Skip to main content

Local knowledge


A wise person once shared that we travel not to escape life but for life not to escape us.  For us this statement is s truism. 
Local insights greatly enhance the travel experience because we all have limited time to mooch around. This past week the value of local knowledge was again reinforced. 
Our friends recommended that we visit La Rochelle, the capital of Charente Maritime Department. We hadn't previously planned to visit this beautiful, white stone Atlantic coast city with its enormous harbour and marina but in hindsight it would have been a sad loss, not to have done so. 

Over the next few days we visited a number of destinations that without local knowledge we wouldn't have known existed. La Tremblade's brightly coloured oyster cabins and ponds each producing wonderful oysters in the estuary. They are surrounded by rectangular oyster ponds
The artist and estuary oyster producing village of Mornac sur Seudre has been classified as a beaux village. It is some 12km inland from the village of La Tremblade. It was in this village we saw a model of the earliest lighthouses which consisted of a fire in an aerial box. 
At Saint Palais sur Mer where the Gironde River (tributaries flow through Bordeaux and the Dordogne) meets the Atlantic, there are French Atlantic fishing huts, a beautiful beach and a sea view of enormous waves breaking over the rocky coast. 

We visited a local goose farm with 1,200 twelve day old chicks and as many adult geese being fattened for Christmas. They also produced foie gras and other goose related products. At the farm we met a local prune producer and another who has a truffle farm. The truffle farmer uses labradors to hunt out the truffles. None of these experiences would have occurred without our friends local knowledge. 

Over the weekend we were introduced to a cave owner (cellar-master) who generously gave us tastings of local wine that we'd not previously tasted. 

We visited our friend's father’s cognac and pineau distillery as well as the local producers centre. At the distillery we were given a private tour and tasting. 
Jonzac, is a small town of 3500 people. In Roman times it had hot springs. Recently the city decided to harness this resource and now have a world class heated swimming pool, gym, spa leisure aquatic centre and the thermal waters also heat civic buildings. 

We toured the village with its beautiful castle, laneways, market place, and aquatic centre. 

Having visited the Normandy D Day beaches and the Western Front we were sufficiently moved to attend the 11 Nov. Remembrance Day ceremony. We were told that Jonzac was the main German armaments depot for much of the French Atlantic coast during WWII. It was liberated by the French resistance, an action that had a high cost of local lives.
  
Our long weekend was greatly enriched through the insights of our friends.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to take a Van-life gap year

How to take a Van-life gap year You don’t just wake up one day, book tickets, fly to Europe and pick up the first campervan you see.  There is a lot of planning and organizing to make it happen. For us, it was a concept that we worked towards over two years and got serious about in the last 6-8 months.  Van purchase In researching vans, we learned that we could buy one, but couldn't insure or register it without being either European residents (read: address, bank account and utility bills in the country we wished to buy the van in) or set up a company to own, insure and register the van. Now this is not straight-forward as one needs to be able to navigate the system from the other side of the world and in another language (as vans in the UK / Ireland were considerably more expensive than on the continent). There are a number of companies who provide services in this space.  We chose EuroCampingCars, because they are based in France and deal in la...
2 comments
Read more

Highland Games

Arriving in Scotland we saw Highland Games advertised in almost every town that we visited. The problem for us was the events were either the week before or in 4 days time; never at a time convenient for us. Our luck changed on the Scottish Borders town of Peebles; all the stars aligned.  Highland Games are when local communities get together and celebrate Scottish culture. All Highland games include: a pipe band competition, highland dancing, and traditional heavy events including caber tossing, hammer throwing, and the crowd favourite of haggis hurling.  Pipe bands and dancing are open to all ages and cover a range of abilities Shot putt is the same as the Olympic event but competitors are free to use whatever technique works for them. Some use a standing throw, others use a run up or spinning preparation.   Hammer throwing, unlike its Olympic equivalent the hammer has a wooden handle and the athlete does not spin in a circle before throwing it. ...
2 comments
Read more

Ben Nevis – Bagging our first Munro

To a Scottish person, a Munro is a mountain over 1000m in height. To hike up one is to "bag" it. Every Scot can tell you how many Munros they've bagged.  Now a 1000m doesn't sound that high but the base of almost all Scottish mountains is close to sea level.   Yesterday we bagged our first Munro, Ben Nevis the UKs highest peak. Ben Nevis is walked by 12,000 people a year. In rough figures that is 400 a day. It is not walkable all year. Even without the winter snow, the almost constant cloud cover and accompanying rain mean that there are few great days to climb it.   We had checked the forecast and saw a window in the morning and knowing that thousands would attempt the climb we resolved to start early. The alarm went off at 5am. We started at about 5m above sea level and hiked the 1345m to the summit. The hike has three distinct sections: 1. The base to the saddle: the path winds its way through silver birch forest and sheep paddocks w...
2 comments
Read more