Surely this wasn't the time to use a UV filter?
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Oh, not another nostalgia attack!
Later that day I nearly stopped to photograph a Citroen DS which sat looking a little foolish (and very rusty), in a farmer's garden. (Who ever heard of a farmer having a garden, but this was one, of sorts). The DS was black and despite its surroundings it had retained so much dignity that I imagined it might once have been one of the fleet in which for years and years General de Gaulle was transported. |
Jo
prefers her shot.
On the previous evening I'd looked for some POIs (Points of Interest) and first we took a wiggly route south to Azé where there were caves. In the very hot and sunny car park outside the entrance Jo cooked lunch (which was breakfast too), while I scoffed burstingly ripe plums from a tree a few yards away.
Once brunched we drove onto the proper car park, walked around the entrance area and were rather unimpressed.
Was it the 2-D bear emerging woodenly from behind an overgrown bush which put us off, or the semi-closed down and unused look of the cafe and other buildings around the entrance? With hindsight, dreadful stuff as we know, we probably should have done the trip, as these images indicate, but we drove away not very far, but in the wrong direction (north), to Blanot (nice website).
It was red hot and sleepy quiet when we arrived at the caves, but we found the wife of the owner-manager. She was Portuguese. After a while a Dutch family turned up - she was pregnant and he was loud and funny. Then the owner-manager arrived with Fanny the guide, nervous, new-to-the-job, 17 - 18yrs old and almost shockingly beautiful.
The boss negotiated a common language which was fun, but a bit silly because it was French. The Dutch chap confidently offered to translate Fanny's talk into English, but his wife's English was at least as good as his and his French was no better than mine.
Loving every minute of it.
Bat droppings.
Gravity
defying helictites!!!!!!!!!!
My
"Amsterdam
sex shop" comment got a laugh from the Dutchman and a look of surprised
and cheerfully faked disgust from Jo.
Apart from a very few bones on display near the exit there had been nothing of prehistory to be seen, but the whole journey had been a good adventure heightened by dim electric lighting, rusty but strong enough ladders and quite a lot of mud. I was last to arrive at the last chamber before the exit point and I nearly choked on a venomous fart which the Dutchman had produced. Jo said he'd apologised, but it was bad enough to be inexcusable.
On my rucsac the reddest red mud
ever, redder
than Breconshire's even, it came from inside the cave.
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Our campsite was a little disappointing partly because I'd planned to stop there (planning, who needs it?), and on the www it had been made to look so good. But stay we did because it was so close to Lyon which, after my previous visit (in 1972!), I remembered as an impressive city and I wanted to show it to Jo. I'd use the site again, if we were passing through, but it's so close to the autoroute that only in the wee small hours does it start to get quiet.
The cider had been left in the van by my friend, MB, after a small gang of us went to see the Fun Lovin' Criminals in Liverpool (and after three songs he'd walked out of the venue and into a karaoke bar).
Day 5: 8 July: Dardilly - Venissieux - Lyon - Dardilly - not many miles
We woke up at the start of a two hour long thunderstorm. I noted that on a plot next to ours was a Dutch woman who looked like Mel Smith. That is very bad luck, wouldn't you say.
We drove south on the autoroute and along the Rhône passing Lyon's container port, then on to Vennissieux which is where in 1972 I'd stayed for a month long week with a hard up baker's family on the ground floor of a tower block. The area seemed a little neglected with road repairs long ago started but still unfinished and diversions without alternative routes signposted because presumably no-one was likely to be there who didn't already know all the alternative (escape) routes. I looked in vain for the youth club's building from which late one night I'd been beyond delighted to hear the Stones' Midnight Rambler belting out. Get Yer Ya Yas Out is a far from flawless yet utterly wonderful rock 'n' roll album which the assembled French youths treated as if it were new although it had been released 18mths earlier in the UK.
We were on our way back to Lyon when I recognised on the skyline the astonishing Fourviere basilica looking for all its strangeness, great size and powerful position like something I've come to associate with Moscow. Can I explain that? Probably not, it's just a feeling.
Railway architecture. I'm sure they modelled that signal box on one I built from Lego.
We parked on a street in the sort of area where you more than half expect never to see
the van again, then walked to a POI where I took an
utterly useless photograph
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Surely
it wasn't that blue! If you wore sunglasses, it was.
Preparing the barbie. 
A Swedish
lorry with a most impressive map.
