I survived the Nullabor

Here I am in South Australia at Streaky Bay. I have had my first dip in the ocean in over 40 years and it was delicious to wash off the Nullabor dust. There wasnt actually much of that because it was raining for most of the journey. Can you believe how surreal it was to be driving through the desert through water rushing across the road, with great swathes of water on each side of the road. It was like, Hello! Is this the desert? All courtesy of Cyclone Rusty. Once the rain stopped it was HOT. I had spent a couple of days wearing a jacket and snugging up at night with a doona. Suddenly it was gasping for the air conditioner and any hint of a breeze. The sea breeze is in now at Streaky Bay and is lovely. Some interesting experiences along the way, apart from the flooded desert. There was the woman at Madora Pass who was working in the servo and commented that she had a campervan. She went on to tell me that she had arrived there in October last year and accepted a weeks work whilst someone took a week off. She was still there and didnt think she could get away until May. She said her lovely new van had only 2,000 km on the clock. I thought I would just keep going in case I got trapped there as well. Then there was the vehicle that pulled out into the service station at Mundrabilla from behind a steel gate. I was just getting back into my van after phoning Judy, or was it Joan? Anyway, I heard this scraping of steel and looked to see from whence it was coming. The gate in a solid steel fence was slowly opening and this vehicle drove through. I asked the driver if I could take a photo. I have now tried to download this photo twice so it may appear twice or not at all. This is being difficult. Anyway if you see the photo you will understand why I commented to the driver that it was like something out of Mad Max. He was however somewhat offended. The scenery along the Bight was fantastic and I took photos but given the experience of the vehicle photo, I will leave that until I get to a more stable environment to send photos.

It seems that the dates will be wrong when I type this in the mornings as although my computer correctly shows it is 2 March today by the time the blog gets published it is still the day before in the US where Google organise the magic. Sorry also about the typos. I did try to preview the entry and then lost it so when I posted again I didn't bother and just went to publish.

Yesterday at 6.45 am, I pulled out of my driveway in my trusty VDub and left summer behind. By the time I got to Merredin it was raining, being the tail of Cyclone Rusty that dumped deluges of rain in the Pilbar. Fortunately it was not that heavy but the temperature had cooled sufficiently for me to look about the van for where I put my jumper. Rain continued through Southern Cross where I stopped for lunch and onto my campsite at Koorarawalyee which is in the Goldfiels Woodlands CP 114 km west of Coolgardie. Rain continued overnight but by dawn had ended. Still full cloud cover. Due to the rain I will bypass Kalgoorlie enroute to Menzies for the Gormley experience at Lake Ballard. A do not want to get bogged at the beginning of my trip on the dirt road from Menzies to the Lake. Tonight I plan to camp at Fraser Range on the Eyre Highway so I will be well and truly into the desert by then. So far I have travelled through the wooded hills of the Darling Range, the dry stubble of the wheatbelt and the salmon gums of the more marginal areas where gold mining has had its heyday. At dinner before I left, the children made me promise that I would photograph any wildlife that I came across. Alice was however disappointed to hear that I did not expect to see a giraffe. I passed on the many dead kangaroos on the road as I figured they didnt qualify and was relieved that I had not caused their demise. This free campsite is very well done. Toilets, lots of shade if needed, table and chairs in both wood and concret, campfires set up with billy overhang and plenty of bays to park. When I arrived at about 2pm, I was the first. Others dribbled in and there are now 5 campers and a huge truck rig. Only one other campervan, the rest are caravans. No eyeing each other off at this ground as it is too wet and we all remain in our vans except the occasional run to the toilet through the rain.

Madge is on the move again! This time in Oz. Leaving home on 1 March 2013 to places and spaces known and unknown. First port of call will be the Gormly statues at Lake Ballard where I will camp. I will be travelling in my trusty VDub and flying solo. I am still at the stage of poring over maps and working out where to go and when I need to get there. I will be visiting Helen and Tim in the Fleurieu from 11 March and Harriet and family from late April. Tom will fly across to meet me in Sydney for a week and then we will travel to Canberra for the second week of his school hols and then fly home. After that - who knows? I have a new camera to play with and will need to see how I go at putting photos on the blog - it wasnt easy with the last one on my small computer.

A day in Penne and Bruniquel

We took a different route out of town to Penne and onto Bruniquel as recommended by the touriste office and wow!

We first had to travel up and along the ridge of the Roc D'Angler for several kilometres with spectacular views which the camera does not have a sufficiently wide angle to cover, but it was the top of where Richard and I canoed and the views are even better from the top than they were from the bottom. We had to pass through a tunnel that was 3 metres wide, I wanted to check that I would fit.

Penne is another of the bastide towns where battles were fought for centuries and hence the building undertaken at strategic points, such as the top of the mountain. Goodness knows how they did it. You can no longer enter the ruin at the top

Lyn was in her sartorial splendour along with the local lass.

The remaining photos are of Bruniquel which has 2 castles, one built in the 11th century and the other in the 17th. The earlier one is actually in better shape but that is because it was restored somewhat in the 19th century. The kitchens of both were still there and very interesting with their bread ovens. You would still be able to use the 17th century oven - it was enormous and still had its long handled spade things to move the coals around and hoik out the bread.

As I had accidently left my camera at home, Wendy kindly took these photos for me.

In search of a flower show

We had all been looking forward to today to go to a flower show in one of the nearby villages. We had seen the poster all week and had misread the verbage many times. At first we thought it was in St Antonin. Then we saw the name Livron and thinking it was one of the neighbouring villages, Wendy and I did a sortie through the week trying to find where it would be to no avail. We went to St Paul de Livron but there was nothing there that would indicate a flower show was imminent. In fact about it that was there was a convent and a grotto with a madonna in a cave. I plugged in Giles (GPS) and found that Livron was about 200km away. We returned home and read the poster again and it turned out to be in a village called Lacapelle Livron. This was discovered last night in time to take off this morning for the show. Lyn had some bad news about her cat just before we were to leave so she and Angela remained at home to try to contact their vet. Wendy, Claire and I arrived in the village and drove to the centre village as directed by several sign posts. The lanes were about 4 houses long on each entry and we could see no sign of a flower show nor anywhere where it might be held. We parked the car and walked a little way (about 50 metres from one end of the village to the other) and saw the church which was built in the 12 century just as the bells were tolled for noon.

We also saw the village Halle which was the tiniest I have seen but commensurate with the size of the village.

Walking on, we bumped into a small group of people who were speaking English. They were pounced upon and asked about the flower show. They said, no flower show - but asked did we mean the open garden? Yes we all nodded vigourousy. They directed us back to the main road and about 300 metres further along was an art gallery which we entered and from the end of that walked into a walled garden. We spoke with the owners who have lived there for 10 years and who are English. They had bought the ruin of a house and there was nothing inside the wall. No one had lived there for 60 years they told us. They rebuilt the house and started the garden from scratch. It was a lovely cottage garden with little secret bits and lots of colourful flowers interspersed with vegetables. The wife is an artist and her paintings, which were very good, hung on the walls of the gallery. The husband now retired was an academic who specialised in permaculture and had been to Australia to lecture, but not to Perth. We chatted for some time after we had viewed their beautiful garden and they made us a cup of tea. He then told us about how the barn was converted into the gallery and also their now living quarters and that they are using the house as a summer let. He also told us of another open garden near Espinas, a little village we had been to before. That was in the Chateau de Cas. Here are some of the photos I took of the cottage garden.

So we headed off towards Espinas and followed the signs to Chateau de Cas up and up and around and around for ages and we finally found it. Amazing. Very isolated, very beautiful, very old and completely different to the last garden. This was a very formal garden. It opened at 2 pm and we arrived about 3 minutes after that time. We were met by a woman who told us in French that we could not photograph inside the Chateau or a wedding that was to take place there this afternoon. At least that is what we thought she was saying. I dont know how long she thought we would be there, but there was no sign of a wedding party and some people were just starting to put chairs out in one of the buildings. We walked around the formal gardens and took some photos of that and the pigionier, which I think is a bit like an English dovecote (for Joan and Judy) and we were a bit anxious because we weren't entirely sure what we could and could not photograph. She then came and found us again and asked if we wanted to see the chapel. We agreed and followed her and walked passed a middle aged couple sitting at a garden setting enjoying a glass of wine. The wife spoke to me as I was in the lead and I apologised and said I didn't speak French. She appeared somewhat shocked and spoke to me in perfect English. I was forgiven when she realised we were Australian. It turned out that they were the Lord and Lady of the manor and invited us again to look at the chapel which was built in the 12th century. She said that the chapel belonged to the village but that she cleaned it. Claire remained talking with them while Wendy and I looked through this tiny little chapel that held about 12 seats and reminded me of the one Joan and Judy visited with me in Dorset. Later, Claire was shocked to learn to whom she had been speaking, saying she thought the woman who approached us on getting out of the car was the owner.

They also run a gite (self catering holiday accommodation) in the grounds of the chateau and gave us brochures about it. We later checked on the web as to the price and it was pretty pricy - much the same as our house in St Antonin for a 2 person apartment. It would be a lovely setting to live in the chateau but extremely isolated from anywhere. One would need to drive at least 10 km to get to the tiniest village and that would not have a shop.

Sadly, when we arrived home, Lyn had had news that her cat had been put down.

The village of Caylus

Yesterday, (Tuesday) Wendy drove us to the village of Caylus which is not far from St Antonin. Richard had come here often to fish and Myles and Elspeth brought the children here for a drive one afternoon but I hadn't been before.

The big items to see were the 14th century church and the new and old castles. The church was lovely, but it was difficult to get a photo of the outside because it is all so built up around it. This was about the best I could do.

The church is renowned for its stained glass windows, said to be the best in the area - I took photos but they didn't turn out so well and I am not sure why they were thought to be the best - and for a very modern sculpture of Christ which I took a photo of but I wasn't impressed by it either.

We had collected a map from the tourist bureau telling us how to get from the church to the old and the new castles. Well we all started off but had difficulty following the map as it didn't have any street names marked on it and as it is all tiny lanes it was difficult to see where we were supposed to be going. With the high walls you couldn't get any idea of where the castles were that you could actually see as you drove into the town. After several false starts, we lost Claire, Lyn and Angela who all decided to make their way back to the car and perhaps find somewhere for a cuppa on the way. Wendy and I persevered up and up and around and around and got quite exhausted and then having followed this path got to a locked gate saying private property and we couldn't enter. This is Wendy showing what she thought of the map.

And this is all you could see of the old castle built in the 12th century over the fence.

The map then sort of petered out and indicated that we should walk back the way we had come. Bugger that, said Wendy. It seemed to us we had walked a full circle so we decided to keep going. We then came across the new castle which again had locked gates but this time they were made from wrought iron and I could take a photo through the bars. The new castle was built in the 18th century.

We continued down past the new castle and ended up where we had started and then realised had we ignored the map, and followed our instincts it would have taken us less than 5 minutes and a far less arduous walk than the way we were directed which took at least 30 minutes up very steep inclines.

We did see an interesting little garden on the way down and I wondered what the owners were expecting to sprout from the pottery.

We then made our way back to the car, finding the others in a bar in the market square where we joined them. This is the market square and Wendy, Lyn and Angela at the bar having partaken of coffee and teas.