts on the Saturday, parts arrived Sunday morning, they did the job Sunday afternoon and sent a taxi to our hotel after breakfast on Monday to take us to Macon to pick-up Midget. We paid only for the repair itself - everything else was covered by the breakdown insurance.
Happily on this occasion the Smart made light work of Mont Ventoux:
We stopped to pay homage at the Simpson memorial; it was even more adorned with tributes than we remember it being in 1995:
The full story of that day's tragedy is now well-known, including the perilous contribution of the drugs Simpson used, but this stark greyish-white stone pillar standing on the bleak cap of crumbling rock above the tree-line, at the exact place of Tommy's death, so close to the summit, emphasises both the enormity and the cruelty of the challenge presented to cyclists by this giant of Provence.
We stopped for a brief walk at the summit, crowded with cyclists who had sweltered their way up in a temperature between 32 at Bedoin and 24 at the top:
We simply cannot imagine the level of fitness required to do this. We came up the lazy way in our Smart:
Mont Ventoux:
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We returned via the Nothern descent road to Malaucene and used the splendid twisty little D19 to take us quickly back to Bedoin - it was fine in the Smart, but as we had thought on Monday, this is another road to avoid in a motorhome.
At Bedoin we refilled the Smart with petrol at the village garage (even more expensive) and popped back to the campsite to retrieve a couple of ice-creams
from the motorhome's freezer - this was all we wanted for lunch. Then we undertook the second fine drive of the day - the fantastic corniche road above the Gorges de la Nesque, the D942 between Villes-sur-Auzon and Monieux:
Words are inadequate to describe this splendid route; perhaps photographs will better convey the reason for including it on our itinerary:
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A quick dash back to Villes-sur-Auzon using the smooth, fast and beautifully-engineered D1, followed by a potter through the lanes and brief shopping in Mormoiron, soon saw us back at Belezy, where the usual cooling swim preceded the customary barbecue.
Thursday 13 August 2009
Today we moved on from Le Vigan to the village of Grignan in that part of Provence known as "le Drome". This was a drive of 100 miles starting with the familiar D999 through Ganges, continuing Eastwards along it to St.Hippolyte-du-Fort and then using the D982 to the pretty town of Anduze, another place we had visited in 2001 when we travelled there and back on the steam railway from St.Jean-du-Gard. From Anduze we routed via Ales and Bagnols-sur-Ceze to cross the Rhone at Pont St.Esprit, making for Bollene. Then we used the handy, very straight D26 / D17 / D59 / D458 (it's the same road but in true French style swaps these numbers around with abandon), past the nuclear power station by the Rhone (we remember flying over this in a Cessna 152 in 1988!) and finally taking the D541 towards Grignan. Our chosen campsite, Camping Les Truffieres, lies just South of the town on the D71 towards Chamaret, and is well-signposted from the D541 - we found it without difficulty.
The journey was devoid of proper laybys or "aires-de-picnique"; remarkably so for France in fact - we had done over 70 miles when R spotted picnic tables in some trees on the D6 just before Bagnols and we stopped for lunch at a table in a small wood. It would have been far too hot to stop anywhere without shade:
Camping les Truffieres is another very nice site; the lady who welcomed us at Reception was cheerful and friendly, speaking mostly in English (because she liked to, she said); but she seemed a little worried by the size of our outfit with the trailer and towed Smart - we assured her that it would fit into less space than she might imagine. She gave us the choice of three pitches still vacant - we walked around the site to look at all three and chose the largest, almost totally shaded by trees (just a little sun filters through) and very quiet:
The other two possibilities were not only smaller but also near the swimming pool and so inevitably noisier, especially at this time of year. We were soon well established on our very pleasant pitch and hooked up to a 10 amp electricty post hidden in a hedge seemingly miles away but just within range of our cable. Yet again our tester showed the supply to have reversed polarity as it had at Millau and Le Vigan, so we again used our "reversing lead" to correct it. From our experience it would seem that 80-90% of French campsite electric pillars have reversed polarity (neutral and earth reversed).
Les Truffieres is quite a small site in a wood so that almost all the pitches are well-shaded. We like it - the owners and the people at the little bar / restaurant are possibly the friendliest we have encountered anywhere. The main disadvantage is the limited scope of the sanitation and washing facilities in a single block. They are kept very clean but are limited in number and you may well have to queue at the more obvious times - for example there are only 3 loos each for gents and ladies. The design of the facility has that strange feature, already experienced at Cognac and Millau, that you can stroll round the corner of either the gents or the ladies "side" and find yourself in the opposite one, quite possibly surrounded by members of the opposite sex who seem not the slightest bit bothered!
We considered a swim and walked round to the pool with our things, but we were put off by the numbers already using it. The pool itself looked very nice but was once again crowded and noisy. There were no adults in the water; the only people over 20 were sitting or lying on loungers and were clearly the parents of some of those in the water. We have come to the conclusion that this scene is almost inevitable anywhere in the high season.
So we reserved an outside table at the campsite restaurant for 7.30 and had a bit of a siesta. Our roof fan does little to reduce the inside temperature of the motorhome, which soon stabilises to be identical to the outside, but if you have it blowing air in, and set on its maximum force, you can at least lie on the bed directly under the fan and this does make things much nicer. We leave it on at night - it's the only way we can get a good night's sleep when it is so hot!
The meal was simple but very enjoyable - two courses, plus aperitifs, wine and coffee for 49 euros - the wine was 13 euros of this. Not especially cheap but about the average cost in France for what we had. The restaurant also does a good selection of elaborate salads and pizzas which can be eaten there or taken back to your pitch.
It took a while to get to sleep with an inside temperature of 30C (at 11pm). We left the fan blowing down on us and eventually drifted off. Bedclothes or any other sort of clothes at night are definitely not recommended in this climate! Happily, the mesh screens which we keep in place covering all windows, roof vents and the door, make a good job of keeping out almost all insect life including the many sorts of "biters" round here.
Friday 14 August 2009
After breakfast we walked the mile and a half to Grignan via the "Grotte de Rochecourbiere" - this is not so much an obvious cave (the entrance is hidden behind a plaque commemorating its discoverer) but a large indented rock cliff. Grignan is a fascinating and impressive village with its large hilltop chateau and its assocation with the famous 17th century writer of letters, Madame de Sevigne:
We explored on foot in the fierce heat - this was exhausting and yet again we felt too hot to eat lunch and settled for cold drinks at a bar in the main square. Then we found the tourist information office and bought two tickets for tomorrow night's concert in the "Collegiale", the large church attached to the chateau; the concert features choral pieces mainly by Haydn and Mendelssohn and we shall look forward to it.
By now the chateau was open to visitors again after the usual lunchtime closure of almost everything and we paid for a guided tour. This was interesting only because we asked for and were given English descriptions of the main things to be seen; the guide spoke in very fast French and was extremely difficult for us to understand. If you tour the Chateau de Grignan and do not speak French fluently (and more to the point, understand fast-spoken French) then we would recommend getting the English blurb and making your own way round (the cost is the same, 5.50 euros per head, whichever you do). But the chateau is well worth looking round one way or the other as it has a fascinating history and is a fine building. As well as the chateau and its Collegiale Church, things to see at Grignan include the main square with it's fountain and the communal "lavoir" (washing place) not far away down some steps. These "lavoirs" feature in a number of the villages in Provence; most of them were constructed in the 19th century.
Scenes of Grignan, its Chateau and surroundings:
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Another exhausting walk of just over a mile took us back to the campsite by a more direct route. We considered a swim to cool off but found the pool very crowded and noisy again so we settled for another siesta under the fan. We had very little in the motorhome with which to make supper but couldn't be bothered, in the heat, either to go food shopping or to find a restaurant (of which there are many in Grignan). So we got takeaway pizzas from the campsite restaurant and ate as much as we could of them - they were good, but far too big to finish. At least we got an early night and this time had a good night's sleep thanks to the roof fan - we're not sure what we'd have done without this device - slept outside probably!
Saturday 15 August 2009
Today we walked in the other direction, Southwards, towards the little hamlet of Chamaret:
There is a good route on paths, tracks and small roads and it's easy to follow because of the landmark of Chamaret's high ruined medieval tower - you can see this from miles around:
There was some shade on this walk but also long stretches in the baking heat of the sun. You can pay 2 euros to go to the top of the tower when it's open, but we arrived at 12.15, during its lunchtime closure (12.00 - 14.30):
We were not going to wait over two hours for it to reopen - in fact you miss very little by not climbing to the top as the views are equally stunning from the tower's base. Chamaret is a pretty little place:
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but there's not much else to see there, except another communal "Lavoir" - an entirely different design from the one at Grignan and also worth finding:
After walking back to Camping Les Truffieres we again felt very over-heated; fortunately the pool was far from crowded this time and we enjoyed a lovely cooling swim. A light lunch at our pitch and a siesta (these are becoming a habit) just left time for a quick dash in the Smart to an enormous Leclerc at Valerais (about 15 minutes drive from the campsite). Here we filled up the Smart with petrol and did quite a big shop for food and provisions, including large quantities of bottled water of which we are drinking several litres every day. We got back to Les Truffieres with just enough time to change and set off for the concert at Grignan.
The concert was billed as starting at 6pm in the large church attached to the Chateau, known as "La Collegiale", but we were warned by tourist information to arrive early, no later than 5.30, and preferably 5.15. We parked the Smart in a shady, and free, place at the bottom part of the village (all the places higher up are "payant" until 8pm) and walked up the steep, narrow streets to the church, trying not to get hot (it was still 37C - in fact the temperature seems to peak at about this time). We arrived at the door at 5.15 to find a notice saying that doors opened at 5.30. But a nice man beckoned at us to go in; we found the ticket desk already set up, presented our tickets and had the choice of almost any seats we wanted.
This classical choral concert was given by a choir from Vaison-la-Romaine, a medium size town about 40 miles to the South East of Grignan. It was called the Choeur Europeen, clever naming giving it an international flavour; however we suspect it performs mainly in its own region. It has made two CDs and both were on sale - we bought one (10 euros), a perfomance of a little-known Mass by Puccini (better known for his operas). The choir was to be accompanied by three, or at times four, string players from the Cevennes region (members of the "Orchestre de la Chambre des Cevennes") and the organ. The organ at the Grignan Collegiale is well-known among those interested in such things as it was built in 1662 and has been carefully and perfectly restored. The programme was to feature mainly Haydn and Mendelssohn.
What to say about this concert? It's a difficult question as neither of us want to be over-critical of an amateur choir in France; like most amateur choirs they had almost certainly put in loads of work at rehearsal and we are sure that most of the audience numbering about 140 (better than you'd expect to do where we live in Cumbria, that's for sure!) absolutely loved what they heard. That's why they wouldn't let 'em go without two encore pieces at the end!
So that's good enough, isn't it? We needn't say any more. We need not, yet perhaps we should record that the concert started late, at 6.15, was preceded by quite long speeches from a variety of people and punctuated by more of these at times; however the conductor's introductions to the pieces were genuinely useful and he spoke clear French fairly slowly. He is Claude Poletti, the choir's regular director. As for the perfomance, it was good in parts, but suffered badly in others; it would be kind to attribute this to the heat (which reigned even inside the church) but we suspect it has more to do with the membership's high average age, the age-old sin of "heads buried in copies" and a severe imbalance between women (numbering 28) and men (numbering 10). One felt especially sorry for the three tenors (no, NOT those three tenors!) who bravely did their manful best! There was a young soprano soloist with a lovely voice but who stared at her music most of the time and made no eye-contact at all with her audience. Not even when singing "Oh for the Wings of a Dove" in German.
Extraordinarily (in R's view at least) this French choir chose to sing Mendelssohn's well-known "Hear My Prayer" in its little known and infrequently performed German version "Hor mein bitten". The first time we have ever heard that, and from that one experience, this was not a good decision. The choir's diction was poor even when singing in French (Faure's Cantique de Jean Racine was, almost inevitably, one of the encores); it was awful in German (even the soloist couldn't improve matters here) and only just about OK in Latin (in the opening Haydn Missa Brevis, a little-known late work, that was one of the choir's better efforts). The very resonant acoustic of the Collegiale didn't help the singers and contributed to the difficulty of hearing words, but diction, projection (looking up) and awareness of phrasing would all have helped, especially in this building.
The organist was excellent and the organ sounded wonderful - it would be nice to get a CD featuring it. The string players were fine and the arrangements competently and thoughtfully scored. We're pleased we went to this concert and on balance we enjoyed it, but it's a shame that better performances in England seem to be much worse supported than similar programmes in France.
We had booked a table for 8.30pm at what is supposed to be one of the best restaurants in Grignan (Le Poeme de Grignan). This is in the current and many previous editions of the "Bottan Gourmand" and the "Guide Michelin". In spite of the encores and the speeches at the concert we arrived there at 8.15pm and didn't emerge again until 10.50pm, a long dinner taking over two and a half hours. This wasn't because we chose to eat so slowly - the service was appallingly slow! There was nothing wrong with the food; indeed it was very good, the warm souffle dessert being especially commendable. And the single waitress was most helpful in recommending a relatively inexpensive wine from a highly-priced list; a Crozes-Hermitage 2006, still over-priced at 32 euros but excellent nonetheless - M had most benefit from this as R had to drive back. There seemed to be only three staff there - said waitress, a slightly indifferent-seeming young man who occasionally brought things to a table, but for the most part just stood around and let his female colleague do the work and, one assumes, the chef. For a total bill of 120 euros including that 32 euro wine, the service was unacceptable but it was too hot to protest (even with
air-conditioning) and we felt we had enjoyed the meal in spite of the flaws, a bit like the concert you might say! We made our way back to the Smart, downhill this time, the temperature a mere 30C at 11pm, and drove the mile or so back to Les Truffieres.
Sunday 16 August 2009
The Smart hasn't done much work for 3 days - just the runs to Leclerc and into Grignan, so we decided on a longer trip in it today. As well as wanting to look around this part of Provence, another reason for staying near Grignan was that it makes feasible a day trip to the Ardeche, a region we explored in the late 70s, about 30 years ago!
To access the Ardeche we made for the small town of Donzere just South of Montelimar and used the narrow but long suspension bridge across the Rhone, then through the pretty village of St.Montan on the twisty D262 to Larnas. Here we stopped to look at the 12th century Romanesque church which is remarkable in that it has survived with very little having been changed; and this is in spite of several threats to change it or even demolish and rebuild it. The most serious of these, in the 18th century, was successfully foiled by a novice monk who worked entirely against his lords and masters and by means of clever manipulation, staved off the threats and kept the original building intact. As a result this is a fine example of a genuine 12th century church in Provence, superior to many better-known examples: indeed it is not especially famous. It is prettily situated and was open when we got there (although of course it was a Sunday). It is well worth a visit:
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From Larnas we continued to St.Remeze, then West along the D4 to Vallon Pont d'Arc, which as anticipated was heaving with people and traffic. The same could be said of the famous "Corniche" road above the Ardeche Gorges on the Northern side, from Vallon to St.Martin d'Ardeche. In spite of the traffic this drive still impressed with its many fine views of the main gorge and the river far below, including the Pont d'Arc (a natural rock arch spanning the river):
and the Cirque de la Madeleine (where the river forms a huge "ox-bow" surrounded by high limestone cliffs):
The Smart proved very useful once again in being able to stop where other cars could not, yet without blocking the traffic:
enabling us to take several pictures; we haven't driven this road for many years. We crossed the Ardeche at St.Martin and made for Montclus on the D901, then turning South on the D990 and right (West) on the smaller D167 to Mejannes-le-Clap. The D167 leaves the D990 by means of a handsome bridge across the River Ceze and we remember this from the 1970s as a nice and fairly unfrequented swimming place. We'd hoped to stop there for a swim but it was crammed with cars and bodies in all directions. Cars were still arriving and trying unsuccessfully to park; the small stony beaches by the river were covered and even the river itself was full of swimmers and canoes. Admittedly it was 30 years ago, almost exactly, that we came here to swim almost on our own, but it was high season then and we were quite shocked by the change.
We found a shaded pull-off for a picnic along the road to Mejannes, toyed briefly with the idea of using the long dirt track just East of Le Clap to access the river, and thought better of it, continuing until we passed the road heading North from Mejannes towards the river - this leads to Camping La Genese on the Southern bank of the Ceze; still in existence, signposted from Mejannes and still a naturist campsite (one where you don't wear clothes for anyone unfamiliar with the word or at risk of confusing it with "naturalist"). We were tempted to go down there for old times' sake, but the road leads only to the campsite and has no other river access so there's no point in going unless you are camping there. We had thought about using the site again this year but from what we remember of the access road and the site itself, things could be very tricky in a largish motorhome. In 1979 we, and our daughter Ruth (then aged 7) camped in two small ridge tents and wore nothing much for two whole weeks in the sun.
From Mejannes we headed South to the medieval hill-top village (there are a lot of these, aren't there?) of Lussan:
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We parked in the car park on the way up, as recommended by signs, and spent an hour or so walking round.
This was also nostalgic: in 1979 while camped at La Genese, Ruth had suffered from an allergic condition (we never discovered what triggered it) and alarmingly blew up like a balloon - the effect was made even worse by her being in the sun. The campsite had advised us of a doctor at Lussan and we rushed there. He gave her a large dose of anti-histamine intravenously with some follow up pills and advised a week completely out of the sun. It worked and she deflated within hours but hated having to sit in a hot tent while Mum & Dad went to the pool!
Thirty years on we tried to find the surgery but failed - we think it has probably gone. Although almost everything was shut, it being Sunday afternoon, we found a nice small cafe open with a shaded terrace and had ice creams and cold soft drinks:
From Lussan we drove East to La Roque-sur-Ceze, our last-ditch hope of a swim, or at least a walk by the river, but the whole area around the rickety bridge just upstream from the Cascades was as crowded as the first place we tried, if not more so, and the parking was "payant" at 3 euros (not a bargain at 6pm), so we drove back to Les Truffieres using small uncluttered roads and the Rhone crossing at Pont St.Esprit, this time using the older, smaller bridge, another long suspension affair.
Arriving back just after 7pm we enjoyed another barbecue after a tiring but very enjoyable day of exploration. Tomorrow we leave here for Bedoin beneath the Southern slopes of Mont Ventoux.
Monday 17 August 2009
Packing up at Les Truffieres was straightforward though we left loading the Smart on the trailer until we had reached the general parking area outside the entry barrier, to avoid blocking anyone's access on the site itself.
We ignored our TomTom satnav - although it knew the destination well enough it demonstrated its usual complete lack of understanding that it was directing, in effect, an articulated vehicle 12 metres long and 2.35 metres wide. Our route was a long way round, using major roads via Nyons, Vaison-la-Romaine (the town of the choir) and Malaucene to Carpentras, before turning North-West on the D974 to Bedoin. Although this used apparently main roads, the surfaces were generally in a terrible state - we have known dirt roads far smoother than this so-called tarmac in dire need of repair. Generally we are finding that the state of French roads, other than Autoroutes, of course, is much worse than that of similar roads in the UK. Also the towns of Nyons, Vaison and Malaucene were very tricky to pass through in our outfit, being narrow and full of traffic with the usual dearth of any useful signposting in the towns themselves.
There are some things we do much better than the French.
Carpentras was a real nightmare, a perfect illustration of the French approach to signposting in all towns of reasonable size which can be summarised as:
(1) Do not mention any destinations other than very major places usually a long way away or tiny villages very close at hand.
(2) With the possible exception of Autoroutes and very major trunk N-roads, do not mention any road numbers on signs at all until the actual start of the road in question, usually in some obscure place on the outskirts of the town.
(3) Even then, try as hard as possible to put the information on the side of the sign that the hapless motorist cannot actually see, presenting said motorist with an array of blank "backs of signs".
The result - we got lost of course! We saw several bits of Carpentras several times. We got carved up repeatedly by rude, boorish, bad-tempered, impatient and just plain bad drivers (yes, we're afraid they were all French - well, a little English Smart is "fair game", isn't it?). Oh, and we had to back-track at times, an exercise that often involves involuntary exploration of an industrial estate or business park - well, it's not easy to turn something 12 metres long and articulated. Eventually we found our way out and were very briefly rewarded by a few seconds glimpse of Carpentras' famous Roman acqueduct (not a patch on the one in Segovia in any case) - there was no hope of stopping for a better look.
But the worst of this journey was yet to come! Today was the day we put a crease in our nice shiny motorhome. As creases go, it wasn't a very big one, about a foot long in the front part of the nearside fibreglass panel just where it widens behind the cab. It is also, mercifully, not very deep. We also split the front nearside habitation window. We arrived at Bedoin, in any circumstances a narrow village to traverse, to find the Monday market just beginning the process of packing up (it was about 2pm). The campsite (Belezy) is signposted in the village our directions said, and so it was, straight up a road half-blocked with stalls and sporting a big yellow "Route Barree" sign. Another big yellow sign saying "Deviation" pointed right up a side street also full of half-demolished stalls and traders no longer trading but busily packing up. Unable to reverse (getting the hell out of there would have been very attractive) we had no choice but to turn right. This was not an easy manoeuvre as access space was far from wide and the turn was through 90 degrees with a trailed Smart on the back. On our left as we turned a trader had parked his largish hatchback with its back facing out into the street, its front against the kerb. Sadly its tailgate was raised also as M. Trader was busy packing his stuff in it! The rest is easy enough to guess. R was concentrating on the overall width and was several feet from the rear bumper of the trader's hatchback. He didn't notice, indeed couldn't see, the projecting top lip of the tailgate about 6 feet above the ground - he couldn't see it because he was on the right of a motorhome with right-hand-drive! The rear view mirror showed nothing behind. If he had been very observant he might have spotted the open boot of the hatchback, but the whole situation was very stressful and he didn't make the connection. The motorhome did make a connection - with the projecting edge of the raised tailgate and the first either of us knew of it was hearing the crunch! The French trader was extremely uncharitable (why are we being so kind?) and having checked that a fiberglass panel and perspex window had done no damage to his tailgate edge (on a very tatty car, by the way) told Marian in aggressive French that she should learn how to drive. He hadn't worked out that the driver (R) was on the other side, but we don't suppose that would have changed his attitude. Anyway he wasn't a bit bothered; we extricated ourselves quickly without further ado and stopped up the road to assess the damage (looks slight to us but you never know, do you, once the bodyshop / insurance racket gets going on the situation). We put in a quick call to Caravanguard just to let them know and they made note of it, but understood that any repair and claim process will have to wait until after our return to the UK. M made a fantastic job of a temporary repair with the good old duck tape and the wound now resembles an honourable battle scar to go along with the dust and dirt of 1750 miles travel (so far). The window, also with its tape bandage, is fully operational. It could have been a lot worse.
The slight difficulty remained that having been "deviated" we now had little idea how to get to Belezy. A call to the campsite and a conversation in Franglais with a very helpful lady at Reception, together with a bit of deductive map-reading, did the trick - we found the road to Belezy, albeit from the other direction, and we were soon parked outside Reception.
The full name of the campsite is the "Domaine Naturiste de Belezy". Yes, this is a campsite where you take off your clothes for a good proportion of the time.
We first got into "Naturism" by accident in our twenties when we visited the Istrian bit of the former Yugoslavia (happier days for that part of the world). It was a fortnight's "package" at a hotel near Porec. We soon discovered that the best,least-crowded and cleanest beach was for nudists, round the corner from the main beach which was crammed with sunbathing bodies and a bit grubby. The nudist beach was lovely, backed by grassy dunes and pine woods. All you had to do was walk past a sign saying "For Nudists" in several languages! R remembers having to work hard to persuade M that it wouldn't be full of voyeurs and exhibitionists and M remembers her disappointment all those years ago that no-one seemed to look at her in particular, even though she had a pretty stunning figure! We have never been very "philosophical" about naturism - for us the advantages are practical, and pretty obvious in a hot climate. We don't really do modesty! Since that first beach experience we have used other similar beaches in France, Greece and Spain. In 1979, with Ruth (then aged 7) we camped on naturist sites in France for the first time, including La Genese on the Ceze (see above - previous day's entry). Although we don't approach this scene, as some do, with almost religious fervour, we have found the social atmosphere on the sites we have used to be superb, with a great mix of families and couples, and with lots of activities - sports, games, culture, music, crafts and so on. Naturist sites seem to be well-organised for the most part and have rather more rules and regulations than the average "ordinary" campsite. But there also seems to be more consideration for others on the part of most campers.
This was our first visit to Belezy though and we had slight reservations about it simply because the booking paperwork was so prolific and there seemed to be an awful lot of rules, albeit all of them perfectly sensible. We need not have worried because in practice everything is very "laid-back" and it would be difficult to be stressed by life here, as long as you are thoughtful about your fellow campers. More about Belezy later.
We checked in (we had pre-booked as early as May for these 7 nights) and we were allocated a very nice, large and shaded pitch near all the social facilities and the swimming pools:
Our pitch at Belezy:
We were given lots of information about all sorts of activities going on in this next week. It took us ages to get settled as we misunderstood the unusual arrangements for parking - you leave your car in a guarded area inside the barrier in a marked space corresponding to your pitch (when it's less busy you can keep the car at your pitch but this isn't allowed for most of July and August). Eventually we understood what we had to do, though we were not sure (and don't think they were sure) what to do with our trailer! We just left it in a shaded area of the guarded car park. It was nearly 5pm before we were settled with electricity connected and our awning in place. We had to borrow a huge extension cable for our hookup as the pillar was about 75 metres from our pitch. You need long leads at Belezy. We were lucky - they seem to have only one big extension reel and we got it.
There is an abundance of wildlife in this area and we share our pitch with a baby robin who eats all our crumbs and a red squirrel who plays in the trees. Both are surprisingly tame - the robin evaded the camera but the squirrel was happy to pose. There are no restrictions here on taking photos of naked squirrels!
We had eaten a picnic lunch en-route (just after Carpentras to celebrate our feat of navigation there) and planned a barbecue dinner - only gas and electric grill barbecues are allowed here - not charcoal ones. We took off our clothes (don't worry, this is a family-friendly blog) and headed for the pool. There are two pools in fact, a smaller one intended mainly for children and beginners, and a large one (just a bit less than Olympic size) for everything else. Kids are welcome in both pools, but a very good feature is that the large pool is divided by rope and float barriers into a swimming area (lane swimming only allowed) and a more general "play and relaxation" area. This is brilliant as kids can do their thing and anyone (adults or children) who wants to swim properly can do so without disturbance. Oh, and without costumes of course! Interestingly we thought the way the kids and teens behaved here was much better than any of the other pools we visited this holiday and with them having just as much fun.
The swim was wonderfully refreshing as the heat continues unabated. Afterwards we went back to the pitch and barbecued our pork steaks.
Tuesday 18 August 2009
Belezy is great! So much so that we spent the whole day here today. The site has already exceeded our expectations. There is a restaurant and bar with a big terrace -the menus look very promising and good value. There is an excellent shop selling far more than most campsite shops. We looked up our list of activities and found one of them very interesting - every week they try to put together a small choir from among campsite residents; this rehearses a programme of songs in various languages, the rehearsals being on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings, each lasting about an hour and a half. They were directed by Johan, a friendly and competent Dutchman who has a great sense of humour and appears to speak about five languages. The idea is that the choir then presents a concert at the entertainment area on Friday evening! We went to the first rehearsal at 10am and had a good laugh, but amazingly we made some real progress with six songs (a seventh is being added tomorrow), singing in French, Italian, English and Dutch (the first experience of singing in Dutch for both of us!). The songs are fairly simple and several of them well-known (Morning Has Broken, Plaisir d'Amour) with some simple harmonisation. This morning we were about 6 sopranos, 8 altos, 3 tenors and 2 basses. We were uncertain of the "dress code" (or should that be "undress code"?) for these rehearsals (or indeed for the concert - just a bow tie and nothing else perhaps?). As people often wear clothes for similar activities here we played safe and R wore shorts while M wore a not entirely modest sarong. In the event, all the women were clothed in one way or another, but the men were all nude except for R in his shorts. He says it was bizarre singing in a choir containing 5 men and being the only one with any clothes on. He couldn't take his shorts off as he hadn't brought a towel (it's naturist protocol to put a towel on a seat if you are nude!). So he took them off at the end of the rehearsal to walk back to our pitch!
We had another swim in the big pool followed by a short session of sunbathing. We find it too hot to stay long in the sun, so we sit under our awning for reading, writing (this blog) or M's embroidery - she is doing a map of the South West Coast Path. This took up the afternoon without any problem.
After another barbecue supper (lamb steaks this time) we went to the Mas (old Provencal farmhouse) where all the cultural, artistic and entertainment activities take place. There is a large paved area outside under plane trees where concerts are given regularly, some organised well in advance, some quite impromptu and many just put together informally by people camping here. Films are also shown regularly on a big outdoor screen put up at the time. Our list of activities and the several notice boards around the site advertised a classical music concert starting at 8.30pm (anyone reading this who doesn't know us should realise by now that we are keen on classical music!). The performers were three string players (a classical trio - violin, viola and 'cello) and a pianist; to be accurate two pianists, a man who played in the first half of the concert and a lady who took his place at the piano in the second half. We heard a little-known viola sonata by Mendelssohn, a piano quartet also by Mendelssohn and two 20th century French pieces, one by Chausson the other composed by a female contemporary of Debussy called Bonis, and then in the second half, the better-known Dumky Trio by Dvorak, a more challenging piece. They brought it all off with some aplomb, especially as we imagine they had known each other and been able to rehearse together only for a short time! The concert was free to its audience of about 60 people, and was of near-professional standard. It was quite an experience sitting in front of this magnificent old farmhouse, surrounded by Mediterranean vegetation and flowers, in the warmth of a Provencale evening, listening to marvellous music played well and with feeling; another experience we won't forget.
There are amusing aspects to attending a concert on a naturist campsite, however. We had arrived early for the performance and just caught the end of the players' final rehearsal. The lady pianist wasn't involved at that point so there were two male string players and one female (the 'cellist) and the male pianist in rehearsal. The violinist, a tall and amazingly slim gent, wore nothing at all; the other men wore just shorts; only the lady 'cellist was fully clothed. Not really a "dress rehearsal" then, more of an "undress rehearsal"! However they all dressed quite normally for the performance. The audience displayed a wide variety of dress modes from smart casual to nothing at all!
We considered an after-dark swim (the pools are open until 11pm and floodlit after the sun goes down) but chose an early night instead.
Wednesday 19 August 2009
We breakfasted in good time to get to the choir rehearsal at 10; the additional song is "Tulips from Amsterdam" which we have to sing in Dutch, English, German and French in that order. It's great singing in Dutch! The whole thing was a lot of fun once more and we are improving (we think!). We then went swimming; again it was very refreshing and helped give us an appetite for a very light lunch - it is just too hot in the middle of the day for us to eat very much. A wine-tasting organised by six local producers began at 5pm and we wandered along. The producers are competitors of course and were happy for you to taste as many of the wines on offer as you wished, in the hope that you would buy one of theirs, although there was no obligation or pressure to buy anything. For the tasting you had to give a deposit of 3 euros each for nicely engraved wineglasses (Domaine de Belezy) and at the end you could either keep the glasses or return them and have the deposit back - most people chose to keep them, as we did. All the producers poured generous helpings for tasting no matter how many of their wines you tasted and this was even so for the more expensive ones. Three producers had "overspill" buckets in case you didn't want to swallow the lot, but three did not. As we tasted most of what was on offer, the inevitable result was that we were both already somewhat "under the influence" by the time the tasting finished just before 7pm. To make matters worse we had already booked a table for dinner at the campsite restaurant and - yes - we ordered a bottle of local red wine with it. Well, they do say that when you drink too much, you never know when to stop!
The wine-tasting was well-organised though and enormous fun - most of the vendors had a great sense of humour and tried out their English as we tried our French. This became very technical Franglais with lots of detail of grape-varieties (cepages) and their percentages, how well (or otherwise) a particular wine would age and the usual faintly ridiculous descriptions of how the wine should taste (blackberry and chocolate on the nose with hints of strawberry - that sort of thing; but the French at least do this more poetically than the English). The wine was variable but the best was very good - it was all Cotes de Ventoux of one sort or another. Most of it was good value for the quality and keeping characteristics. We bought 11 bottles in total of which two are for the "drink-now stock" and 9 to take home (the Smart's going to have a lot of wine on board). The drink-soons were superb roses (Vin de Pays and by far the best roses there among many); the take-homes were all reds. The roses and six of the reds were around 6 euros each - not exactly cheap but this was all classy stuff. The three other reds were a real extravagance at double that price (i.e. 12 euros a bottle), but this was the only producer with an official organic certification. Sadly this had the usual effect on the price! What chance does the organic movement have as long as this goes on? We bought these three bottles not because of a "bio" label but simply because the wine was well worth its price. We hope we were not over-influenced by the alcohol we had consumed at that stage!
We donned clothes for dinner (this seems universal practice). The restaurant meal started well and continued well with one exception towards the end. We had a nice table on the terrace and our starters (crudites for M, very good fish soup for R) were good, as were our mains. We both had lamb chops with chips, beans and other veg (unidentified but it tasted OK). Service was excellent, the menu offered a good range of choices and reasonable prices. That unwise final bottle of red was pretty decent (we think) but it was getting more and more unwise to trust our judgement of anything thanks to the "affluence of incohol" as we might have said at the time.
But then came that exception - nothing short of paralytic inebriation could have prevented recognition of R's "creme brulee" dessert as a culinary disaster! Beneath an acceptable if slightly soft and sugary crust (in itself not unusual, sadly) lay a curdled mess. Heated too quickly, says M. R acknowledges his error in not returning it at once, and worse, trying to eat it. He would like to blame his alcoholic state, but in fact confesses to a moment of weakness. Complaining was absolutely the thing he should have done the moment his spoon broke through that sugary crust.
We can recommend the Belezy restaurant with the qualification - don't order "creme brulee" or if you do, and it's wrong, send it back!
We staggered back to the motorhome at 8.30pm and decided a one-hour siesta was in order before we went to the Mas for a rock concert due to start at 9.30 and going on until 11pm. We woke up a few minutes before 11! The concert was probably pretty good, so we cursed and went back to sleep.
Thursday 20 August 2009
Having spent two whole days at Belezy without leaving the campsite we thought we should have an excursion today. But this had to wait, of course, until after our third choir rehearsal at which our director introduced another song, a French version of the 1950s Doris Day hit "Que Sera Sera"; it retained one line in English - "What will be, will be". And we are, definitely, improving! Then we drove the Smart to the summit of Mont Ventoux using the famous route on the Southern side of the mountain that forms probably the most famous stage of the Tour de France, and on which Tommy Simpson died just a few hundred metres from the summit, on 13 July 1967. The road is still a Mecca for endurance cyclists the world over.
Mont Ventoux:
We have driven the Midget over Mont Ventoux in the other direction (ascending on the Northern side, descending to the South); this was in 1995 and we lost most of the brakes on the descent when the front disc pads disintegrated leaving the calipers to grind directly into the discs. This did little for stopping ability but somehow we got all the way to our booked hotel between Lyons and Macon using just the handbrake for the most part. Arriving at the hotel on a Friday evening for a two-night stay, we had called the rescue service who in turn contacted a classic car garage in Macon. They collected the car two hours later, ordered the parts on the Saturday, parts arrived Sunday morning, they did the job Sunday afternoon and sent a taxi to our hotel after breakfast on Monday to take us to Macon to pick-up Midget. We paid only for the repair itself - everything else was covered by the breakdown insurance.
Happily on this occasion the Smart made light work of Mont Ventoux:
We stopped to pay homage at the Simpson memorial; it was even more adorned with tributes than we remember it being in 1995:
The full story of that day's tragedy is now well-known, including the perilous contribution of the drugs Simpson used, but this stark greyish-white stone pillar standing on the bleak cap of crumbling rock above the tree-line, at the exact place of Tommy's death, so close to the summit, emphasises both the enormity and the cruelty of the challenge presented to cyclists by this giant of Provence.
We stopped for a brief walk at the summit, crowded with cyclists who had sweltered their way up in a temperature between 32 at Bedoin and 24 at the top:
We simply cannot imagine the level of fitness required to do this. We came up the lazy way in our Smart:
Mont Ventoux:
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We returned via the Nothern descent road to Malaucene and used the splendid twisty little D19 to take us quickly back to Bedoin - it was fine in the Smart, but as we had thought on Monday, this is another road to avoid in a motorhome.
At Bedoin we refilled the Smart with petrol at the village garage (even more expensive) and popped back to the campsite to retrieve a couple of ice-creams
from the motorhome's freezer - this was all we wanted for lunch. Then we undertook the second fine drive of the day - the fantastic corniche road above the Gorges de la Nesque, the D942 between Villes-sur-Auzon and Monieux:
Words are inadequate to describe this splendid route; perhaps photographs will better convey the reason for including it on our itinerary:
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A quick dash back to Villes-sur-Auzon using the smooth, fast and beautifully-engineered D1, followed by a potter through the lanes and brief shopping in Mormoiron, soon saw us back at Belezy, where the usual cooling swim preceded the customary barbecue.
Friday 21 August 2009
The day of the grand concert! The final rehearsal of the choir at 10am went very well. As soon as it finished we went across to the area where boules (petanque) is played; we had arranged to meet Jo, the boules teacher, a very friendly Belgian man. He gives boules lessons each morning (Tuesday - Friday every week) between 10 and 11.30, unfortunately exactly the same time as the choir rehearsals. So we had been unable to go to any of his lessons but he had kindly agreed to spend time with us today, after his teaching period, to give us at least the main principles of the game and some basic instruction. He began by explaining, mainly in French, some of the history of Petanque, and the different forms of boules that have developed over the years; there is a specific Provencal form, for example. He taught us the basic forms of "throw" and the main rules of scoring. When it came to our turn to practise we were pretty hopeless though we eventually showed very slight signs of improvement. It is a more complex and subtle game than we imagined with lots of scope for using "tactics" as well as the obvious throwing and aiming skills. It would be nice to find somewhere at home to play and improve, but this is likely to be difficult in Cumbria (you don't see many games of boules there!). We have no suitable surface in our garden and it's not big enough for a dedicated "boules
court". Still we enjoyed our initiation and hope we'll find a way to continue playing.
The boules area is shaded but this has been the hottest day since we arrived at Belezy, so much so that they have announced a closure of all the paths and roads on Mont Ventoux from this evening because of the fire risk.
We cooled off in the pool again and while briefly sunbathing after swimming we chatted to another English couple who leave here tomorrow; they were also visiting Belezy for the first time and had been here two weeks. They have liked it very much, though it doesn't seem they have got involved in any of the organised activities but have preferred to spend their time sunbathing and swimming. You miss out on a lot here if you don't get involved, but of course some people prefer just to do their own thing.
We did our own thing - lunching, reading, blogging, embroidering - until it was time for an early supper before getting ready for the concert. We did a lamb casserole rather than a barbecue - you can have too much of any good thing! Then showers and actually putting clothes on (smart ones at that) made us ready to walk across to the Mas just after 8pm. By 8.30 everyone was in place, the choir of 18, an orchestra of 8 string or wind players and a piano (two pianists contributed at different times). We had an audience of about 200 people sitting on benches and chairs under the plane trees and the performance started ten minutes late, as seems to be common in France.
It went really well and the audience appeared to love it. As well as the choir pieces there was a string quartet (a melodic and well-known slow movement from a Borodin quartet), choral solos (serious ones and amusing ones), an oboe and piano duo, a nice trio and a Strauss waltz (the Imperial) for the complete band; the last was brought off with great aplomb under the baton of an English conductor, a professional who had specialised in conducting theatrical bands in Britain. For both singers and instrumentalists there was a useful sprinkling of professionals among the amateurs. Considering that most people had met for the first time earlier this week, and that the programme had been prepared in just four rehearsals, the standard was very good; and so enjoyable to perform and, we think, to hear. Afterwards all of the performers congregated by the Mas for a drink and nibbles and we had many interesting conversations in a mixture of languages - the sort of mixture where several languages appear in the course of one sentence!
A great evening, musically and socially!
As a result of this experience and our great enjoyment of Belezy so far, we have decided to extend our stay here for a further five nights; we were leaving on Monday 24th August but we are now staying until Saturday 29th. We can remain on our nice pitch also. This means we can sing again next week (and take part in another concert next Friday) - Johan assures us the programme will be entirely different! More swimming, more exploration (many more places nearby we want to visit), more music, more sunshine, perhaps some new activities (M is interested in the "painting on silk" and R is interested in archery lessons), more lazy siestas and unhurried meals and, we expect, more sunshine!
Cheers:
Camping les Truffieres, its friendliness and its surroundings, especially Grignan.
Mont Ventoux - and special cheers for "les veloistes"!
Les Gorges de la Nesque and that terrific road (another cheer from La Smart).
Le Concert Belezien - the performers and audience, not forgetting the directors who worked so hard with our modest talents.
The Domaine de Belezy itself - extending our stay says it all.
Boos:
French signposting - yuck!
The creme brulee at Belezy - double yuck!
Market traders who park their vans sideways in narrow streets and leave their tailgates up without warning.
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