Not far along the road we noticed a gathering of cars and onlookers, of course curiosity got the better of us and we stopped and stuck our noses in. It was the check point for the Rallaye de Picadon, an annual car rally named after the local goats cheese, an indication of the locals pride in their produce. Well, AJ couldn’t have been more excited as we passed all kinds of rally cars on the open road en route to the next leg of the race. We continued on until we spotted the next check point gathering. Noticing cars driving down the nearby road, we decided to follow and found signs directing us to a car park and viewing area for the rally. We stayed a while sitting on a sloping bank with a full view of a hairpin bend. The rally drivers flung their cars around the bend in front of us and locked up their tyres, with every screech and puff of smoke from the burning rubber the crowd cheered. AJ and JR were pretty excited and so was I sitting in the sunshine of southern France, beside wild blackberry bushes and two happy boys. We had our picnic here, the usual suspects attended, saucisson, mustard flavoured with pain d’Espices, red tomatoes, creamy Coulommiers fromage, our picnic staple. The Vegemite even made an appearance too. We finished with deep purple muscadets grapes and enjoyed every last, juicy one of them. We had not a care in the world sitting perched on the hillside.
On we travelled, new on the D156 after the town of Bourdeaux. The scenery became more dramatic as the road snaked along the mountain sides, revealing shards of limestone protruding from the earth, sometimes looking like the spiny plates on the backs of prehistoric animals, some were reminiscent of giant dinoraur teeth. The time of the day depicted the colour of the limestone ridges as we passes, they varied from pale pink, ochre, white and grey.
Nearing the town of Saillans we passed two young girls with buckets in hand. ‘They’re forraging’, I said and we stopped the car. They both had a bucket of freshly picked blackberries, plucked from bushes growing wild from the roadside. They had been picking for only an hour and had plenty of perfect fruit, each made up of a cluster of dark blisters filled with sweet juice, they tasted as Mother Nature intended with the perfect blend of fruitiness and sweetness. The girls were picking them to make confiture, they shared that in October they would return to this same forest to forage for champignons – what a life!
Leaving Saillans behind we picked up the D135 and also the la Roanne River. We watched as canoes full of adventure seekers made their way downstream whooping as they went. I paddled in the cool water, an almost opalescent colour of blue and green made cloudy from the sandstone rich terroir. I have never seen rivers of this colour except here in Provence. The banks were made of gentle, stony slopes allowing us to reach the flowing water with ease. It was a lovely moment as we all chose a target rock to aim for, AJ and JR left me for dead, my aim was of in la la land.
The road between Saillans and St-Nazaire-le-Desert followed the picturesque river for miles. Sometimes its banks were sheer cliffs and sometimes they were gentle slopes like before, all were lovely. The river flowed on its path and so did we, stoping for photos along the way. The boulders in the bed of the river were sometimes the size of a small house and at others they were like flattened golf balls, nature had offered us every possibility of her handiwork today I think.
The road made its way underneath the majestic mountains that dwarfed us, through dark tunnels and under ledges cut away to allow our passing, all the while la Roanne flowed by our side, our forever friend if we wished to stay. Just before arriving at St-Nazaire-le-Desert, I spotted a vegetable patch that dreams are made of. The pumpkin vines were full of what looked like prize winning pumpkins of bright orange, they looked as though they had been lacquered to be put on show but they hadn’t, they lay on the dusty ground, attached to their host via an umbilical cord. The cabbages fanned their leaves out from their radius as if to catch as much of the late afternoon sun as possible before the cool of night descended. A few unripe strawberries hung from infantile plants, their leaves serrated as if cut by decorative pinking shears, and apple trees were heavy with fruit beginning to blush with red.
The drive home was as one would expect, with the exception on one thing. On a roundabout close to Nyons there was a hippy type, with a donkey on a lead – not exactly an everyday sight. Even more unusual was a dithery old man, with an old man swagger. He wore a belt slung low on his hips, attached to which was a holster, inside the holster was a gun.
Ponderings...
The Mistral winds make for dry lips, a paw-paw ointment business would boom here!
The plumbing in Europe has us stumped! Almost every home we have lived in since leaving Australia has had appalling drainage in the shower. Narrow drains = bad drainage, it’s not rocket science!
