More of those two months

Ready for lunch

After the long week in Blagnac and the region, we drove up to Najac and settled in at the Belle Rive hotel, our headquarters when we visit Em&G. Nothing new to report from there. We relaxed. A few days later, Cl arrived with the children and Al, her mother-in-law. They were staying in a gîte on the Viaur river, just upstream from where it joins the Aveyron in Laguépie. We saw them briefly when they arrived, but it was late, so we left them to get settled and eat something. The next day, we met up at a restaurant in Najac - our first really bad restaurant experience -- ignoring us for more than half an hour, then slow service and then serving the wrong things. After this very, very long and unpleasant lunch (we were among the first to arrive and the last to leave!), we went back to the hotel for a swim. G arrived on his motorcycle - straight to the hotel, where they all stayed for dinner and then left while there was still a little light to guide Ge to the gîte. By the time they got to the road that was just a gutted out path, though, there was no light left and it was a rough ride on the heavy motorcycle.
They spent their days visiting sites with Al, who was unfamiliar with this region and then we all met up at Em&G's a few times. A flew back to England and we drove back to Nogent for a few days recuperation before Cl&Ge came to Nogent for another 10 days. Actually, Ge went back to England after a couple of days, so it was just Cl with Au and Co.

A live show - a medley of Disney musical comedies -- Excellent!

An moved into her new apartment! And since she is also on vacation, she was able to spend lots of time with Cl and the girls. I think they all appreciated it. I know I loved having them here. They went to Giverny one day and also spent some time with L and his kids in Paris. (L, still on vacation while Gw returned to work. Just last Wednesday, though, Gw had the day off and we all (except P) went to Disneyland Paris. It was hot and sunny, but not as hot as during the heat wave. The kids, I think, loved it. I love seeing the kids getting all excited. There was a bit of panic at the end of the day when a couple of phone batteries ran down and because we had split, there was a moment of not knowing where the others were. But we all were found. The kids were exhausted. The park's closing finale, a light show on the castle with fireworks, was beautiful and everyone managed to get back to the cars and back home, safe and sound. Cl drove back to England the next day.

The house is back in order. The sweater that Au and I started to knit is almost finished. I'll deliver it at the end of September. The summer top I made myself and wore in July, I took apart and reknit, smaller and better fitting. With the leftover yarn, I was able to make a smaller version for Co!

A Very Full Month

View of Najac from the VVF

A week after my last post, I fell. We almost had to replace the mailbox, which is in the lower part of our gate, but Paul managed to pound it back into shape. I more or less plunged into it as I tripped on a flagstone! My glasses flew off after cutting my eyebrow; One of the lenses got scratched and had to be replaced and my brow needed 6 stitches. I sprained my wrist, but that was not officially diagnosed until 2 weeks later when I was wondering why it was feeling worse instead of better. I had scratched up knees and a big bruise that is still a bit tender.
I couldn't knit! Hand knitting was out because it does require a bit of wrist flexibility and machine knitting was out because pushing the carriage with my right hand hurt and even when I used my left, there are manipulations that require using my right.
Just before that, however, I won an ebay auction for a Brother 950 machine and a compatible ribber! In order to save a bit, I had it delivered to C's house and they brought it down in their car in mid-August. I have now set up the machine (just yesterday, in fact) and will work a bit on it if the room doesn't get too hot. We're expecting the temperature to get up to 37°C today. That's 98.6°F!
At the end of July, C flew into Paris with Au. She spent one night with us and then went off to a friend's birthday party and went straight back to England from there. Au stayed two weeks with us -- first time visit all on her own!
The next day, it was back to the airport to pick up K & S, on their way from Italy to Israel. We didn't really get to spend much time with them -- a shame, but the weekend plans were set: a day at

Start of the festivities at Disneyland

Disneyland Paris with the Parisian cousins, uncle and aunts, to start off. She also spent a night with the Parisian cousins and went to the aquarium with them. S. came home with us after that and spent the next night, here, with Au.  We did some high culture, too: the Musée d'Orsay and the Studio Blue Sky art exhibit; animated film art from the first pencil sketches to the finished product -- very interesting and there's some really beautiful artwork. Paul took her to the top of the Arc de Triomphe one day when I had a meeting in Paris. The second week, we stayed more at home and she helped me knit. By this time I had a brace on my wrist to prevent awkward movements. She was the motor, pushing the carriage back and forth and I was the manipulator, creating the cables. She knit herself a scarf and the two of us collaborated for the cardigan and hat. We also watched some of the Olympics. It's a shame the gymnastics were on so late, here in France. She loves gymnastics and swimming. We had a nice picnic lunch with A in the Parc Floral and Au had a nice day out - aunt and niece - in Paris. We also had a visit to see the

A full moon over Ginals

On the second Friday of her stay, we left for Najac. We arrived at E & G's in Ginals fairly early in the afternoon for a nice visit with them before heading to the hotel in Najac. They then joined us at the hotel, later, for dinner. It's become a tradition. The menu at the hotel Le Belle Rive is somewhat of a tradition, too; it doesn't change. It's still a very nice, friendly, inexpensive hotel, and it has a swimming pool and a tennis court.
Saturday, we visited Najac. First, we got the little treasure hunt booklet from the tourist office for A and then set off. We covered the whole town from the market place to the church at the other end -- down hill, up hill, down hill, up hill...., a visit to the potter for the stages of pottery making, investigating the bakery for the story of "fouace", finding the architectural elements of midieval buildings....  We did not go all the way up to the fortress. (You can read about last year's visit.) We had lunch on the way back to the tourist office and then, after Au collected her treasure, we went back to E's to wait for the rest of the Northampton family to arrive! The kittens (also mentioned in last year's posts) have grown and are very friendly. They still follow E and G around everywhere if it's close to meal time, but are very independent, otherwise. The wet, wet spring has given way to an extremely dry summer and the vegetable garden has suffered a bit, but there are still plenty of tomatoes.
The family arrived and after a short hello, we accompanied them to the VVF (Village Vacance Familiales) for their check-in, which took more than an hour. They were sent to the very last bungalow down the very steep hill. All the activities are at the top.
We had a picnic lunch at the bungalow on Sunday. It's very near the viewpoint -- a spectacular view of Najac and the setting off point for some hikes to Najac and to the St. Blaise bridge. If you believe the hiking times posted, it would take about as much time to hike over to Najac as to go up the hill to the parking lot to get the car to drive there. Same for the bridge! We stayed in Najac while we waited for the Parisian family to arrive. They had a bit of a mishap on arrival. They had parked the car temporarily while they went off to find the "gite" they had rented. Going back to the car to drive it up to the gite, it wouldn't start. It was parked at such an angle that the gas wasn't making it to the engine. What is nice about family vacations is that we were there. The gite owner lent L a couple of 5-liter recipients and Paul drove him to the gas station for more gas. In the mean time, G unloaded the car and dragged everything up the steep hill to the gite, which is right across from the church. I stayed with the kids so she could absent herself to do this. It took quite a few trips! On filling up, however, the car still wouldn't start. The gite owner got out his car and towed L's car to a flatter position, where is finally started. When he went back to the gas station to fill up, he didn't need to put in much gas. It wasn't empty when this happened, just parked at a really bad angle! The British family was already at E and G's (all my in-law children's names begin with G!) for our big family barbecue dinner, so we set off with the Parisians as soon as we could. All the Lebelle cousins together! Lots of fun with the kittens and just the freedom to run around. The evening ended with a beautiful sunset and a full moon.

St. Blaise bridge, 13th century

The next day, we picnicked at the St. Blaise bridge. Paul and I walked over from the hotel, a little over a mile along the river. We got there very early and staked out a table. I sat on the riverbank and tried to draw the bridge. There were canoe-ers out for the day; a couple of them stopped to jump into the river from the bridge. They really had to know where it was deep enough, because the river is not at all deep these days. The British family arrived. Ch sat in the same spot I had occupied and in just a few minutes had a much more reasonable drawing! We started our picnic and A arrived. She had left Paris on Saturday and spent the night a few hours from us. This made it a big family vacation. We had all our kids and grandkids more or less with us. In fact, on Monday, L & G invited us all to their gite for a full family barbecue. On Thursday, we all, minus one, visited Cordes-sur-Ciel and Albi (last year's visit). Friday, another full family barbecue lunch before A set off for Paris.  Saturday, L and G, et al, went off to the beach for the second week of their vacation and we went with the British family to St.-Cirq-Lapopie and PechMerle in the afternoon. We didn't visit the cave this year, we stayed outside with the little one while the others visited. Sunday, another picnic at the bungalow and later in the day we went to E and G's to say good-bye. We left Najac early on Monday morning.
As usual, no family pics in the blog. I've sent the links to family members.

To Najac and Back, part 2

It was just an hour to go from Cordes-sur-Ciel to Najac. We crossed the 13th century bridge, St. Blaise and watched a group of kids who had stopped for a swim and a few kayakers trying to get the feel of the kayaks as they fought the current. (Very little current and the river is very low in spite of the recent rain. In fact, they were going with the current and still had trouble.)
This bridge is already part of Najac. The hotel is just the next bridge upstream, within walking distance. We got to the hotel early enough to just rest. Having spent three days driving, we were ready to just settle a bit and have dinner at the hotel. This was our third stay at the Belle Rive and this time we were treated to a big room. Well, two rooms since we had our friends with us: a double and a triple. Each room also had a sofa and a desk or coffee table and plenty of closed space. This was nice for a four-day stay. We had dinner there the first evening and two other dinners -- the menu doesn't change enough for a really long stay. Everything was well-prepared and well-served, but a longer stay would have been monotonous, I think. The asparagus omelet from April has become a mushroom omelet in summer. I've posted a view of the fortress from the hotel before, so here is one of the hotel from the fortress. Click on the photo to enlarge it. You can see the hotel, the swimming pool and the tennis court. Since it had rained, the pool was a bit too chilly. We had another day of relaxation our last day there and I dipped, but didn't swim.

On Sunday, we went to Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val after a brief walk in Najac, up on the crest of the hill. The whole idea of going to St. Antonin on a Sunday was to see the town on a market day, except we couldn't see the market or the town (medieval) for all the people! The place has become more and more popular as they exploit the filming of The Hundred Foot Journey (La Recette du Bonheur) a couple of years ago. It was released in 2014. I had asked Emma to reserve a table at La Festin de Babette for an excellent lunch and meeting up with them. It was a long, leisurely, Sunday lunch along the river. After lunch, we went up to Le Pède to see the new kittens and show off the site.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in conversation, walking around, admiring the views, the work done, the work still coming up, the kittens, the vegetable garden, the kittens. There are three, but I only dared put up a photo of one. I'm a sucker for kittens and I'm not alone.
We got back to Najac just in time to see the austere church and climb up to the fortress for one of the last tours of the day. It's really very interesting. The site was inhabited before the 10th century because the area was rich in copper, silver, iron and more. All those trees we see around were not there; it was almost entirely vineyard.

By the 10th century, there was a château. The difference between a château, a château-fort, and a fortress is a château is inhabited by the lord; a château-fort is a fortified château, and a fortress is occupied by troops, only. Najac was in the Comte de Toulouse's territory, with a strong Cathare population. It was also the administrative capital of the Rouergue region. After the victory of Alphonse de Poitiers, King Louis IX (St. Louis)'s brother, in 1229, the city of 6000 lost it's status. Alphonse de Poitiers created the new town of Villefranche-de-Rouergue, upstream on the river, tempted the population with a tax-free incentive and that was the end of Najac's wealth. The château was mostly destroyed (there's still a square tower) and replaced by the military fortress, with a drawbridge, an offset main door, the longest archer slots in the world (where have we heard that before?) and more.
In spite of the climb up to there, we were still stuffed from our lunch and picked up something for dinner from the bakery in Najac.

I had promised M that we'd see dolmens. Monday, we went looking for dolmens near Martiel and finally found them. I had printed out the map and we only did a little of the walk, points 1to 5.
At the end, 5, there was a depression, maybe the quarry where they got the stones in about 1500 BC. There was also a cave. Paul and I did not go into the cave; we left to go back to the car thinking the others were just behind us. After telling us they'd follow, they went into the cave and explored and took pictures. They lost track of time and when they came out they lost track of the track. We were worried, having waited an hour by the car. They had the keys, so we couldn't go for help and there was no phone reception. Big, big sigh of relief when they came down the trail, at last.
It was already past noon and we sped to Villefranche for lunch, followed by a short visit of the town and then on to the potter in Saint-André-de-Najac. Since our very first visit, when we noticed his window display in Najac, we'd been wanting to go to his place.
The original plan was to go to Toulouse on Tuesday, but we were all spent and decided on a day of rest before heading back to Nogent on Wednesday.