Day 96 Bordeaux to Vendays-Montalivet

In which Sid and Doris visit the submarine pens and eventually cycle past Medoc chateaux and Pauillac port on the Gironde.
We continued down the river, past the elegant stone houses now much further from the bank than when they were built. The river is big. Say what you like about the french, they do a good river. And with it some excellent bridges.

Before going up the Gironde peninsular we want to see the German submarine pens. These are built so strong that it is not worth the effort of dismantling them. There appears to be a little bomb damage, probably from a very large bomb.

As ever we are looking for conveyance of the day. The winner so far is this flying saucer. I am so glad I did not ask the wizened American about the UFOs at Roswell.

We seize the opportunity to add to our collection of pictures of cranes.

Leaving Bordeaux the land here is all flat fields with set-aside on one side and maize on the other and oddly devoid of grapes, but we keep going, after a spirited debate about how high, exactly, is an elephant’s eye.

Sid is sure there are vineyards up here. He was a privileged student at AXA University which had its campus nearby at Cantenac Brown. Sid recalls one of the lessons. The students were set to making model cardboard chairs. For some reason Sid was not giving this piece of management education his very all and made a rather indifferent chair. At the assessment the chair was found wanting, then crushed by the examiner. Still, French labour productivity is quite high so perhaps these methods are well proven. No picture of the non-bomb-proof chair is available.

As we began to get into the Medoc names we looked for a cafe. At Macau we found a (closed) boulangerie which doubled up as a vehicle for the owner’s political views. This area has quite a lot of Gilets Jaunes’ spray painting on the roads. (Sid will write a note on the GJs, a 2019 phenomenon in France.)

So, here is a picture of President Macron, leader of his political party En Marche. He is shown in Nazi uniform but instead of a swastika wears an armband with EU stars. The caption says ‘En Marche .. towards the new world order’ , a phrase much used by conspiracists (see also wizened American).

The yellow note says Macron’s only pleasure on earth is to sow misery. If you lived in the village and ate bread you could either join in: ‘Bonjour, Francois, have you heard that the EU is banning bread from 2021?’ Or drive out to the supermarket.

 

Anyway we are now in vine country with fine (ostentatious, moi?) chateaux. Here we are at Margaux and St Estephe.

Sadly no food is available so we are back to the last of our favourite Bulgarian bars. It is beginning to rain so we pause in a bus shelter to eat and to muse on how we could set up a business to import them to the UK. A French cyclist comes by to grumble about the neutron bomb shutness of his country on Sundays. We shrug with Gallic boffness. Dommage. [In defense of the Medoc region, we did find a whole row of open cafes in Pauillac Port-plaisance a few km later – D.]

Sid is worried about shall we say a pain in his backside, so Doris composes a Wifely Ode to make things better:
 Sid has a spot
 Upon his bot
 I’ve looked at it
 It’s just a dot.
 But Sidney says
 That dot (or spot)
 Is hurting Sidney
 Quite a lot.

That doesn’t do the trick, so instead we sing “Bring us some figgy pudding”, inspired by some of the figgy cereal bars from earlier in the day.

The landscape changes again to woodland. The rain is not really trying and we are barely wet by the time we find L’Arbreret hotel and restaurant. Here we have the best cooked dinner we have had in 96 days’ travel (Menu Terroir €24.5), with local beer and a half bottle of chateau bottled Haut-Medoc.

And so to bed.