I am very pleased to say that last night we were lulled to sleep by a satisfying chorus of croaking frogs in the Fanjeaux lake. Clearly senior (erstwhile) farmer Marcel has not managed to manges tous les grenouilles. A couple of years ago Marcel began a concerted campaign, based around his ample stomach, seriously to reduce the admittedly overcrowded frog population. Whilst some campers found the nightly croaking disturbing, most of the regulars consider it to be an enjoyable, integral part of Fanjeaux. Indeed, no frogs, no Fanjeaux. So, we were pleased to hear a decent, albeit reduced, overnight chorus.

However, I think that there is a sinister trend just beneath the surface. On previous years we have seen humongous tadpoles in the lake along with many small froglets in and around the lake. This year, however, the younger, replacement generation seems to be absent. We have not seen a single tadpole, nor have we seen a particularly small frog. My fear is that the frogs’ breeding success is now almost non existent. I would, of course, blame the voracious fish for vacuuming up any frog spawn and tadpoles, should any happen to hatch. So, does our frog chorus have a limited life based upon the natural lifespan of a frog? At least Marcel appears to have stopped trapping them.

Whilst there may be a complete lack of birdlife on the lake, the same is mercifully not true of the surrounding poplar and ash trees which still support a good variety of oiseaus. We frequently hear the “inverted wolf-whistle” [my description] of the secretive Golden Oriole. A glimpse of this stunning bird would be most welcome but rarely comes. Making the resident Chaffinches sound rather dull, there are a good number of Blackcaps warbling away entertainingly. Most delightfully however, this morning we were awoken at 6:00 AM by the piercingly tuneful call of a Nightingale. It began in the bushes demarking one side of Guillaume’s pitch, then gave a repeat performance from the bushes of the opposite side of Guillaume’s pitch, before moving slightly further afield for a reprise or two. Birds marking out their territory is a bit like beating the bounds. We’ve heard Nightingales singing before but not at such close quarters. The song variation and detail revealed by such close proximity was a revelation. It’s certainly a much more pleasant alarm call than that of a cockerel. Alarm clocks should contain recordings of Nightingales.

Having been comprehensively Nightingaled awake, I encouraged Francine out, as she had threatened, to play with some early morning light, photographically, that is. The narrow road leading up to the farm runs beside a raised field of onions, the heads of which had proved an irresistible draw. She also found a few splashes of colour framed by a corn field or two that grabbed her attention.

One of the attractions of camping on the farm site is the variety of activities and subjects that can provide entertainment, assuming that one takes an interest in such things.

Shunning the autoroutes favoured by Sally Satnav, we dragged Guillaume the 150kms across country from the eastern Pyrenees to Fanjeaux, just north of Mirepoix. We’d booked a lakeside pitch from the coming Friday but were arriving four days earlier than originally planned. Such is the draw of our favourite campsite. Luc’s ladies, ~300 dairy ewes, were out in the top field munching fresh grass to greet us. I didn’t expect our prime lakeside pitch to be free four days ahead of time but was quite prepared to shift pitches after a few days. However, it was free so moving would be unnecessary; we claimed our spot in time for lunch.

This campsite is a few other people’s favourite, also, and we’d be renewing friendships from the two years since our last visit. [Last June had been spent at home for me to have a cataract operation.] Most of the regulars here are long term visitors, staying for a month or more. We were particularly keen to renew our friendship with our immediate neighbours, a Wenglish [Welsh/English] couple, installed for a month and lethal with an empty wine glass. On another of the lakeside pitches is a Cornish couple here for about two months this time and there’s a lovely Belgian lady, still installing herself for the entire summer, with the help of family, after losing her husband a couple of years ago. The campsite must be related to Hotel California; I won’t attempt to quote it verbatim but it’s something like:

… you can check out any time you want but you can never leave.

After a 2-year absence, we were greeted with hugs by all the regulars – it was like coming home.

The dammed irrigation lake used by farmer Luc has become something of a personal long-term study. Six or seven years ago it supported a rich diversity of fauna including waterfowl such as ducks, coots, herons, egrets and some enchanting little grebes, together with a large population of frogs and even a few snakes. There were painfully cute tree frogs in the hedges of the pitches beside the lake. The lake was instrumental in getting me thoroughly hooked on dragonflies with 17 species, many of which were present in large numbers.

About four years ago things changed and changed dramatically. Large Grass Carp were introduced into the lake to remove the vegetation. Along with the Grass Carp came some 3rd party intensively farmed Koi Carp. We have never been completely clear as to the reasons but we suspect the huge frog population might have been the main driver – some campers had been known to leave “because the frogs were too noisy at night”.Whatever the reason, the lake’s vegetation vanished and the dragonfly population crashed, though small numbers of a few species still hung on. I was most interested to see what effect two years more had had.

First impressions were that the lake now looked almost sterile. It is much deeper than we’ve ever seen it after some heavy winter rains but it looks sterile, mostly because there is not a single water bird of any description on the lake – not one. Today is very warm and sunny, so perfect dragonfly conditions but I initially spotted just a few Black-tailed Skimmers (Orthetrum cancellatum) at the dam, and a couple of Blue-tailed Damselflies (Ischnura elegans) together with a Common Blue Damselfly (Enallagma cyathigerum) around the lake.

Neither are there any Koi Carp visible, though the floating feeder is still lashed to the lakeside. The fourth lakeside pitch is occupied by an English fisherman who is pole fishing and catching carp by the dozens of kilos, each individual fish being upwards of 5kgs but, he told us, they were not Grass Carp. As well as the whales, there are very many smaller fish around the margins of the lake but they are brown surface feeders (we suspect Bleak) rather than the gaudy oranges and reds of Koi.

So, clearly things have changed again but once more we’re not sure quite how or why. The Koi were being bread for sale but once introduced you’re never going to extract every single individual so where have they all gone?

Given the rich supply of potential Heron food – fish of many sizes and frogs, which are still present though in lower numbers – why are there no Herons present? We spotted a Grey Heron fly over, do a circuit or two looking around, then fly on as if it had rejected it as suitable habitat – very curious. I can understand a lack of coots and dabbling ducks ‘cos there’s no vegetation to dabble at but why no Heron? I am wondering if the lake margins are currently too deep for a Heron to wade and stalk prey but that is just an idea formed out of desperation.

It’s early days so we’ll see how things go. It’s good to be back despite the reduced fauna. 🙂

It’s good to have a reason to go and investigate pastures new. I have an e-friend (i.e. met over the Internet), a fellow dragonfly enthusiast, who has a holiday home down at the Eastern end of the Pyrenees. His latest trip to France coincided with ours and here was the perfect excuse for us to explore pastures new. We’ve previously looked at the western end of the Pyrenees, Basque country, and we’ve looked in the central area around several famous Tour de France mountain climbs, but never the eastern end towards Perpignan. So, with an invitation to a BBQ, after four nights at Loupian, near the Bassin de Thau, we headed further south down the main autoroute, for trucks, towards Spain. We hung a quick right before hitting the border to zoom a safe distance inland – safe, that is, from any danger of kiss-me-quick campsites.

I’d been keen to avoid another busy ACSI campsite but, when looking at the books, one campsite sounded too much like us to avoid: rural, good for walks, quiet. Regrettably, it was flying the ACSI banner but that’s where we headed. We’ve ended up at about 300m/1000ft, on what would merely be classed as a hill round here, amidst another swarm of Dutch campers in the foothills of the eastern Pyrenees. The campsite  isn’t actually full but it’s certainly busy.

It’s also very windy. The Tramontane is blowing, largely from west to east along the mountains. It’s hot,  almost too hot for some, hitting 35°C down in the valley, but the constantly strong wind with occasional violent gusts, makes sitting outside Guillaume a little less than completely comfortable, We do have a view down to the plain below, though. We are reliant upon a conifer tree on our pitch for shade because we’ve been unable to erect our sun canopy which would swiftly have been blown into the Mediterranean 30kms east had we foolishly tried to pitch it.

Shunning sun-worshipper territory to the east, we made an exploratory trip a little way west up the valley of the river Tech, passing through Céret. We’ve been told that Céret  has a wonderful though touristy market, which we chose to avoid ‘cos we can get exactly that at our next stop near Mirepoix. Like many places in Europe on gorges, Céret also has yet another example of a Pont du Diable [Devil’s bridge].

Further up the valley from Céret, we passed through Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda, and on to Arles-sur-Tech, finally avoiding the classic tourist trap of Gorges de la Fou. Returning to Amélie-les-Bains, we found a pleasant picnic spot beside the river Tech. The most fascinating thing about the picnic spot was the inventively engineered bridge across the Tech, required to gain access. The bridge appears to have been constructed by laying a series of concrete pipes, through which the river could flow, and covering the tubes with more concrete. The dire warning signs were enough to put off anyone of a faint heart. The bridge felt just about wide enough for a car, but someone had clearly worn the extreme edges a little.

The day we arrived at Llauro in the eastern Pyrenees was, we thought, pretty darn windy. That, it seems, was just the Tramontane flexing it muscles and warming up. For the last two days, the Tramontane has been up to speed and it’s been damn windy, buffeting Guillaume on his corner steadies.

It’s still hot but sitting outside in the constant gale has become so tiresome that we’ve tended to retreat inside Guillaume for some shelter. The knock-on difficulty is that we’d like a lot of fresh air inside Guillaume but can’t really get enough because we can’t open any windows or the roof light on props for fear of something being ripped off  by the wind. Opening the door gets us frequent rattles and a caravan full of windblown dust.

There’s second issue with our choice of campsite at Llauro. Getting anywhere, and returning from anywhere, involves a 15-minute drive each way along one of two roads both consisting of a seemingly never ending series of hairpin bends. Being a Sunday, the seemingly never ending series of hairpin bends we chose today was full of a seemingly never ending series of French cyclists often rounding said seemingly never ending series of hairpin bends on the wrong side of the road, or, at least, in the centre of it. A car driver really does not want to hit a cyclist in France because, whatever the cyclist may have done, they cannot be deemed to be at fault; the car driver is automatically at fault, always. It’s a ludicrous law that some would have established in the UK.

We managed to negotiate both the hairpin bends, without colliding with too many of the maniacal cyclists, to get down into the valley for a morning Odo hunting trip with our friend, after which we bit the bullet and visited Argelès-sur-Mer for a beer or two and a spot of tapas for lunch. I say “bit the bullet” because we feared Argelès-sur-Mer would be just beach territory, definitely not us. However, our pal new a pleasant harbour location, Port-Argelès, which was perfectly fine, part of the port being home to some of the area’s delightful traditional fishing boats.

The presence of tapas highlights one of my main education points here. This neck of the woods, albeit France, is classed as Catalan, sharing much in common with the north-eastern part of Spain. Here, the Catalan flag takes precedence over the French tricolour.

So, after three days of being buffeted by the Tramontane and of negotiating 30-minutes worth of hairpins to get off, then back onto our hilltop campsite, the sheep are calling – we’re heading for Fanjeaux and our favourite sheep farm tomorrow. We can’t wait to get out of this bloody wind. One hears about how the Mistral, blowing down the Rhone valley, can drive a man insane but, trust me, this Tramontane has been the worst wind I’ve experienced. I’m sure it’s quite capable of causing similar insanity. The Dutch couple next door appear to have had enough, too; we spotted them thumbing through their (accursed) ACSI campsite book.

Having said all that, we have enjoyed visiting our friend and sharing a little dragonfly hunting trip with him. It’s been good to see his holiday home but we must confess to wondering quite why they chose this location.

I suspect we won’t be back but, if we are, we certainly wouldn’t stay on this hill top again. A valley location would be much more convenient and a little more sheltered should the Tramontane blow up again.

At our continuing-to-be-practically-full ACSI campsite near Mèze, we had a recent interesting new arrival. A lone traveller pulled into the pitch behind us driving a Spanish registered McLouis brand motor van,. An apparent lady got out and started setting up. Shortly afterwards, the site electrics blew (this was not an infrequent occurrence) whereupon the “lady”, in a rather gruff English voice, said, “I hope it wasn’t me”. I explained that the electricity was only a 6-Amp supply and “she” went on to say that she didn’t really understand what that meant. So, the technical knowledge fitted the clothing but the voice did not. When “she” donned a bikini and sat under a sun shade reading, we didn’t think the shape of the torso matched the clothing, either. Perhaps in this case the McLouis should have been a McLouise? Actually, a much more suitable camper van might have been something based on a Ford Tranny conversion. 😯

This morning we wobbled into into Mèze  on our bikes – I say wobbled because my bike now has an impressively buckled back wheel caused by my landing on it almost two weeks ago – and found the market in full swing. Though we’ve stayed in th8is neck of the woods before, we’d never really seen the middle of Mèze, just the harbour. We were impressed, particularly by the market and were forced into buying a splendid piece of espadon [swordfish] which I thought would do well cooked with the remains of our ratatouille. [For the insatiably curious, the idea stemmed from an Italian recipe called Impanata di Pesce Spada.]

We were also taken by the possibility of a 55-minute, late afternoon catamaran trip round the oyster beds in the Bassin de Thau and decided to return after lunch. However, as the afternoon progressed, so did some very threatening black clouds all around us. Neither a stormy boat ride nor a wet return ride on board les bicyclettes appealed, so discretion got the better part of valour and we continued to sit around relaxing and waiting for the storm to break. It never did.

I was right about the swordfish and ratatouille, though. Yum!

Tomorrow we head for the eastern Pyrenees.

Now look, don’t get me wrong, I love birds, as those who know we would freely admit. yesterday morning, however, they were having a laugh.

The first assault was mounted yesterday when a small bird, possibly one of our surrounding Serins. Francine, bless her, Had put some laundry in our travelling bucket to soak prior to washing. She stood the laundry-containing bucket just outside Guillaume’s door. When she returned to take it to the laundry, she discovered that one of little avian friends had pooped right in the bucket. “Bother!”, uttered Francine, or words to that effect.

It could have been worse; our avian friend could have pooped on the laundry once it had been washed. Bearing this in mind, Francine was particularly nervous about pegging out her now bird-shitless washing. “Shields up, Franco!”, she commanded. I manoeuvred our parasol into place over our travelling washing line as Bird Shield 1 in the hope that it would protect against any additional cling-ons.

One bird made clear its displeasure by pooping on Francine’s left arm as she sat in her chair. Fortunately, both these initial assaults were just minor weaponry. I rushed for some toilet paper to clean up but the bird was already miles away. [The old ones are the best!]

This morning, Francine woke us early – 5:00 AM! – to go to Mèze harbour for a dawn photo shoot. 5:00 AM is no time to put the bed away se we left it until we returned. When we did return and I set about stowing the bedding, I noticed a small blemish on one corner of my pillow. “Curious”, I thought, sponging it off with a dampened sock. I glance up and was horrified. The source of the curious mark on my pillow became horribly clear. Guillaume has a very large sunroof which, in this climate, it is very nice to have fully opened – propped almost upright. The resulting large hole in Guillaume’s roof tends to let in insects so the sunroof comes complete with a fly screen which we habitually leave closed. Our fly screen was now caked in bird shit, not small bird shit but 5 megaton bird shit. The not quite vertical sunroof was similarly caked by another 5 megaton blast. Actually, it could all have the fallout from a single 10 megaton strike. Evidently an avian friend approaching the size of a Golden Eagle had been roosting in the tree branches above Guillaume and had scored a direct hit with its morning movement. “Bother!”, I muttered, or words to that effect.

In this baking heat, bird shit is a bit like Jetcem ® – it sets like concrete and it sets very fast. The longer I left it the harder it would get so I was anxious to clean up as soon as possible but how? A serious sponging would make a serious mess saturating the inside of Guillaume. I removed the upholstery and stowed it in the bathroom, then spread our groundsheet (purchased as a bicycle cover) over Guillaume’s floor and benches before setting about sponging down. The tenacious cling-ons on the fine mesh of the fly screen proved particularly tricky since there’s really nothing to press against. Guillaume’s roof itself was one helluva mess. Using our step, I managed to gain access through the sunroof and clean him as best I could.

OK, fine for now, but two more nights here would likely have poor Guillaume caked in guano again. We could leave the sunroof on a lower setting and avoid a repetition of the fly screen caking but in all likelihood he’d still get splattered again. After a little thought we managed to combine four old guy ropes with the corner eyelets in our multi-purpose groundsheet and deploy Bird Shield 2.

Our antics and bird engineering amused our neighbours greatly.

“It feels good to be on the road again,” muttered Francine as we drove out of Maussane-les-Alpilles.

We’ve done something rather out of character for us on our nest stop and it’s proved quite interesting. We’ve returned to an area of the Languedoc that we are familiar with but to a different campsite. We are near Montagnac, at Loupian this time, to be precise. The site we’ve chosen is one of the classic French Camping Municipale sites. Or, at least, it used to be.

Some years ago, when we were camping in the same area but camped at our then usual site, I cycled to this municipale site in Loupian just to have a nose around. There were a few units on site, which were, as far as I could tell, almost all French. There was a very french “clack” of boules drifting over the fence from a game of petanque in progress. To be frank, the site seemed at first glance to be a little rough and ready but very French.

So, here we are several years later and, horror of horrors, this erstwhile classic French Camping Municipale site is still a Camping Municipale but has been enrolled into the ever-expanding Dutch ACSI camping organization. I’ve been leery of ACSI for a while, for this reason: I suspected it would attract swarms of Dutch deal-seekers (ACSI members get an out-of-season discount) and sites that would otherwise have been quiet out of season would become very busy. We’ve pitched up in early June, decidedly out of season, and this time round the site was aproaching full. An English neighbour, who seems to stay here for about a month at a time, told us that last night it was full. That’s the ACSI effect for you and it’s exactly what I was afraid of. This site is really the first evidence I’ve actually seen of my fear. The site is fine but the ACSI effect makes it feel more like camping in August at the height of the season.

This site already feels considerably more friendly than did our last site at Maussane-les-Alpilles, which could best be described as impersonal. (It took me a long time to come up with that word but it’s perfect.) We are amongst tall conifers giving shade from the sun for most of the day and the conifers are full of Serins “spraying” us with their song. Serins deliver 3-4 seconds worth of immeasurably short, varying notes in what can only be described as a frenetic stream. Here’s one giving us a few seconds worth. They look a bit like Canaries and may be related but their song is quite different.

Having been Serin-aded over lunch, we cycled just a couple of miles down a conveniently adjacent voie verte [green way], an erstwhile railway track now tarmac covered serving as a cycle track between Mèze and Bouzigues. We headed for Mèze to stare at its idyllic looking harbour which issues onto the Basin-de-Thau, through which runs the Canal du Midi.

“What a place to park a boat”, we mused, as we sat and munched a salted caramel ice cream.

We had a lazy day putzing around Maussane, today. We began by putzing into town to do some shopping where we found a wonderful shop selling all manner of produce from Les Alpilles. I love the way the French are intensely proud of their local regions and the products from them.

There are three or four restaurants/cafes with shaded seating in te square outside the church and on our shopping putz, I noticed a waiter crossing the street (from the restaurant itself to the outside seating area on the opposite side of the road) armed with a circular metal frame of the sort used to support a Plateau de Fruits de Mer. Sure enough, this restaurant’s menu offered a Plateau de Fruits de Mer with crab, prawns whelks, clams mussels and three different types of oyster. We putzed back to Guillaume and then immediately putzed back to the restaurant to indulge ourselves with a posh Saturday lunch assisted by a Ricard and some local white wine.

As we were munching various morsels of seafood from various shells, Francine suggested that, in the afternoon, I might try to find her “a wren”. At least, that’s what it sounded like. I was confused – we’ve seen lots of birds but no wrens. All became clear when she explained that there were signs advertising a course of taureaux jeunes at 3:30 PM at the arènes. Not knowing quite what to expect, after snoozing off a splendid lunch, we putzed back down and found Francine her arènes.

For €3 each, what we got was a hard concrete step from which to watch Une Course Camarguaise, a bull fight French style. Last August in Spain, we’d been less than impressed by watching a bunch of testosterone-enriched teenagers taunt some Spanish black bulls. This French version of playing with bulls seemed a much more acceptable affair. The first official task was to introduce les raseteurs [fit young men with a good turn of speed] to the modest crowd.

Getting the excitement underway, the first bull is let into the arènes, it’s head adorned with various trophies: a cocarde [rosette? between its horns],two glands [tassles? at the base of its horns] and two ficelles [strings – tying the tassles to its horns, I think]. Assisted by a tourneur [bull provoker], the raseteurs [fit young men with a good turn of speed] take turns attempting to run a glancing course in front of the now charging bull and snatch one of the trophies from the bull’s head. After their run, the fit young men leap athletically over the barricade to nominal safety. Successfully grabbing a trophy wins the raseteur some money. The trick, or course, is to avoid becoming another trophy on the bull’s head yourself.

I said they leap to nominal safety over the barricade because, quite frequently, the bull also decides to leap over the barricade, somewhat less athletically than the fit young men, and proceeds to run round the perimeter. It’s as if the bull knows where the raseteurs are hiding. Suddenly, the arènes becomes the area of safety until, that is, the bull is guided back inside.

Each bull – there were eight – gets to chase raseteurs for up to 15 minutes, depending upon how long its trophies last. After the first four bulls, we got a beer break for the blood to return to our backsides.

This was quite entertaining and an unusual new spectacle for us. One poor bull seemed to bite its own tongue and draw blood, probably jumping the barricade, but that appeared to be the extent of any injuries. The bulls ranged between 4- and 9-years old.

Now, here’s an object lesson in how to put an old, disused bauxite mine to good use – in the unlikely event that you happen to have a suitable old, disused bauxite mine lurking about, of course.

As it happens, there are a few old, disused bauxite mines in the so-called val d’infer [hell’s valley] just below Les Baux de Provence. From these mines, huge blocks were cut and processed for the bauxite, whatever that might be. 🙂 What was left behind was a series of vast caverns with near flat, light coloured walls such as those in this picture.

Being fans of the son et lumières [sound and light] entertainment form, the French came up with a spectacular ways to put these caverns to good use. The light coloured, near flat, massive walls make a natural series of projection screens. Accompanied by music, multiple projectors cover the walls with projected art works and moving pictures. We witnessed version 1.0 of this entertainment form some years ago, Cathédrale des Images, a Pablo Picasso display. That spectacle, regrettably, was shut down because of some modern health and safety nonsense. Fortunately, version 2.0, Carrières de Lumières, has now opened and we went along to see the “Klimt et Vienne” [Klimt and Vienna – whoever Klimt was] show.

I have to say that Version 2.0 outshone Version 1.0 [pun intended]. Clearly Herr Klimt was some artist – I’m a self-confessed artistic numbskull so how would I know. Klimt images were interleaved with scenes of Vienna accompanied by suitably chosen music. I even came out humming some. I felt I needed Chief Inspector Morse to tell me what operatic creation I had been listening to.

Having seen the blank walls of the bauxite cavern above, my inadequate vocabulary cannot possibly describe the transformation made by the myriad projectors so here’s a few images which will hopefully do the job. Do take note of the people in the images to get a true sense of scale.

I am not easily impressed but this place and entertainment form impresses me. This is worth a detour to see. This is somewhere we would always go almost whatever is on. The spectacle is simply breath-taking.

We needed an impressive dinner to follow that and the local Spar supermarket happened to be selling some faux-fillet [sirloin steak] of taureau de Camargue [Camargue bull]. My count of tasty instances of beef in France is now three. Tasty it was, though it had obviously been running around a little and was not the tenderest of steaks in the world. Still, it was a bull. [Note the patriotic table cloth for the 70th anniversary of D-Day.]