Abbadia

Although it was built in an old-fashioned Gothic style, this chateau is not really all that old.  It was designed and built as a wealthy man's fantasy and also his astronomical observatory around 150 years ago.  During the second world war, it was occupied by the Germans and ended up in a terrible state.

Now, when you go inside, everything looks perfect. They have spent a fortune re-doing all the mural paintings and replacing all the fabrics and stained glass.  The work was finished in 2004.  The house is still used by the Abbadie family so you are not allowed to take photos of the inside.  I took one sneaky one in the library of this book to show how important Glasgow was in the world of science.

The outside is covered in carvings of exotic animals .... and cats catching rats

Spain And Back Again In Two Days

There were two reasons for our trip to Spain:
 
1) David Brown goes to Hondarribia every year and recommends it highly.
2) Near the border is the Chateau d'Abbadie which was built by a famous and wealthy astronomer.

If you are not into fancy food and fresh fish then Hondarribia is a total dump.  The hotel was in a private villa and we had a nice breakfast served in the garden.  On the other hand, the room was very hot & stuffy, the TV had only Spanish channels and the DVD player and the WiFi didn't work.

The Old Town used to be fortified - you can see some of the walls still - and it is tiny.  At the top is the square with all the painted houses on one side.  The other side looks kind of like a prison with lots of with lots of holes where it has been hit by bullets and canon-balls.  In fact, it is a very posh hotel.

It took less than an hour to walk round the new and the old town so we took a ferry boat over to Hendaye it France.  The trip only takes about 5-10 minutes!  If anything, Hendaye was even more of a dump so we got the next ferry back.

Wednesday turned out to be very cloudy but the rain that was forecast didn't happen.  We got out of Spain as fast as we could.

Horrendibus Menu

 Tuesday - we got up early, went to market for a light breakfast and drove all the way past Biarritz and into Spain.  Just over the border is a small fortified town called Hondaribbia.  I prefer to call it 'Horrendibus'.  If we had not booked a hotel there, I doubt if we would have stayed. Anyway -- we were getting hungry so we went to a nearby restaurant for pizza.  This is what we found on the menu that had been translated into English.

Street Sign, Toulouse

My best guess is that there used to be a baker's shop in the street.  'Four' is French for 'oven' and there is a type of loaf called a 'bâtard'.  The symbol over the 'a' means there used to be a letter 's' there as well.
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Grand Hotel

 Saturday turned out cold and rainy wo we went to Toulouse and stayed the night in a designer hotel right in the very centre.  It was great!  The room had a huge HD TV,  an expresso coffee machine and lights everywhere.  The weather turned dry and fresh and we had a lovely dinner and breakfast in the man square.

Latest Royal Family Photo

Yet Another Accident

I drove to Toulouse to collect Marion from the airport on Friday.  On the motorway, I saw a big lorry at a crazy angle on the other side and this had caused a big long traffic jam.  "Ha Ha!" I thought  "Lucky I'm not going that way."  Ten minutes later I was crawling along at 2mph in a gigantic traffic jam.  I was sure I was going to arrive t the airport long after Marion got there.

Eventually I got to the bit where police were waving cars through one by one and they stopped me completely ... this was to let the ambulance get through to the scene  of the accident.  It was certainly one of the worst crashes I have ever seen.  One black car was lying against the central barriers facing the wrong way and it was completely wrecked.  There were three shocked people and a panda standing behind the other barrier.  Whoever was in the black car just had to have been injured.

In the end, I arrived at the airport car park exactly as Marion's plane landed so I wasn't late after all

Arctic Adventures

Went to Nanda & Barry's in Castelsagrat last night for a light supper with friends.  There I met a Cuban banker called Alfonso who was all worried about the current tropical storm Isaac which could be heading for his house in Florida.  He said they survived two hurricanes in ten days a few years back and it was terrifying.

There was also a very nice French woman called Danielle who seem to have lived all over the world and had now come back to her home. When she was young, she lived for seven years in the North-West of Canada in an area called the Yukon, right up beside Alaska.  She told us how she had gone snowmobile trekking across a frozen lake and fallen through the ice. The rest of the group had to form a human chain to drag her out, then they immediately made a huge bonfire and stripped her naked to dry off her snow-suit.  In these conditions, if you are not dry, you are dead.

It can get down to -50C and that is when you find out what 'square wheels' are.  A car's tyres aren't round: they are always flat where they touch the ground.  Overnight, the wheels get so cold they become solid and when you try to drive, the wheels feel like they are square.  She said you just give up and call a taxi.

I guess she ran some kind of restaurant because she talked about how she did a Canadian version of a famous local French stew with beans using moose sausage and porcupine fat cooked for 72 hours.  Mmmm  ....  sounds delicious?  She thought so.

Nuage

 

Yesterday, I saw a cloud in the sky ..... 

Toad in the Road

Last night I went for a long walk outside the village to look at the stars.  Even though it was nearly midnight, it was still roasting hot.  As I got near the school is saw this strange lump at the side of the road.  Then I saw another about three feet away.  It was two toads, eyeing each other up. They weren't anything like the teensy frog we saw before: these were about the size of the palm of you hand.

I walked all the way to the cherry trees and back  which took about twenty minutes.  And there they both were, in exactly the same positions as when I first saw them.  Here's a photo of one of them.

Fateful Detour

 

It's nearly two hours to Bergerac airport so I had to make a quick stop after dropping Marion off.  The first sign I saw was for a village called Issigeac (that's it in the photo), ten minutes off the main road.  It was a very nice place, a bit like Auvillar.  I found a bar and had a small beer in the shade.  From there, I headed towards another bigger old town I'd never been to called Montflanquin.

As I got to the roundabout at the edge of the town, there was an emergency sign indicating a car accident and lots of police and vans.  I was waved carefully past the accident by the gendarmes.  I wasn't able to see what had happened - all I could see was a dead body lying at the side of the road covered in a white sheet.  Maybe a pedestrian had been knocked down?  I thought it better not to stop at the town and kept following the TomTom instructions.  Two minutes later, I tried to take the road south towards Montjoi and I came upon another accident!  A car was stopped and a woman was standing in the middle of the road acting very distressed.  Again, I could not figure out what on earth was going on until I noticed a small brown dog, the colour of a dachshund, sitting in the middle of the road.  Only it wasn't really sitting, it was pleading.  It couldn't move because the car the woman had been in had run over its back legs.

By this time I was feeling really shocked and I was driving carefully down a long steep hill when a car on the other side decided to try and overtake.  It hadn't allowed for the fact that it was going uphill and would not be able to go as fast as he thought so he was heading straight for me.  I had to brake quite hard to let him have space. The car behind me got quite a fright too.

Next time, I will just stick to the main road, boring though it is!

Crazy Birds

All day long yesterday, the sky was full of House Martins - the little birds that look like Swallows - chirping and calling to each other.  They were doing crazy things like mid-air kissing, and chasing each other as well as drinking from the pool.  They've started again this morning.  Maybe it is part of ritual for bonding before they start off on their long trip to Africa?

Bee's Bum

 

I was trying to take a close-up photo of a Morning Glory flower
when this bee got in the way!

Josephine Baker, Superstar

Drove for two hours in fierce heat to get to the Chateau de Milandes - Josephine Baker's fabuluous house which she restored and then adopted about a dozen children from all over the world to raise as her 'Rainbow Tribe'  In her time, she was more famous and more talented than, say, Madonna.  You can see her Banana Dance on YouTube.

Over 100 degrees

Today we're expecting a thunderstorm in the afternoon and it is windy, making it feel a bit cooler.  The long-range forecast is just sun,sun,sun,  By Saturday the temperature will 39C which is 102 degrees Farenheit which is hotter than blood temperature.

Film Set

Went to Castelsagrat last night for a big supper for 18 people at Nanda & Barry's house in the square.  The whole place was hung with red & green banners and had a stage built in the middle.  It was being used for a film shoot.  The film is built round some young music group who come to play at a Strawberry Fair in a mystical village and how it changes their lives.  Or something like that.  Tthat's why they had hung strawberries everywhere!

At the party we met an American family who bought the house next to Nanda's.  They have an 8-year-old daughter who has been horse-riding every day at Lauzerte.  They must be pretty rich because they fly over to France from USA two or three times a year for holidays.  They hit a deer too, much harder than we did because they were going at 90 kph. They said it flew up in the air and landed in the sunflowers.   Also, we met a man called Jolyon who works for the British Army as a translator in Afghanistan.  He told us about how dangerous is was living in the capital, Kabul.  Sounds AWFUL.

Big Heat

Incredibly hot yesterday ... our room was at 28C at bedtime!! So we sat out in the garden and watched shooting stars while the noisy air-conditioning unit got to work and cooled the room down to 24C.  After that, we got a good night's sleep.

Heavens Above

We were sitting at the end of the garden looking at the stars round about half past ten tonight, hoping to see some shooting stars.  Suddenly there was this huge light in the sky going fast from West to East.  No planes go that way and it had no red & green lights, no flashing lights.  Also, there was no noise.  By the time it was overhead, I figured that it had to be the Space Station so I looked up the website that shows you where the space station actually is and there it was!  You can see from the image that its orbit passed a bit below us in France.  That's the first time we have ever seen it.

Dernier Jour - Dimanche

Last day in Montjoi.  And what a busy day! Thunder & lightning, pouring rain.  Visist to Castesagrat Brocante, buying Pokemon cards.  Then on up to Lauzerte where we missed the Agriculural show but explored the square and the church.  Graffiti car.  Swimming in the rain in the dark.  Setting off fireworks in l'Hospital.  Log fire.  Playing Pictionary.  Tomorrow - off to Toulouse Airport

Playing Possum

Rachel sent me this story about a really weird school fund-raising project in New Zealand.  They got the kids to dress up dead possums!

Porcupines

Remember we were talking about porcupines the other night?  Today I found this story on BBC about a fight between a bulldog and a porcupine.  Guess who wins ....