France - Around Cognac

 25 – 28 June

A delicate sound of thunder

It had been our intention to travel from the Ile de Re to the Ile d’Oleron, but we decided that a third island was perhaps one too many and, in any case, the weather forecast was not looking too good.  That didn’t bode well either for a couple of days at Coulon (aka La Venise Verte) in the Marais Poitevin, where we had planned to view the marshes via a boat trip.  So plan B was implemented. 

The scorching weather followed us to Saintes, where we quickly got ourselves organised before going out in search of “Sunday lunch”.  This proved to be a little difficult as the town was very quiet, but we eventually found a restaurant which could accommodate us (outside only) and where one of the two choices on the menu de jour was “fini”; the remaining option was, however, delicious.

We then made our way through the town to the Roman amphitheatre, one of the oldest of the Roman world, built in the first century AD during the reign of Claudius.  The terraces, long since overgrown, accommodated up to 18,000 people.

An audioguide in English was very interesting, if a bit long!  Having purchased a “bargain” ticket for both the amphitheatre and Abbaye aux Dames we felt obliged to go there too, but it was still hot and I, for one, was flagging, so we really didn’t do it justice.

With hindsight, we should have stopped at the public gardens, from which we could hear music, or taken a boat ride on the River Charente.

The next day took us on to Cognac, which was a series of non-events!  We arrived at our chosen site to find reception didn’t open until 4 pm (it was only 12:30 pm) and finding yourself a pitch prior to registering was definitely forbidden. Instead we made our way into the town centre and found the aire (functional, not pretty) but it was somewhere to park while we visited a museum, Espace Decouverte, which would tell us all about the flat-bottomed boats called gabariers, that once carried cognac to towns in northern France.  Damnation! The museum turned out not to be open on a Monday!  This was not to be our day.

So on to Jarnac where the good weather finally deserted us, per the weather forecast.  We set up in the rain and the weather veered from hot sunny intervals to heavy rain and thunderstorms in the blink of an eye.  This rather scuppered plans, although we did manage a cycle ride on the first day along the river Charente.  The cycle “track” was just compounded earth, with potholes filled in with hardcore here and there, so it was not a comfortable ride.  The Ile of Re it was not! On the second day we sampled the restaurant adjacent to the site (L’Auberge de la Prairie) for its “menu de jour”, which turned out to be good quality and excellent value, before going on a tour of the Courvoisier Cognac distillery.

This was enlightening and made you realise what a lengthy process it is and why Cognac costs what it does.  The tasting rounded off the visit nicely and we toddled back to the ‘van.

We had stayed in Jarnac a night longer than planned; there didn’t seem to be any point in moving when the weather was the same all over France.  But tomorrow, even though the weather is forecast to be pretty much the same, we head towards the Loire …