A few days off: Biarritz

Continued from Bayonne...

Oh Dear! I am not having a good day and having driven the few miles from a disappointing Bayonne, Biarritz does not lift my spirits. Maybe I am tuned in to Spain and the fringes of France are causing some interference with the ‘mmm – lovely’ sensor.

We struggle through closed roads and twisting alleys to the Corniche (that’s the sea front to you lot). 

It is more enclosed  than it looks  in this picture and for a small bit of beach it is liberally scattered with people in black wetsuits. 

They may be surfers or they may be poseurs, difficult to tell when they are on dry land. And stopping anywhere to get a better look or take a better picture was just impossible. 

I grabbed this view of the Corniche from the road leading along the coast which shows the rocky outcrops which enclose it and make it look a little more interesting.

Further along was a small bay which looked like a private beach on the grounds that there were only a couple of people on it, but everyone else may have been at lunch…

  

 

Or maybe it was because it was raining.

Of course driving a vehicle with the handling characteristics of a 20 foot shipping container made negotiating the narrow streets of this historic town, squeezed in between the sea and some very precipitous cliffs, less than a pleasure which may have added to its inability to captivate me. 

Artists impression (or is it a serving suggestion?)

Verdict: Time to move on.

A few days off: Bayonne

Not a lot to say about this town. It seems to consist of an endless ring road [Well, technically they are endless. Ed.]  linking out of town shopping centres. I am sure that if you could find the town it would turn out to be lovely and a great place to live, raise a family and all the other things that (yawn... can't be bothered to finish the sentence).

From the little I saw, this sign outside one of the Bayonne InterMarchés just about sums it up.

 

Then we went inside. 

Who would have put money on finding three Hyundais in a row?

This shop name looks like an English word but isn't. I can only think of two contenders: repulsion and expulsion, neither of which are exactly appropriate names for this sort of outlet. Also turns out to be a medical term meaning 'pushing out at the front' - subtle or what?.

Freud also uses it to refer to 'drive' or 'instinct'.

You choose.

Verdict: Time to head for the glitz of Biarritz.

A few days off: Campsite 1

I have managed to stay away from anything resembling a holiday campsite since a trip to Camber Sands in the early 1970s where signs nailed to the trees read “Please Park Prettily”.

It is of course a gross generalisation, but people who stay at holiday campsites talk endlessly about their bloody caravans, stabilisers, nose weights, gas bottles, sat-navs, curtains, carpet and kitchens and other domestic detail. Of course I do have these conversations, but they are about me and my gear and so are interesting [You may want to think about this - Ed.]

Some sit outside their 'rigs' meeting their neighbours and being almost offensively chummy while they cheerfully barbecue luxury foodstuffs into carbon. Others prefer staying inside watching 'Belgium’s Got Talent' or whatever on staellite TV.

And they appear to enjoy writing to The Caravan Club  Magazine with appllingly written tales of life on the road: "Hubby reversed the old caravan out of the garden at No 23 and primed the toilet with CrapGon toilet fluid as I ironed the sandwhiches in preparation for our great adventure..." They also seem to like complaining about other caravan and camper users who do not share their values.

When travelling in the UK I tend to keep myself to myself, stay in lay-bys, up quiet lanes and in dark corners on industrial estate. This does not quite meet the holiday requirements of  herself, who prefers somewhere from which one is less likley to be evicted in the wee small hours.

Having left home later than intended heading for Spain, we thought a good place to stop for the first night might be Ondres on the French Atlantic coast. It was reputed to have space on the beach which, while not a campsite per-se, was camping-car friendly. It turned out to be a section of the car park reserved for camping cars. Despite being the end of the season it was around half-full.

Having arrived at dusk we had two options, stay and make the best of it or go and find somwhere else in the gloom. Sancerre cooed soothingly from the fridge and a  single malt hummed moreishly from a cupboard. We stayed.

There was a fee of €7 for the night but the coin-operated barrier was knackered presumably knackered after a busy season going up and down.

A notice said that the barrier was broken and that the Gendarmes would come and collect cash. This turned out to be only one third true - it was, they didn’t and they didn’t. 

We sat outside in the moist warmth, sipped Sancerre and said bon jour to all and sundry. They said bon jour back to us and walked their dogs, or stayed in and watched TV. For all I know angry letters were written to Le Journal de Camping Car

In the morning we emptied the waste and refilled the fresh at the fluid managemnt point. Well, you have to take advantage of these facilities when you can before heading off on an adventure...

As I reversed out of bay number 23, complete with gleaming toilet,  I suspected that I would be seeing a couple more campsites before the week was up.

Verdict: a fine Sancerre and a very acceptable single malt and €7 to spend on something else. Now, where's the address for the Caravan Monthly letters page...

A few days off: Not waving, but frowning

I have owned a number of vehicles which seem to attract wavers (see below). I have had a Frogeye Sprite, two Morris Travellers, an MG Midget, VW Camper and a Series Land Rover, all of which granted me honorary membership of some invisible owners’ club.

Wherever I went in these vehicles, people in similar vehicles would wave as we passed. I could not imagine having anything in common with anyone who would think we had anything in common just because we had something as insubstantial in common as a type of vehicle (if you see what I mean).

And now I have a camper, what the French refer to as a camping car. It is a little strange that they have chosen to use two English words rather than come up with their own word as they do with so many other things. I favour the word Bivouacture, or maybe the ChapiteauCV... [ Use the comments box below for your suggestion for a suitable French word.]

Regardless, the French LOVE camping cars - almost as much as they dislike caravans, which are considered fit only for itinerant fruit pickers. In a camping car you can park up and stay the night almost anywhere for a few Euros, or less. There are waste water dumping stations in many small towns (we have one in Lauzerte) where you simply stop above a shallow basin, open the valve and all your washing up water disappears down the drain. 

There are several downsides to camping cars like the speed (lumbersome) handling (cumbersome), fuel consumption (frightening) and cornering (noisy if you have forgooten to stow everything properly). But the most annoying thing is that when you drive one of these things other camping car drivers wave at you. I have met a few people who have campers and they are as varied as any other given group of people, but I KNOW that the wavers are not ‘people like me’ – they can’t be.

Basically, ‘wavers’ are what Kurt Vonnegut called granfalloon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granfalloon) and having read Cat’s Cradle at  age fifteen I have a long standing aversion to such relationships. Notwithstanding all that, I have many friends and contacts I have met through my work and who I wave at while driving around simply because we work in the same industry, which is granfalloon-ish – so what do I know…

A few days off: Ondres

Mrs PJ and yours truly decided to take a bit of a break and offed to northern Spain because:

 a) neither of us had been there for more than a fleeting visit
b) that was  way back in the mists of time
c) we have not had a week away from email since 2004
d) it is only a few hour’s drive from Chicken Hill.

Didn’t quite make it to Spain first try and arrived at the beach at Ondres on the French coast just in time to miss the sun setting into the Atlantic, so parked up and opened a bottle of Sancerre. When it was too dark to see anything I decided to have a look at the beach a few metres from the car park. It turned out that the beach, although only a few metres in a horizontal sense was about ten metres down in a vertical sense. From my vantage point I could see the white of the surf breaking on the sand, and with the aid of the torch I had remembered to bring could just make out an object of considerable mass on the beach but was unable to determine exactly what it was.

I returned to the car park and sampled the Glen Grant single malt (ludicrously cheap and just a little moreish from our local InterMarche) and thought no more about it. The following morning was altogether a better time to look at beaches what with it being in daylight and all. The hulk I had seen looming out of the dark the night before was a WWII pill-box (that is a concrete gun emplacement from the 1939-1945 war for younger readers – and they think they invented linguistic economy with texting. Hah!).

Unlike Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte and that bloke played by Russell Crowe in the film Gladiator, I do not number military strategy or tactics among my accomplishments. However, I could not see the strategic or tactical advantage of having a gun on the beach when there was a perfectly good cliff edge, offering the usual advantages of an elevated position, only a few metres away.

Also, bearing in mind that the threat was expected to come from the sea and not the good folks of Biarritz a little way down the coast, I was unsure why the gun window (or is it gun port?) gave a nicely framed view of the one-time gambling capital of the French Atlantic coast, now a popular hangout for le dudes de surf.

Inside revealed the grim surroundings which one might expect from such a place...

but time had added a mellow, rusting appeal to the steel-banded roof. 

There were also some very useful rings for hanging things from. One must assume the things in question to be bulky shells, but who knows what a bored gunner might get up to...

A trip around the other side provided a clue as to the present location and orientation of this solitary brick in the Atlantikwall (an extensive system of coastal fortifications built by Nazi Germany between 1942 and 1944 along the western coast of Europe as a defence against an anticipated Allied invasion of the mainland continent from Great Britain). 

The foundations were clearly visible and in no way as the designer had intended.

The jaunty angle of the gun window was not as I had surmised, to give a little quirkiness to this otherwise austere construction, but a result of the displacement of the entire structure. It is clear that at one time it had been at the top of the cliff until forces unknown, but presumably tidal, had persuaded it down to its present, more submissive, position.

Indeed, I found several more further along the beach had enjoyed the same fall from grace but could not be arsed to walk up the beach to inspect them.

Two more bricks in the wall (and in the distance)

 The locals appeared oblivious to them, possibly as a result of familiarity or may be due to the cunning application of camouflage...

...which looks a little like the oysters I would find attached to a concrete breakwater the next day in Hondarriba.

Anyway, the place was pretty much deserted except for a surfer...

...a child-minding dog walker...

...someone on a horse...

 

...and a couple doing a bit of fishing

Well, he is fishing and she is watching dutifully. Looks like she’s in for a fascinating day (discuss)

Verdict: a fine Sancerre and a very acceptable single malt.

Lawn (I don't really) Care

“I remember a tip of dad's:  The old boy had a thing about wasps,
and always wore bicycle clips while mowing the lawn”

Vivian Stanshall – Rawlinson’s End

When I was a kid I would see adverts in National Geographic Magazine showing glamorous Americans cruising the turf on lawn tractors relentlessly beating their splendidly smooth lawns into submission. A ride-on mower was a serious object of desire and I could not imagine the circumstances where I might have one.

Well, now I can, and several times a year I use a 20hp, V-twin, grass mangler to attack our meadow. Subtleties like evenness, alternating stripes and neat borders are no part of my plan. My sole aim is to hack the stuff back to a level where it is no longer a fire risk. 

MTD 75th anniversary edition, shown to great effect
on a sample of our respledent lawn

 

It takes an hour to do the top part of the meadow because is quite steep and there are loads of trees, and it takes a  couple of hours to do the bottom part because it is quite big. The result is an hour of 45 degree manic tree avoidance followed by a couple of hours rather tranquil plodding back and forth. Mowing on a hill involves lots of shifting from one side of the seat to the other in order to maintain a more or less vertical sitting position. Anyone who has seen a motorcyle sidecar rider in a hill climb will be familiar with the movement (if the foregoing sentence is a complete mystery, check out this clip from You Tube).

The process of switching from one side to the other is referred to by our neighbour, Alain, as 'Le danse du canard'. And he should know as he does a lot of mowing and is also something of a canardier. I have yet to see him danse but will assume that like most Frenchmen around here he has a certain terpsichorian ability. 

Plodding uphill toward the hornet magnet.

Plodding is an ideal opportunity to see what critters are skulking in and around the herbage. The grass is crawling with crickets, grasshoppers and praying mantises (Google them if you want to know what they look like) as well as a number of beetleish and millipede type things. There are also butterflies and other  flying things. 

Three flying things spotted while mowing the meadow.
I stopped and got off the mower to take these.
(compare with hornet pix below)

As you can tell entomology is not my strong point.

One thing I do recognise is a hornet. They come in several varieties (Asian, European, domestic, diesel etc) but I do not really want anything to do with any of them. If it looks like a super-sized wasp then it is to be avoided. Last time I cut the meadow I was stalked by one. Stupid as it sounds I even took a picture of it.

It's just there, by that bit of grass...
...next to the leaf

OK, it’s not going to win an award for wildlife photography but you can see it here in this close up and it is on an intercept heading.

 

For some reason it gave up chasing me and concentrated on a hornet-magnet somewhere deep in the grass. It was still there when I came round the next time, and the time after that – on each occasion I took a photo to reassure myself that it was the same one and that there was not part of a squadron forming for a mass attack.

Back at the computer I looked at the evidence, and on blowing up the recconaisance photos discovered that I have taken a three pictures which would not have looked out of place on a plane identification chart from the second war ARP handbook.

Top, side and front views.

While I am satisfied that it is the same beast, they do tend to have certain physical similarities. Identification of individuals is not helped by poor quality photographs. It hardly needs saying that focus and framing are likely to be severely compromised when shooting a malevolent insect single handed from a ride-on mower on a rough bit of pasture – but then, as some of you know, there are times when I simply can’t be arsed.

Crapstone – what’s in a name?

My sister, Grace, and her family live on Dartmoor.

Dark, brooding and mysterious are some words which are often applied to this dark, brooding and mysterious place.

So is picturesque (there's a shedload more scenes like this I could not be arsed to take any more photos of them - that's what postcards are for).

Dartmoor is probably best known for its prison...

Note the high security gate.

and ponies.

and not so well known for layabout punk sheep…

 

…and the Paperweight  Centre...

...which is home to “The Broughton Collection”.

Grace and Co live in the village of Crapstone…

…which is a fine(ish) place with a proud(ish) heritage involving the RAF and to a lesser extent the RAC.

The RAF had a base here and there is a war memorial commemorating the Great War. I suspect most of those named were navy or infantry and some were from Crapstone...

on the monument they refer to the wider area of Buckland parish:

The RAC have an advert featuring Vinnie Jones reluctant to say ‘crap’ in front of (presumably) his daughter. For what it’s worth, while I was looking for the advert, I searched for the AA... The advert was, and may still be, here.  If not there is a copy here [You will need a FLV player to play this clip – you can download one from here - Ed.]

The fount of some wisdom and not a little misinformation, Wikipedia, notes that: “The industrial hub of the town is found in the Crapstone business park, while the chief financial district is located at the banking counter within the local post office.” Reluctant as I am to dis this most worthy of undertakings, I suspect that the writer was not paying attention. It seems that the industrial park is also reluctant to speak its name:

There may of course be a second
business park in this tiny village.
If so please email me

On the topic of reluctance, the Dartmoor promotional web site http://www.discoverdartmoor.co.uk/ does not list Crapstone. This may be because they think it is not in the Dartmoor National Park which is true. However I have stood with one foot in Crapstone and the other foot on Dartmoor without a hint of discomfort. Whereas to do this from Yelverton, Tavistock or Exeter (to name just three) would require legs several miles long - and they are listed.  

One theory is that inclusion of the word Crapstone would reduce the number of hits on search engines – which may explain why Scunthorpe is known locally as Scunny and is not such a popular tourist destination.