eyes on autumn twenty-twenty-three

I CAN ALMOST SENSE THE DESPERATION amongst those blighted souls who look to this blog for uplift: why has our dear author not covered the 2023 Summer visit to the Vaucluse this year, the anticipation is almost more than can be borne?

Well, here's the thing. Shortly after dropping anchor back in this benighted isle, returning from southern climes, back in April this was,  I took myself off to see an optician chappie about the jolly old peepers. The annual review. I got them tested, to see if I needed an updated prescription, spectacle-wise. The truth of the matter was that there wasn't much to be done, just forking out for another set of Zeiss lenses, while the elephants in the room were in fact the cataracts in my eyes. Having been warned over the preceding years of this century, that cataract surgery might be quite high risk for a bloke with eyes as snookered as mine, and that as long as I was seeing well with specs, best not to push the surgical intervention option. In fact the NHS declined to intervene on three seperate occasions or at least until I reached a point where life as I know it would have become impractical. 

Well folks I think that is the threshold I am now arriving at. The long and short of it is that I subsequently took counsel with the foremost cataract surgeon in the country, fortunately operating in nearby Exeter,  who gave me a thorough looking over, shook his head, cleared me as OK to drive for a few more months and referred me back to the NHS (his own department in fact) for bilateral (both eyes) cataract surgery. I am booked in. Risks notwithstanding and gently down played by my consultant. Most likely dates for the intervention (industrial action allowing) are in November (right eye) and six weeks later (left eye). So this fits in just nicely with our autumnal visit to Sablet which I am about to outline to you, OK? And if I am in luck, long enough ahead of 2024 aspirations to get out to PACA84, seeing things in a new light, may be… 

But why no Summer visit I hear you expostulate . . . come on, get real. What is going on in this world? Global warming is what, dear chums and that's a fact – or at least it is there, in Southern Europe. Associates of the Sablet tendency and in residency, have already confirmed heat levels bordering on the unacceptable. Our experience in the Summer '22 visit underscored a conclusion we'd come to back in 2020 (when Covid stopped us in the spring and summer time anyway). Southern Europe is getting hotter and hotter. Too hot. If it keeps the year on year temperature tendency at the current rate, the Sahara will not just be giving the Fr countryside a dusting of sand once or twice a year, it will be knocking on the door. It is the truth. 

Which brings me, circuitously, to the plans we have to Sabletise in Autumn. As is my wont, I include in this post the navigational guidelines describing the route in terms that will be immediately familiar to my most enlightened and seasoned readership, based upon that pillar of navigation in France, the A4 wiro-bound Michelin Atlas of France. No francophile traveller should be without this worthy tome, or the larger sized variant if you prefer a greater area per spread. Not much use if your plan is to travel by rail, air, canal or foot, mind: it is for motoring purposes. Michelin Fr. is still holding up against the dreaded sat-nav, which is given to losing signal just when you need it I gather. Michelin Fr. has some minor faults: badly placed place names at times, a tendency to deliberately, even vindictively place key junctions on page edges or in the gutter, vagueness about physical features here and there, and even the omission of some very minor (but possibly pivotal) country roads. But it serves. There is no substitute that remotely matches it, take it from me. 

But if you don't have the Michelin (we motor on Michelin tyres also, incidentally) this is what our plan amounts to:

• Disembarkation at Roscoff after an overnight crossing, commencing with an early diversion to promote the Rade-de-Morlaix (see above representation) to our passenger-guest, and consume a breakfast. Then southwards across Brittany etc to an hotel at Batz-sur-Mer, a little family run affair we used a few years back, and liked. There should be ample time for a walk along the breakwater before retiring (see below).

• Day two should include St Marc on the Loire estuary for breakfast, then across that same Loire at St Nazaire and by various means a route to Royan is taken, to a second hotel at St Georges de Didonne with views across to the Pointe de Grave. 

• On the third day we shall rise again and take our place, if we are able, upon the vehicular ferry to the aformentioned Pointe. Breakfast either on this craft or over there, across the Gironde somewhere. The slog south through the forests of Les Landes comes next, with a diversion or two to observe this or that feature, (tbd en route). Our next hotel, like the others is booked ahead…

• Having overnighted in the charming town of Condom (the image above dates back some years, when we had called by for lunch) we take horse to Millau, hoping to reacquaint ourselves with a bastide settlement or two, hesitate perhaps once more in Albi, then by gradual degrees, steer a course to overnight number four in oft visited, aforementioned Millau (passing under the viaduct to reach our hotel up on the other side of the city).

• We complete our transit to Sabbers by making a startling but tested  diversion through the Cévennes via Navacelles, Vissec etc, then passing east through Uzès to the Rhône valley – which we cross, also the river, even unto the Vaucluse… coming to rest at the Sablet-chez-nous mid to late aprés midi. We'll have acquired lait, beurre, and pain by then we trust, with which to sustain us until we can do a market or respond to some other victual acquisitional opportunity. 

But of course, you'll want more detail than this precis! Indicated below are the roads we are expecting to traverse, as used by the Bullsmead navigator in conjunction with and cross referencing to the Michelin Fr. Atlas to inform proceedings. As oft reminded, the proposal is but a guide; deviations will and do occur. No mawkish adherence to pre-planned aspirations is tolerated in these circles, allow me to reassure you! 

Sorry about the differing scales of these two sheets, it's a quirk of the blog app, and beyond my creative spirit to mess about with, just now. If you knew just how much of my limited time on earth I had dedicated to drawing up this post you'd temper your rebuke at least for my seeming sloppiness…… Sharper eyes than mine have already noted that the road out of St Marc is numbered D492 not D942… Always good to know that someone out there is paying attention.

NB –– if I haven't explained before, the black bulleted • roads indicated are uncoloured in the road atlas while the yellow bulleted roads • show in yellow in Michelin, the red 'D' roads therein are graced with a red bullet point • (you're getting this aren't you!) red text and bullet • indicate N roads, • blue indicates autoroutes. I'd have liked to indicate the coloured bullets in this paragraph according to the colours they equate with, but it's complicated, too complicated for my limited abilities… you've got the idea now, I'm sure…

This colour system I employ is designed to aid navigational cross referencing to the road atlas: Fr. roads are, on the ground as it were, the same colour range as surfaced roads to be found throughout Europe. Just to avoid any confusion.

On this transit we are once again graced with a trusted travel companion who has already proved she can cope with our eccentric manners, on multiple occasions: namely Dr G (– unfortunately not a doctor of the medical type, they never are when one needs one).

That's it. The plan. It remains to be seen (at time of scribing) whether it pans out like this… I might in the fullness of time reflect on how it shaped up. And I might not, it can only be a matter of time before I lose the will…