Follow The Yellow Brick Road Saturday 9th August

Kate on the road above Sauve

As I told you earlier, we now have four neatly dug rows, newly enriched with horse manure and good leaf mould, and all we needed were vegetable plants. We’d stopped off at the melon stall on the way back from our trip down to Lattes yesterday, and viewing the rows and rows of newly planted vegetables, we enquired about what we could expect to grow between now and winter. The owner of the stall looked at us rather bemused and said “Hiver (winter) what winter?”

Full of enthusiasm, we were up and doing early this morning and drove up to Sommieres which as you may recall, has its market on a Saturday. We found our same parking spot and right next to it was the plant man. I tried out the same question about Hiver and got the same reply, only this time, I could actually hear him thinking “stupid woman”. We stocked up with cabbage, leek, lettuce and courgettes for starters, and having stowed our loot in the back of the car, we went in search of our favourite boulangerie and bought fougasse and a fresh baguette for lunch.

A clever plan had evolved and we drove on north to Ledignan and spent a happy hour with Mamy before it was time for her lunch, and we then set off cross country for Sauve. This hillside medieval village is quite an historic landmark and AS SOON AS I HAVE INTERNET (hint hint) I will find out a great deal more about the place. We ate our fresh baguette and sampled our newly purchased olives and filled up our water bottles from the village pump and then started up the hill. By this time it was 2pm and the sun was hot but we were determined to be good tourists and really see the village.

Exploration takes place by dint of climbing up a series of stone steps which disappear round bends only to emerge into a street higher up. This will quickly lead to another stairway or a steep passageway which burrows under the buildings above. Upwards we climbed and I kept thinking that any moment we would stop and I would have a spectacular view of the roofs of the village and the valley beyond. Jean had paused to look at a map which gave various routes noted in red and yellow lines, but I was too busy trying to translate the information written alongside to pay much attention.

“Follow the red arrows” came the command so we dutifully set out along the top of the village, fully expecting at any moment to be directed back down a flight of stairs to descend to the lower streets. On and on we walked, and as usual, I was shod in my trusty Australian Croc flip flops while Jean was in his tough sneakers. Sliding from rock to rock, we trudged on and all the time, I knew that the sun was beating down on my left shoulder which meant that we were heading north west.

“Follow the red arrows” came the constant command and the track led on through the dense overhanging trees. Clearly this had been a main route a few hundred years back and occasionally we could see marks in the rock where cart wheels had dug in.

There comes a point in a walk like this where you either have to decide to turn around and retrace your steps, or bite the bullet and keep going in the hopes that eventually you will reach somewhere. It took us the best part of two hours and two large bottles of water, but the track finally started turning back and losing altitude, until we gratefully found ourselves on the outskirts of Sauve and within reach of an excellent restaurant which provided us with delicious ice creams.

We hadn’t actually seen all that much of the village despite our long hike, and promised ourselves that we would return on a slightly cooler day when perhaps we would find many of the little pottery shops and art galleries open. We drove homewards across the foothills of the Cevennes mountains, glorying in the fact that we no longer have to travel for hours to find any rising ground as had been the case in Florida. France is now our own back yard and the more we see of it, the more we love it.

An hour’s rest and I am proud to announce that the vegetables are in their beds and the irrigation system is working well and all is at peace. The Castries bulls have gone back to their farms and the sounds of fireworks and loud music from far across the vineyards have faded away. Tomorrow if the weather is nice, I think we might head down to the beach at Maguellone and dangle our toes in the Mediterranean. Who knows, we might even find it this time!