Trip to France - Saturday

Saturday December 15th 2007

Chateau de Rodie, Courbiac, France

One of the most challenging aspects of our plans for next year is due to the decision to run back-to-back breaks in a single country, moving from one location to the next on a changeover Saturday. When we tested the run in Spain a month or so ago it was a pretty long trip but certainly do-able in the time available. However, in the last week or so, I have come to appreciate that the France changeover was an even longer journey, and might be quite difficult to do in the time allowed. Today would be an initial test run for next year.

So I departed the Chateau at about 6:30am with the temperature at -5 degrees. It was pretty slow going for the first hour as I made my way back to the motorway, but then things speeded up quite considerably once I did get on the toll roads. The road sign that said Montpellier was 275km away was an unwelcome reminder of just how far my planned jourmey was. It was brightened a bit by some fine views of Carcassonne from the motorway, as well as some decent music on a French radio station.

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But just after Montpellier, it actually started to snow! Now this hadn't really been something I had expected so close to the Mediterranean. For an hour or so it was actually quite heavy and my speed took another dip. Once off the motorway near Avignon, I stopped and took a couple of pictures of the snow on some baby fruit trees.

Another highlight was a brief glimpse of the Palais des Papes in the centre of Avignon - a definite visiting priority it seems to me.

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Once past Avignon I was making my way towards Apt - the nearest decent sized town to La Moliere and containing a large supermarket and at least two wine co-ops. But I didn't really have enough time for a longer stop, making my way straight out of Apt and up to Saignon, perched on a hillside above Apt.

Saignon from the Apt road

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Saignon was totally deserted - not a single place open. So when I did meet up with Tim, we had to return to Apt for something to eat. Tim wasn't totally sure of the way to La Moliere from Saignon but we found it ok. We met two people on the property doing some work outside and then hit rather a snag. They didn't have the key to get into La Moliere and they needed to try and call a local cleaner to get it. So while I wandered round taking some pictures, they made a series of increasingly frantic calls to various people

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The view towards Mont Ventoux, hidden by clouds in the distance

The central courtyard of La Moliere, such a contrast to the summer views when all the vegetation is in full bloom

In order to allow more time for the cleaner to get our message, we went down to the sister property to la Moliere, just through the olive trees. This would also be available next year if we wanted it, should we sell out. Oddly enough, we did have a key for this one and so had a good look round. I thought this one was pretty good inside - 7 double or twin bedrooms, all en suite, a decent kitchen, etc. Tim assured me that La Moliere was decorated to a higher standard that this one, so it should be fine.




La Moliere from the swimming pool area of its "sister" property up the hill

But the main concern when we knew we wouldn't be able to get into La Moliere was my failure to be able to draw some sort of plan of the interior so I could get an idea for room allocations, etc. So we will have to try and cobble something together over the coming months and then link them back to Tim's photos of the interior. Not ideal. However from what we could see from peering through windows, La Moliere is really lovely inside and so none of this should really be a major problem.

One other thing though could be tricky. Apparently, this part of France will get completely jammed up on certain weekends next summer as people from Northern France make for the south for their holidays. This could easily double the length of the journey for us and it is about 5 hours already. But we think the first holiday weekend is the week after we make the journey, so maybe we'll be ok

After being dropped back in Saignon, I decided to have a short drive back to La Moliere to make some notes on directions, etc. Then I drove down to Apt and stopped at one of the wine co-ops, "Chez Sylla". This turned out to be a very good move as they had loads of detail about local wines as well as many other leaflets for things in the local area. So I am fully stocked with info now. And this place also sold numerous wines by the litre, priced around 1E each. So definitely a good place for us to buy from I think.

I set off back about 5:30 intending to stop for a meal somewhere. But my progress was pretty good and I made it back to the Chateau just after 11:00. A total journey of just over 1,100 km taking over 10 hours. French radio broadcast an opera this evening which helped pass the time and Carcassone looked great lit up as I passed by. But a very tough day overall.