Thanksgiving on the road – heading north (1st in series of 4)

We returned a few days ago from a week-long trip to southern France. We visited friends for Thanksgiving dinner and picked up wine we had bought years ago that was stored in the cave at the Margaux winery. This is the first of 4 posts on this trip.

Judy Logsdon was a high school friend of Pat’s from Canton. After college she went to Cameroon in the Peace Corps, where she met and married her husband, Francois Dubois. They lived in Cameroon for a number of years, and then moved to France. They live in Port-Ste-Marie, a small town on the Garonne River between Toulouse and Bordeaux. The trip gave us a chance to see her again after many years and to meet Francois. We last visited Judy in 1992 when we were living in Paris, but had missed Francois as he was in Cameroon.

After picking up our rental car, we headed north out of Barcelona. We had checked the weather reports, we had decided to drive straight north across the Pyrenees, rather than take the more circuitous but faster autoroutes up the Mediterranean coast to Perpignan and then west across France.

About 20 miles outside of Barcelona the road passed Montserrat –a massif with jagged pinnacles that give it a “serrated” appearance. A priory half way up the cliff was founded in the 11th century. This is one of the three “sacred mountains” of Catalunya and fonts of Catalan identity. And Wagner used this as the setting for his Parsifal. In 1812, however, the French destroyed the Romanesque buildings from the 13th century when they invaded.

Continuing north, our route took us by Andorra (although we never quite crossed the border). It was bright and clear, with snow on the mountains, and much colder than in Barcelona. [It had been about 50 in Barcelona when we left, the coldest day yet, but was in the mid-30s in the mountains.]

The views across meadows to the mountains were beautiful.











And Pat certainly was enjoying herself!





Shortly after passing by Andorra we began to climb again into the high mountains. And got a rude shock. A large illuminated sign announced: Equipment Obligatoire – with a picture making quite clear that the required equipment consisted of chains. Which of course we did not have. By then there was a little snow accumulated by the side of the road. There was still no snow on the road and the temperature remained (just) above freezing, but the road also continued to climb, we were driving into thick clouds, so we really weren’t sure what was ahead. We proceeded: there really was no alternative other than turning around and taking a very long detour to the coast. We continued to climb, while the roadside snow and clouds accumulated, until the road split – we could take a tunnel or the road up over the pass. Needless to say, we opted for the tunnel. On the other side the road headed down; there was plenty of snow around but none on the roads and no need for chains.

But the weather certainly changed as we crossed the line of the Pyrenees. The sun had disappeared. It was grey and cold and the trees were covered in hoar frost as we headed down the French side alongside a mountain creek – as can be seen in this picture of our car parked at a pullout.



We pushed on as we had reserved online a hotel in Bergerac, France, on the Dordogne River. The plan was to stay there and then drive on the next day to the Bordeaux region and pick up our wine.
It was dark by the time we got in, which made finding our way through the narrow streets of the old town more of an adventure. After a certain amount of quasi-random wandering, we finally spotted the hotel. And were told that they did not have a room for us – repairs on the room were suppose to have been finished that day, but were not, and they had no other room. But, no problem, we were told: they had arranged a room for us at nearby hotel. Fortunately, the substitute hotel was fine and somewhat better situated, being a few blocks closer to the old town.

After unpacking, we walked down into the old town and found a small restaurant tucked in an old, low, stone, barrel-vaulted room. We were glad to find it because Wednesday seemed to be closing day for about half of the restaurants in town, including the one that we had identified online. Dinner included terrine de canard, confit de canard, agneau, chocolate mousse, and pear sorbet, tasted good; it was good to be back in France, and dinner certainly tasted good after a day on the road.

To be continued.