Last words

The Renault Mégane we had was great - we ended up doing just short of 8,000 km, 7,909 km to be precise. It was very comfortable to do all those kilometers and we returned it in near perfect condition. The price of petrol/diesel is interesting - it varies hugely. We saw a difference of as much as 40 cents a litre. The cheapest place to buy it was at the supermarket. As I've said before, the motorways in Europe are amazing and you can do big distances really quickly - you get to a cruising speed of 110 or 130kph and virtually stay at that in cruise control until you leave the motorway.

Dogs are everywhere in France - I'm a dog-lover but there, they're mainly horrible little ones. Lots of people do the Paris Hilton thing - carry their dog around in their purse, men included. Now that is just not a manly look!

Now back in chilly Wellington - but after the temperatures we've been experiencing during the last few days, it's quite refreshing. I'm sure I'll be over that by tomorrow! Flights home not bad but it was very turbulent at times between Frankfurt and Hong Kong. At one stage, the cabin crew were getting really annoyed because people kept ignoring the "keep your seatbelt fastened" instruction. The pilot came on and said "if you could see what we can see on the weather radar, you'd not only return to your seat, you'd run to it"! That got their attention!

It's very sobering to realise how insignificant NZ is on the world stage. The only references we got were about rugby (no surprises there) but disturbingly, the lead item on the 4pm radio news one day mentioned "Nouvelle Zélande". We pricked up our ears - imagine how we felt when the item was about the death of Shrek!! Was telling an Austrian woman about it and she said she'd read about it in an Austrian newspaper. It's good to know what's important!

We had a wonderful time, saw some amazing places and scenery but I guess for me, the highlight was the people we met. Some really really nice people - particularly nice as they suffered politely through our efforts to communicate!

But it was time to go home - we are both a bit tired, it's been a hectic pace all the way, and I'm beginning to look like an Old English sheepdog - can hardly see out from under my fringe now and I desperately need a hairdresser! So we're back, tired and quite round (well, I am, 6 weeks of French food have taken their toll - Andrew's running shoes have been used for the purpose for which they were named, mine not so much, well not at all!). So it's back to reality and saving for the next trip!

Lyon

The first day in Lyon was stinking hot. We drove into town, checked into our hotel and left our luggage and then took the car back to the depot near the airport. The Renault guy dropped us back to the airport and we then got the tram back into the town centre and a bus on to the hotel. It was 4'ish in the afternoon, 40 degrees plus, the bus was packed to the gunnels and horror of horrors, the air-conditioning was broken! Aargh - 10 minutes on that bus was never-ending, the heat was indescribable! Our hotel was in the old part of Lyon, the medieval centre. It's a quaint old place, in a great location (in a pedestrian zone) and really spacious and comfortable.

The next day, was, thankfully much cooler - back down to the early 20s - so we hit the streets. Lyon's a really nice town (when it's not stinking hot, that is!) - two rivers, the Rhône and the Saone, flow through it. No pictures of beautiful bridges though unfortunately - the Nazis blew them all up as they withdrew from the city in 1945.

The main sight of Lyon is probably the basilica, high on the hill above the city. It's an immense structure dedicated to the Virgin Mary. About 1870, the Bishop of Lyon vowed to build a magnificent tribute to Mary if the Prussians spared his city. They did and he did - it's gigantic and very ornate. Everything - floors, walls, ceiling - is covered with elaborate mosaics. Very colourful and lots of gold leaf. Downstairs, the lower church, is dedicated to Mary's earthly husband, Joseph. Unfortunately for Joseph, money ran out pretty early in the project and it's noticeably plainer - it's used as a concert venue now.

The old city's also known for its passageways (traboules), essentially short-cuts linking the old town's three main streets. These traboules apparently made Lyon's old town the ideal centre for the Resistance to slip in and out of as they confounded the Nazis. There are a number of really attractive and striking buildings, whose complete facades have been used as a painter's canvas.

Beautiful bridges

You see really lovely bridges all over France but they're all very different. A select few...

Pont Valentré in the Dordogne is an example of French medieval military architecture. An isolated fortress commanding the river, apparently it impressed the English so much during the Hundred Years War that it was never attacked.

In the Auvergne, we stopped at the Pont du Diable (Devil's Bridge) at the mouth of the Hérault gorge. It's a beautiful Romanesque bridge, 500 metres long. It's a lovely spot with a beach and lots of people enjoying the water on such a hot day.

And the Millau Viaduct - just how beautiful is this? It is just amazing. 2,460 metres long and cost 400 million euros, 80 million for the toll barrier alone! Apparently construction took three years to the day and it's planned to be in operation for 75 years. It really is spectacularly beautiful above the Tarn river.

The Auvergne/Massif Central

The Auvergne region is pretty much an unvisited part of France though its popularity is growing. Still dominated by the traditional industries of agriculture and cattle farming, the Massif Central and the surrounding Auvergne region is the largest area of protected land in France. It's mostly volcanic and is quite spectacular. There are two huge regional parks and you see heaps of hikers around, most with their two walking sticks. Sunday is especially popular for hiking and cycling.

Salers is a largely Renaissance town but has no château - one of the few towns without one. The story goes that a long-standing conflict between the townspeople and the local lord culminated in 1666 with a royal order to raze the château - and they did. The lovely houses with their turrets, spiral staircases and stone window sashes reflect the prestige the town earned by becoming a bailiwick, seat of the bailiff who was charged with dispensing justice on behalf of the king in the 15th century.

To get to Salers, we'd gone over the Pas de Peyrol, where a cycling race was underway. Stunning scenery yet again - very green with forests all the way down the sheer mountain sides and lots of volcanic outcrops.

Our plan to drive up the Puy de Dôme, a volcano near Clermont-Ferrand which was formed 11,000 years ago by three volcanic eruptions (later used as a Celtic shrine and Roman temple), were foiled by the fact that they're putting in a train line to the top, due to be finished by the end of this year. So at the moment, the only way to get to the top is by foot. It was quite late by then so we decided to come back the next day and do it. Not sure that climbing a volcano in 40 degree heat after six weeks of eating, drinking and sitting in a car was the cleverest thing to do but it was worth it. You felt you were on top of the world. I noticed there was a defibrillator at the top and couldn't help thinking that there was possibly more need for it somewhere on the way up!

On 7 March 1911, aviator Eugène Reyaux made history by landing a plane on top of the Puy, after flying from Paris for 5 hours. He did it in response to a challenge by the Michelin brothers, tyre manufacturers in Clermont-Ferrand. I wonder how they got the plane off the volcano.

When we got to Clermont-Ferrand, the car temperature gauge showed it was 45 degrees and it certainly felt like it! It's basically a student town and the home of Michelin - tyre manufacturing is a key industry there. It's one of the oldest cities in France - Clermont was one of the largest towns in Roman Gaul and became an episocpal seat in the 5th century. In 1630, the town was aligned with neighbouring Montferrand, thus becoming Clermont-Ferrand. The cathedral (and many of the houses) is built entirely of black lava - it's called the Black Cathedral and can be spotted for miles. The black buildings are really attractive - a nice point of difference from everything else we've seen.

Languedoc

The Hérault area of Languedoc is incredibly scenic and beautiful - amazing scenery - all very nice after lots of towns and villages. We went to a place called the Cirque de Navacelles, which is in the bottom of a huge crater. You drive up and up and up to get to the rim to look down to it. Basically over millions of years, the river has made an island in the bottom of the crater and the river itself has changed its course. You then drive down and down and down to have a closer look and then up and up and up to get out again - all on windy roads with huge drops and no barriers!

There's a little place called St Guilhem-le-Désert that's stretched out on the side of a ravine. The one street was so narrow that the government built another street parallel to it - you need it to cope with the tourist buses. The town developed around an abbey in the 11th century, which is in the main square along with a simply magnificent tree planted in 1855. Attached to the doors on many of the houses you see a local thistle, the cardabelle, which predicts the weather as it closes when rain's on the way. They won't be doing much for a while I suspect - it's getting pretty warm!

La Couvertoirade is a real "miniature" medieval village - lots of tiny, windy streets of churches and houses, completely enclosed in intact city walls and towers.

Mountains to the Med

To get to the Mediterranean coast, we had to drive through the mountains - very close to Andorra. We drove up to the Col de Puymorens in really heavy fog - you sometimes couldn't see more than about 6 feet ahead. Given the sheer drops, that may not have been a bad thing! Some pretty close calls too - some of the trucks didn't seem that bothered about coming full speed towards us, well over the centre line.

En route, we stopped to take a look at the Four Solaire, a power station that does it all with mirrors and the sun - how novel is that!

Emerging from the mists and fog, we made a stop at Villefranche-de-Conflent, a well-preserved medieval city within ramparts and looked (from a distance) at Fort Libéria.

We hit the Mediterranean coast and stopped at Collioure, not far from the Spanish border. You hear lots of Spanish being spoken there and the French is heavily accented. It's a picturesque place, vines growing down the hillsides right down to the town, and was pretty busy - lots of British accents - and the place is totally geared to tourism. The town's dominated by a massive fortress established by the Templars in the 13th century. The day we were there, there was going to be some kind of Basque festival for St. Jean and every beach had a pyre ready to be torched.

Further north, not far from Montpellier, is Sète, a busy fishing port. Apparently freighters carry French sunflower and rapeseed oil from there all over the world. You see gigantic tankers of Algerian natural gas (if one ever goes off, it will take the whole town with it) and Algerian wine (marginally less dangerous).

Narbonne's a nice spot, with a massive (unfinished) cathedral and Archbishop's Palace. In the main square, there's a recently-discovered section of the Roman Via Domitia. It looks pretty rough - can't have been much fun marching over it or driving carts with wooden wheels. One thing I did notice in Narbonne was that even though it was lunchtime in a big city, we didn't see anyone in business clothes - maybe casual Fridays have taken off there as well.

The covered market was nice and colorful - lots of local fresh produce.

The Cathars

The Midi-Pyrénées was home to the Cathars, a religious sect that believed the world was too awful to be the work of God. During the first part of the 13th century, the Cathar religion spread throughout the south of France. The pope was furious and set his military might against the "heretics". The bloody crusades annihilated the ancient civilisation and ruins and legends are all that survive of a world of troubadours and courtly love, of tolerance and true democracy. We went through the Cathar castle at Foix, where people started settling at the time of the Gauls. The Counts of Foix were faithful defenders of Catharism and the château managed to withstand horrific attacks by the catholics. The castle's amazingly well maintained and you get an enormous sense of history when you stand on the towers and think about who's been there before you and what's gone on there.

The most spectacular ruined Cathar castle's at a place called Montségur - we drove up there but it was so misty that we decided it wasn't worth the walk up because we wouldn't be able to see anything!

Other places in the Pyrénées

Went to St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, which has been an important commercial town on the pilgrim routes to Santiago de Compostela in Spain since the 14th century. Three pilgrim routes converge there and still today, pilgrims do the routes. Much of the accommodation is geared towards them - early nights, early breakfasts and pretty basic accommodation.

Espelette is famous for its sweet red peppers. They're used whole or in powdered form in many local dishes. We had them in our dinner one night and they're pretty hot! They're picked in late summer, threaded onto string and hung to dry, often across the front of houses.

St-Jean-de-Luz is a little fishing village on the Basque Atlantic Coast. One of the most important historical events there was the wedding of the Sun King, Louis XIV, and the Infanta Maria Teresa of Spain in the cathedral in 1660. The cathedral gate, through which Louis led his new bride, was immediately walled up by masons so it could not be used by anyone else. That's style! You can still see where the gate was.

We also went to Biarritz, which began as a whaling port but was transformed into a playground for the European rich and famous (lots of European royalty) in the 19th century. Lots of lovely old hotels and lots of ghastly new ones. There's a huge influx of holiday-makers in summer but the permanent population's mainly elderly (and extremely wealthy) and much leathery old skin was on display on the beach. Disturbingly, many of the leathery old ladies were sunbathing topless.

Bayonne is the capital of the French Basque country. It's at the confluence of two rivers and is really pretty. It's right next door to Biarritz but it's much, much quieter.

The Haute Pyrénées

On our first day in the Pyrénées we visited Lourdes, the place where a young girl had several visions of the Virgin Mary and people with disabilities go, hoping to be healed. We were there on a Sunday and the place was very busy. There was a cycling group there, all decked out in green and white, with signs and a huge candle, saying "From Limerick to Lourdes 2011"! The town itself is full of hotels and shops selling religious memorabilia and white clothing, but it does have a magnificent basilica.

We then did a circuit into the Pyrénées, up the climbs the Tour de France follows, going over the Cols (passes) du Tourmalet, du Soular and d'Aubisque. My God, are they steep!

We went up to the Pont d'Espagne, where there are amazing waterfalls - the photos don't do them justice unfortunately.

The second half of the drive was almost better than the first - huge, dramatic drops from the road and NO BARRIERS. I was feeling most unwell for some of the time! But the scenery is just magnificent - majestic mountains and rivers and also verdant, green hillsides.

No wonder people take their chairs up there just to sit and drink in the views!

We've had the gambit of weather in the Pyrénées - stunning cloudless blue skies and then last night, the most dramatic electrical storm. It started in the late afternoon and went on till after midnight. We're staying out in the middle of nowhere, so it's pitch black. When the lightning struck, the place lit up like someone had turned the flood lights on. Was most dramatic. We've been really lucky with the weather - hasn't been too hot to do stuff and the rain we've had, has been mainly at night. Apart, that is, from the afternoon we were in Rouen. It had started to rain a bit, so we ducked into the tourist office on the square in front of the historic cathedral (Monet did lots of paintings of it). All of a sudden, the rain came down in torrents, the wind came up out of nowhere - you could see it blowing vertically across the square - and the temperature plummeted. That lasted for about 15 minutes and then, suddenly, it went as fast as it had come. Most bizarre.

Le Dordogne

The Dordogne is a simply beautiful area of France, crammed full of beautiful towns and villages and castles and chateaux to rival the Loire Valley. Will give you some highlights of our few days there.

Near Montignac, we went to Lascaux II, to see the prehistoric cave paintings discovered in nearby Lascaux in 1940. Apparently four teenage boys were out with their dog, who fell down a hole into a cave. Being teenage boys, they rushed home to get lamps so they could explore the cave and discovered the paintings from 17,000 years ago. The cave became known as the Sistine Chapel of Pre-History and the images on the walls and ceilings are of bulls, horses, deer and ibex. The cave rapidly became a major attraction but the influx of visitors allowed harmful micro-organisms into the cave which had been closed for so long, which caused the paintings to deteriorate and the cave was closed in 1963. The local authority then created an exact replica of the cave and the paintings, 200 metres from the originals. They're incredible - the colours are still very vibrant and the drawings incredibly sophisticated. No photos for you because they're copy-righted.

Along parts of the Dordogne Valley there are castles on every cliff top. Their strategic positions meant that they were under heavy attack during the Hundred Years War between England and France and regularly changed hands.

We drove up to the tiny little village of Cazenac and had the lovely experience of meeting and talking with an old man in the graveyard there. He was delightful. He told us about the area and took us into the church to explain the stained glass windows (created in the '70s), which all feature local people, including him and his wife who'd recently died, just short of 60 years of marriage. Much more interesting than the normal Madonna and child.

La Roque-Gageac is a town built against a rock cliff, which drops vertically down to the Dordogne River. There's clear evidence of the day in 1957 when a huge block of rock came away from the cliff face, destroying a dozen homes and killing three people.

One of the highlights of the Dordogne was the Hanging Gardens of Marqueyssac. It's a private estate built on a cliff high above the valley. It originally belonged to a guy who'd spent time in Italy and wanted to replica an Italian garden, complete with pruned boxwoods of all shapes and forms. They're hand-clipped twice a year, once in spring and again in late summer - given their states of perfection, I'm surprised that's all. Much of the topiary is rounded and you have the sensation almost of floating when you look at it. The château is late 18th century, built on the eve of the French Revolution. It has an incredibly beautiful roof made from limestone slabs, typical of the region - weighs more than 300 tons!

And St Cirque-Lapopie is yet another lovely little town. We were there in 1994 and it was just as pretty this time around and surprisingly, it's still not overrun with tourists. It's on a sheer cliff above a river - a truly spectacular setting.

Rocamadour is a mass of old dwellings, oratories and towers on the face of a cliff, 150 metres above the river. It's a historic site and a place of pilgrimage. There are 223 steps up the Great Stairway to the Ecclesiastical City; pilgrims made this ascent kneeling at every step. We went up them somewhat quicker I suspect.

The Dordogne's known for its foie gras and you see lots of geese with massively distended livers waddling around the place. And in the south of the Dordogne, you see massive fields of sunflowers. Unfortunately, we were just a couple of weeks too early to see them - a few hardy ones had blossomed but they'll be a magnificent sight in a few weeks' time.