two thousand and twenty-one number two

A plan has emerged. We are breaking out a second time in Covid Year Two. Throwing caution to the wind,  retracing our tracks, in part at least. And while we are doing it why not clean up the list a little more?

Our idea is to reverse our route of the summer return adding on a bit on day one and maybe score on the lighthouses 'missed and overlooked' front (Mme Melling contests the name of Croisic, says she thinks it is called Trehic, which it is in some circles, you see, it is at the end of the La Jeté du Trehic but…), take in Oisly to purchase some Touraine, and then enjoy the countryside only generally seen in the rear view mirror or over the shoulder this year. And do it with three new stopovers as opposed to two. 

Coming back is yet to be decided but it will be to catch the last sailing out of Roscoff before the winter shutdown: the final hotel there is already booked, don't want a night in the motor before shipping out, it'll have to be a day crossing you see, that's all that's on offer, so we'll spend our last night in Roscoff and hopefully dine in the Surcouf… get m'last oysters of the year I trust. Sorry… I was away there … I bet they will be closed, or stocktaking or some such…

For now this is all you need to know: the route just might get further refinement, (Mme Melling sees places just off route that I have not thought worth the detour, so…) but my public will just have to pick those up as and when they happen, I've got affairs of state to deal with right now. It says provisional and provisional it is. You can check it out on your Michelin if you like; you'll see it's pretty well worked out…

a long summer return via issoire

Firstly, Sablet via Aubenas and Brioude to Issoire…

Getting ourselves back to Blightey was straightforward enough this time (summer 2021) after we'd started off going in the opposite direction to Monteux to get the required PCR test from a lab (we are talking covid-19 here). But that was achieved in a reasonable timeframe… we left 1RueFB finally at about 08.40. 

So our way back to Angleterre (did we really want to go back?) was a re-run of our retreat of Summer 2019 (coming back, cooling down). At least up to and including our Amboise stop-over that is: we enjoyed that transfer and so we decided to use it again. I'm not going to detain you with another account of it… we stopped in different places and I didn't take many snaps, much. But as routes go, itsapeach!

Day one featured some pretty heavy rain on the climb up onto the central massif, but after that the weather largely behaved itself. There was much more traffic about at times (notably day one) and on some parts of our route, much less traffic. Strange that. Issoire hotel was full. But we'd booked so that was not an issue. No snaps taken.

In 2019 we went to Amboise after Issoire to take in the Chaumont Garden Festival [qv] but that wasn't on this time so we confined our aspirations to side-tracking to Oisly, to get some Touraine wine. But it was Sunday: our favoured domaine was not open for sales. 

How didn't we know what day of the week it was? 

Prior to the Oisly disappointment we had found things were slightly open in Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre where we called when we twigged the place had 'significance' (see Jour de Fête post for more detail, go on go on, you know you've just got to, you can finish this post off some other time, life is passing you by and it is going on a bit……).

After the Amboise overnight we pottered up to Cherbourg this time – instead of Roscoff (the overnight sailings from there being fully booked). Breakfast was taken at Vibraye, all of 60 miles out from the hotel (and not 60kms as reported elsewhere): there was nowhere else open other than les 2 entêtès (see left: it was good coffee, we'd obtained the croissants and pastry miles back). 

We clocked up 301 miles in total on day three including a few potterings off the route here and there, notably to the western tip of the peninsula for stunning views, probably, west to the haze-obscured Channel islands and looking the other way, France's principle nuclear processing plant. 

Before coasting in the north we had a reasonable (C+) lunch in a brasserie in Carentan (quayside) after showing our NHS vaccination certificates. 

We arrived altogether too early for the boat but by doing so, and being 'on the ball,' we got ourselves on the Galicia rather more easily than we had expected… 

Y'see, one had to have so many bits of paper, or similar, Q codes and stuff, on your digital screen (smartie phone by default, laptop or other personal device – if not one of the smart phone majority) that, sure as eggs are oeufs, quite a few of our fellow travellers were somewhat 'at sea' with collecting all that together in one place to allow them to embark. 

Mme Melling had managed it perfectly, even if her language had been occasionally rather 'saxon' and 'choice' in Amboise Ibis as she wrestled with her smartphone and the robotic powers that be, to assemble all and every certificate of cleanliness needed by us both in a readily presentable format. It took a while, best part of deux heures in fact, but when we drew up at the embarkation kiosk at Cherbourg it proved to have been time well spent. We simply slipped across an iPad apiece to the reception operative, thumbs up from her, her countenance wreathed in gratitude for at least one set of travellers on top of things et up to speed, and through we went. OK so I overshot the French police post who wanted to see and stamp our passports, but we weren't fired upon… chased down by a Berlingo squad van, but all sorted, passports embossed, guns back in holsters, after which we proceeded to lane six to wait for a few more folk to successfully negotiate their way to the quayside… Galicia sailed at least half empty…… how many were left behind? Nobody knows…

It was even easier getting off the ship in Portsmouth. Within twenty or so minutes of coming alongside we were out and battling through the ever-present roadworks on the M27, finally arriving back at Bullsmead Towers well before ten in the morning. I think Mme Melling was almost disappointed that we weren't asked at Portsmouth Passport Control to trot out the complete works all over again… no, it was simple, '… thank you, next…it's all on the computer madame, no that's fine, carry on…'

The ferry was the rather imposing new BF ship (the aformentioned Galicia) and very comfortable with it (not sure that the ship alone would be enough to persuade us to come this way in preference to Roscoff: the drive from Portsmouth has got no better or shorter, but the vessel is a step up from our favoured but ageing Armorique). 

Still can't believe how we managed to get our ducks not just in a row but in the right order, the right ducks and suitably displayed on digital devices; you'll probably be aware I am not a smart phone user or fan despite the increasing pressure to join the masses in that respect. At time of writing I am still holding out……  but credit where credit is due: it was Mrs M what done it and she done it good. 

Hey, this was a good trip back! Let's do it again, but next time north to south! 

OK, you're on… How's about September? 

Don't just sit there woman, get on with the bookings, I've just honed the route…… 

Footnote: Jour de Fête is a sister post to this one, because my dears, one of those places (Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre) was passed by previously but then recognised, visited and re-evaluated this time. Read it up to be really with it (or not, it's a free country, sort of).

jour de fête

Probably only the most attuned Jacques Tati fans can recite the locations where those few classic films were shot. We've already ticked off the most famous of these: St Marc, where Mr Hulot's Holiday was filmed (see pharesighted post 48 concerning grand charpentier). The place is very proud of its assocation with Tati and it still exudes traces of the sleepy holiday atmosphere the film captures. 

So when we were passing through Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre and a poster for Jour de Fête was espied, we thought at first it was just a local showing of Tati's 1947 film, but then we realised (or Mme Melling did, she is notably quick on the uptake, compared to your author) that this sleepy town was the place where it was mostly shot. A full brake application and a quick about turn was called for and duly executed: firstly, to examine and take snaps of a roadside iron rendition of a postman (Tati's character in the film) secondly to get back to the market square…… this is it! This is the place! Look, it's hardly changed. 

Well it has changed a bit but in essence it is all still there, and Sainte Sévère is happily cashing in on it in a modest way… well? Why not?

Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre is smaller than Sablet but has several more distinguished buildings including the 15th century gatehouse on the town square, which formed the backdrop for much of Jour de Fête, along with the classic temple style town hall, you could hardly call it a mairie. There is also a medieval market hall (picture below); on our visit it was hosting an exhibition of political cartoons. The seats set out in the square I think might have been there for an annual screening of the film indicated by the roadside publicity, while the tourist office doubles up as a Tati shrine and museum. Not sure:we didn't ask, but I like to think so. Post cards, posters, books, dvds etc, that sort of thing. Open. even. The tourist office includes a reconstruction of the post office interior in the film, complete with a fine set of vintage telephones (sadly closed due to the covid thing). There's a fine rendition of the Tati postman in bronze outside but I preferred the painted cut out in the doorway, even though, obvs, the film was made in black and white. 

Where is Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre? Just south of La Châtre in Central Loire. Any the wiser? I thought not. What's the film about? The clue is in the title… Why was it made here? Because JT was exiled to SS-sur-I during the unpleasantness and wrote the screen drama based on his place of exile and the characters he found therein.

Truth is, I haven't seen Jour de Fête in some years…  and not surprisingly, given its vintage, one might be slightly underwhelmed by the early JT slapstick humour, so much more refined in Vacances de Mr Hulot . Released in 1947, you'd expect Jour de Fête to be a bit creaky, what with the recent ending of WW2, but fillum buffs and historians rate it highly… a bit like m'good self in fact: similarly 'released' in 1947, in black-&-white, to critical acclaim, a bit dated now (although now in colour) even a bit creaky –  but a classic, rated highly by those in the know………

 …… just who am I kidding?

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Where, you might be wondering, 

has the driving on the right blog got to of late? 

What's been happening, why have we been left in the dark, 

since that rant on Ventoux?

I'm assuming you've been keeping up with my narrative, 

an assumption that is almost certainly a bit wide of the mark. 

Far more likely, if you've even got to this sentence, is that you are seeking information/ whereabouts/ profile on one of the other Adrian Smiths that labour under that name across the world, and are now wondering who the hell this tosspot is, with his half-baked dialogue on nothing more interesting or attention-grabbing than journeys by car to some tin-pot little village in the Vaucluse from an even smaller minor habitation on the underside of North Devon, England. 

Sorry if that's the case: No, I'm not a heavy metal guitarist in Iron Maiden, not a Turin based graphic designer of some repute, neither am I one of a handful of Adrian Smith academics at Plymouth, Southampton or Sheffield Universities anymore.  I can't claim to have built the Burj Khalifa (the world's tallest structure) – that was another AS, and I don't hold the presidency of the Royal Society, and never have done, let alone received a knighthood. There are other Adrian Smiths that I am not… sorry if it's one of any of those you were looking for – you've come off the rails and are up the cul-de-sac of mediocrity I have been messing about in called Driving on the Right. Cut your losses right now…… byeeee!

The fact is, the muse (dear faithful fan[s]) has not been upon me (if muses are prone to spring upon one) and the Summer 2021 adventure has finished bar the gardening. Only now does the miserable effluvium of my mind stir just enough for me to perceive some crumbling possibility of a way of further divulging that experience as I saw it to my ever eager public. 

But if you want a general view, of fewer words, an impression, a taster — of the Melling-Smith Summer Experience, you can do no better than riffle through Le…Blog, Mme Melling's posts on the trip, made at the time, and employing her skills with both word and image. 

Of course, the chances are, you are already au fait with the Le…Blog account which Mme Melling is persuaded (by her fans, not least amongst whom I count myself) to keep up on each excursion we make. Much better stuff: I give it my full support and recommend it without reservation, even if the occasional glitch does get through during its inception. 

Let's face it, the voyages en france series gets the essential feel of those jaunts across with an economy that I can only marvel at. I don't even speak the lingo (I blame my school), what chance have I got? I speak English, I am referring to French here, as well you know…

My efforts for this last foray are still in the 'crucible of my mind'. 

Stop that sniggering, I'll get to Summer 2021 in my own good time, if I'm spared, that is…… don't hold your breath. Anyway, there's a link to this recommendation right here on this page… look no further, the story of the Melling-Smith Summer 2021 Progress is complete and ready to tell it all (well most of it). 

My reflection on it?     Hang about…