August 9th-11th

5^th August

We caught the bus and tram into town again, fortunately we could still use our ticket from the day before as it was a 24 hour ticket. We only did one thing really, we visited a science and exploration centre Le Vaisseau. As you can imagine we were all entertained, Hilary particularly with the water things and anything else that flowed. We spent over 5 hours there, doing, observing, learning.  

There were models of human bodies like giant 3D jigsaw puzzles where you had to build them putting all the organs together inside the torso, it gave me the opportunity to excel and teach Hilary something for once. It also gave me the chance to tell her about CPR and the positioning of hands for doing chest compressions, and what she should do in such a crisis. There was another computerised exhibit, well two actually, one where you sat on a bicycle and rode it while an x-ray type picture appeared on the wall showing your skeleton, and another where you stood in a contraption with your chin on a strap and a video showed your internal organs working (heart with blood flow etc) but in such a way it seemed to be your own system in action. Another favourite was a completely dark room, tunnel system which you had to navigate (ropes to follow with your hand, and hard hat on your head) to demonstrate how difficult things would be without sight. There were wheel chairs and crutches for children to try out and various other body orientated displays.

There was another room about cogs and wheels and motion, one about animals, the water one I’ve already mentioned, and a temporary exhibition which was all about different construction methods throughout the world from stone and sand and mud. There were videos, static displaysand many hands on demonstrations to show how to use the principles of physics to aid in the building and ensuring maximum strength of a structure. There was box filled with little spheres of resin Iguess, which you could turn upside down, it had two pieces of wood dividing it into two compartments, but with a small gap midway so the balls could flow through. It demonstrated that the spheres, or particles of sand would naturally form an arch to block the gap when the box was inverted. There was another exhibit showing how the key stone works in making an arch of stone hold together without any glue/cement, just relying on the forces of gravity. All really interesting and informative.  It’s the kind of place that if you lived locally an annual pass would be a great investment because you could visit frequently and still make new discoveries.  The outside area was made into aseriesof gardens, which were both pretty and educational. It provided a great place to have a picnic lunch, with little seating places amongst the flowers, but also vegetable plots with written explanations about the vegetables and their history. There were insect displays, lambs and sheep for the city kids to learn about, a pond with frogs and newts, and play areas with sand and digging equipment. As I said, we were there for five hours, but only did a small proportion of the things available. Hilary would have been content to stay the night and start again the next day I think, but we dragged her away and walked back to Kehl. It was about 5 kms I think, but we stopped at the Jardin dus deux rives, I think that’s right. It’s the Garden of Two Rivers which is the Rhine and the L’Ill, but one part ison the French side of the rivers and the other the German, so it is about connecting the two nations and being one. Strasbourg and I guess Kehl have a long and horrible history of war and destruction, it suffered catastrophic damage during 1944 near the end of WW11, but that is just the most recent example of a war between the French (Allies) and the Germans having a toll on the people.

The gardens are relatively new, about 5 years old I  think, lots of large grassy patches for playing and some nice formal gardens with water features, they aren’t as glorious as they could be, a wonderful setting though, on the banks of the Rhine. I’m not sure if the area is prone to flooding , it could well be as much of the Rhine is, but with time I think this area could be stunning.

We walked back across the foot bridge (which gave Diana the spooks), a modern very architecturally designed structure with huge wires and open areas looking down to the river (in the floor and sides)) and down the promenade on the Kehl side back to the camper.

9^th August

Today we left Baume les Dames, a small and cramped campsite near a canal/river in eastern central France. The weather wasn’t promising, and we had two routes planned, one a fine weather and one a dodgy weather option. We decided to risk the fine weather option which involved a few smallish remote roads very near the Swiss border on our way south west, but via an animal park called Polaire Parc. Hilary had found a brochure which made the place look worthy of a detour so we set off. On the way we saw the typical Alpish houses, log cabins, A frame wooden houses with steep roves, cubic metres of firewood stacked neatly for winter (and summer, there were plenty of chimneys puffing out smoke as we drove through little village after little village). At one point we stopped on the side of the road for a photo of two castles on opposing rock faces at the mouth of a valley, as I was standing here with camera pointed at the castles I heard a bell ringing, and then another. When I looked to see if my thought was right, sure enough there were two dairy cows with big bells around their necks, happily munching on velvet green pasture. I went across the road to look at them in the distance, and they came running over to see me, I gave the calmer one a big rub on her nose which she seemed pleased about, and then went back and got the others to come and see. We fed them carrots, and stroked them and admired their bells.

The road took us on a gentle but consistent climb up into the Alps, no snow apparent, empty ski fields and chair lifts and lots of forest. There were altitude signs along the way, the highest point marked was 1150 metres, it was quite cool, and grey, and as I said many people had their fires going to ward off the chill. It was a pretty view, not the snowy Alps of the higher Swiss peaks, but pretty all the same. We followed our map to Polaire  Parc, which really is in the middle of nowhere, up a very rough dirt road. The park is one which contains animals from the polar regions (as its name would suggest), not bears you’ll be pleased to know, or seals, inuit, wolves….. but reindeer, huskies, malamutes, Greenland dogs, aurochs which is the ancestor of our domestic bovines (the last ones died out in 1627 in Poland but in the 1930’s a coupleof brother recreated the breed using a number of descendent breeds, and they are now undergoing “backward natural selection”), the tarpan horse (considered to be the ancestor of every currently living light horse breed). They are beautiful, grey, or light brown/fawn with a black cross on their backs (like a donkey) and a rounder face than our usual horses.  There are also yaks with their big woolley coats hanging down. A guide took us around the animals so that we were in the enclosures with them, we weren’t allowed to go up to the animals, but if the dogs came to us we were allowed to touch them. The guide had an extensive talk about each breed, and was very passionate, unfortunately he only spoke French so we didn’t understand any of it. There was a small pamphlet they photo-copied off for us in English, but we would have loved to have been able to comprehend what he was saying because he appeared to know his stuff, and speak with humour.

When you go up, inevitably you have to descend again, and this we did more rapidly than we had on our ascent. We came down through the bush and rock faces into a deep valley with a small town on its floor. It had numerous picturesque and impressive rail viaducts with multiple arches at various points crossing the valley and equally as stunning steep bush-clad, and clean rock faces towering above. We didn’t stop, just drove on the same piece of road three times before managing to find the small road we needed to take to continue our journey. 

We had been thinking St Claude the next town might be a good choice for stopping but when we saw the campsite (3 parks, literally on the side of a busy road) we decided to continue to Jeurre which is where we are now. This is a green field of two heights, with a vegetable garden and flowers through the fence, numerous trees and flower post scattered around for beautification purposes, again in a valley with steep sides, but beautifully aligned for sun catching.

10.8.11 Jeurre

We woke to blue, blue skies and the sun slowly making its way up the deep bush and rock clad valley. We decided to stay here at our quiet little camping spot, do some chores and chill out.

We did hair washing, clothes washing, put our sheets and bedding out in the sun.. and tidied up the van. Diana and Hilary did some of the book, we had a cruisey lunch and then I fell asleep in the sun and Hilary read for hours.

At one point the owner came over and started looking with horror at our laundry and started gabbling frenetically in French. We had told her the evening before we didn’t speak French but that didn’t stop her. She went on and on, gesturing at our washing, waving her arms around, frowning, gabbling continuously. We think she thought it was a bit much, so we reduced our footage of line and took our sheets and towels down. She stopped going on eventually, either we got her complaint right or else she ran out of breath, though I suspect for her, the latter never occurs. They really are an uptight lot these Europeans, they need to chill out a bit. There was no one around but us, and her (when she got back from her shopping or whatever) and I’m not sure really what the problem was other than it was not what “usually” happened. I guess it’s a bit like Pegasus town in Canterbury where you aren’t allowed your washing outside because it looks unsightly!!!

So we had a very quiet afternoon, reading, sleeping, doing the book, sitting in the sun, drinking beer/cider/lemonade/tea….. eating a few chips every now and then, getting over sunned (Hilary and me), Di was inside doing the book. In fact Hilary and I get areas of over-cooked on our faces/arms, but thankfully Frau Uptight had an aloe vera plant growing in a pot on the wall and so we have harvested bits of that. A wonderful salve to our redness. In fact I have a piece sitting on my little finger now as I sit at the picnic table, typing way in the sun, because this morning while making pancakes and bacon for breakfast I inadvertently cooked my finger. The aloe is amazingly soothing, I just hope it works for the scalding/scolding we’ll get when Frau Uptight sees the missing points from her plant!!!!!!

Last night after dinner (yummy wraps with delicious salady things and Mexican style beef) we did a wee bit more of the book and then played 500 late into the night. We are still in Juerre which is a little town (well we think it is, we have stopped nearby) not too far from the Swiss border, in France near the alps. It is gloriously sunny again today so we are having another day in the sun, catching up on blog and book, sunshine and rest. Sometime we’ll head directly south to the French southern coast and then along to Spain. It is still a couple of days travel way, we only do about 300kms maximum a day as otherwise it gets very tiring and pointless, especially as we usually avoid motorways and take more narrow and windy routes.