Thursday at Les Mathes the weather had thrown irritating rain at us all day long, off and on. At times it felt mostly on. We really should have used it as a travelling day but we hadn’t yet paid the campsite owner so we sat inside Frodo wishing we’d been a bit more astute – the owner was absent all afternoon. We did eventually manage to pay and on Friday we did move on.
After some debate, where we moved on to was Le Temple sur Lot where there was a campsite with enthusiastic reviews. It’s essentially in the middle of nowhere, which generally suits me down to the ground, though it did have one intriguing attraction in what is really a one-horse town.
Starting on slow local roads we eventually completed the 3-hour 270kms journey and managed to arrive whilst reception was closed for lunch. However, whether or not they spotted us I know not, but as we were wandering around scoping out the pitches, reception did open up and booked us in. With there being just one other unit on site, we had no trouble grabbing our – well, Francine’s – first choice of pitch.
We got settled and wandered into town, though I’d hesitate to call it such, to find a Vival which really should not have bothered; it was next door to useless. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more pointless alimentaire in France. There is another option in nearby Castelmoron which we hoped would be better the next day after Frodo had spent a comfortable night serenaded almost constantly in the daylight hours by a vociferous Mistle Thrush.
When the French do cycle tracks, they really do cycle tracks. We followed one such, twisting and turning through the countryside so as to avoid roads pretty much all the time, to Castelmoron. Mercifully we found a Super-U Express, which was an excellent shop, to make sure we had enough supplies for another coming public holiday. There were some intriguing beers which I really couldn’t resist but which will probably be the subject of a slow news day.
After lunch [he said, skilfully avoiding beginning a paragraph with a conjunction] we went to the one-horse town’s main tourist attraction. Le Temple sur Lot is home to the French national waterlily collection. What’s that if not a show-stopper?
The main show-stopper may be the French for waterlily, which was a word completely unknown to us: nénuphar. I doubt that we’ll be dropping that into day to day conversation.
In 1875, Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac began the nursery for the propogation and commercialization of hardy waterlilies. At the World’s Fair in 1889, he displayed his new-fangled plants, which were unveiled along with the Eiffel Tower that year, and which caught the eye of Claude Monet. The rest, as they say, is artistic history.
We cycled into town and then out to the waterlily nursery where, we were gobsmacked to find, not a single bicycle stand that we could lock our cycles to. This is more or less unheard of these days, particularly sur le continent. Carefully avoiding the thorny subject of bikes, we coughed up out entrance fees and went in to go oo-ah at the nénuphars. As well as lilies, the garden sported a bridge which should look familiar to Monet fans.
With all that water around, I thought I might go oo-ah at some dragonflies, too. There were some but nothing that would occasion an ooh-ah. There was, however, the most enchanting small, young tree frog, which I was very surprised to see. We were used to seeing these at our favoured campsite in Fanjeaux but they disappeared after a particularly severe winter. ‘T was nice to see one again.
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