It's been a very wet April, with only the odd day of respite, which, luckily coincided with our walks with the walking club. Beverley has started back at the campsite and one of her first tasks was to deal with the floods following the opening of the barrages further upstream on the Dordogne. Here are a few photos of the floods and our latest walks. Click on a photo to enlarge it.
A camping pitch.
A customer's caravan and awning being rescued.
The terrace from one of the mobile homes
A childrens play area.
Latest Walks
Here's a couple of links to our latest walks on Openrunner. You can view the circuit on the IGN map and also see a few photos I've added:
Rocamadour:
http://www.openrunner.com/index.php?id=1605304&ig=1
Castelnaud:
Spending your 60th Birthday in the Cantal Mountains is definitely to be recommended, especially when everything has been organised for you, including all the accommodation and driving. The plan was to set off mid-morning after opening the thousands of cards and presents waiting for me on the kitchen table (well 10 cards and much fewer presents if I'm honest) from family and friends eager to reassure me that being 60 wasn't so bad, and then take a leisurely drive to the Mountains before settling in to our carefully researched and selected Maison D'Hôtes. My first surprise of the day was to enter the kitchen and find our friends Mary, Bob and Robert standing there singing Happy Birthday to me and bearing gifts of croissants and cakes, not to mention a guidebook to the Chemins de Compostelle (ready for our next trip) and the biggest birthday card I've ever seen.
The excellent breakfast gave me the will to go on for at least another year so off we set for the great outdoors. Making very good time we stopped off for lunch along the way and took a look round Aurillac, the capital of the Cantal department, checked out the local cinema just in case, and bought a couple of walking books for the area. Too early to arrive at our accommodation we decided to investigate the Route des Crêtes, a tourist route providing some great views over the valleys and mountains. This was definitely ringing all the right bells with me and my birthday blues were quickly fading into the distance.
Beverley had excelled herself on the choice of accommodation. La Roussière, our Maison d'Hôtes, is situated in a steep valley at the end of a narrow country road. The house was fabulous and our hosts Brigitte Renard et Christian Grégoir, not only made us very welcome but served us some excellent evening meals, which we enjoyed in the company of our fellow guests. This is a place we would definitely recommend. Check it out….
On our first night we identified a couple of challenging mountain walks from our guidebooks and looked forward to the next morning. Our first circuit of choice was 'Les Fours de Peyre-Arse' that takes in the Puy Mary and the Puy de Peyre-Arse. However as we approached the start at the Col de Serre the signs were ominous. The clouds were thick and low, and the chances of seeing anything (even our feet) looked slim indeed. We set of nevertheless, in the hope it would clear. And sure enough, after 30 minutes or so into the walk, the clouds began to lift revealing a beautiful blue sky and mountain ranges we had no idea were there. Even more unexpected was the thick covering of snow that lay across a large part of our path ahead. The snow was old and icy, too dangerous to risk on the steep slopes without crampons, so, after a quick meeting, we decided to take the tourist route up to the summit of Puy Mary and return. The final climb to the summit is by the most unpleasant concrete steps – not only a scar on the landscape but a pain to climb. Even so, the views from the top provided plenty of compensation.
Our second planned walk, the 'Circuit Plomb du Cantal', apparently offers magnificent views across the mountain ranges of the Cantal. But this was also obscured by cloud and blocked by dangerous snow conditions so, cutting our losses, we jumped in the car and headed further south to the village of Pailherols (near our accommodation) to try an alternative lower-level walk. Our hosts had previously recommended a local cheese producer there when we enquired about buying some of the local Salers cheese. We found the man busy cutting up huge pieces of cheese for his clients and we were lucky enough to get one of his last pieces of matured Salers. By now the weather was looking a little threatening so Beverley asked him if it was likely to rain that afternoon. He reassured us most emphatically that it would not. By the time we walked the 200 metres back to our car to ready ourselves for our walk the heavens opened with thunder, lightning, deluge and hail, confining us in our car for the next hour or more. I've never believed that the 'locals' have special weather divining abilities and if you ever needed an example then this was it.
But the storm did eventually clear, with blue sky and sunshine pushing it northwards. It was now 3pm and our walk required three hours to complete so we set off at a pace in order to get back in time for dinner. The 'Circuit des Montagnes, turned out to be very pleasant indeed. Set on a plateau at 1035m, the walk climbed gently to just 1293m over an old farm track providing some lovely views over the surrounding valleys. The fields and banks around us were covered with blankets of the early shoots of croci and other wild flowers desperate to make their way to the sunlight. Another week or so and this would be a most spectacular sight. Despite another storm making its way overhead, we were able to keep ahead of it and made it back to the car in very good time.
For our last morning we had planned a very short local walk but we awoke to dense, low fog, which, our host informed us, was unlikely to clear and was set to get worse. So we cut our losses by setting off for home, taking one of the minor roads to Aurillac in the hope of seeing just a few more glimpses of the local countryside. As we left our valley, on queue the cloud lifted just enough to allow us our wish, providing us with views across superb valleys and some very attractive villages. All in all then, a great 60th birthday, and thank you to everyone who helped to make it so – especially Beverley. View the photos…