Moulin de la Pauze in the background, as you can see the water is low
Sunday dawned, hot and humid. Lesley commented, a bit like Freetown, and who am I to
argue. We decided on an extremely leisurely cycle down to the river. Packing a picnic was the order of the day. One of the beauties of living in France, and particularly Ribérac, is the accessibilty of everyday foodstuffs right on the doorstep. Don't worry that it's early on a Sunday morning either, fresh food is readily available. We kick started the day with a yoghurt and honey breakfast, Greek style, before heading off for the bakery for one of our favourite 'pains'. The one we like to use for making up crispy type sandwiches is, the evocativlely named '1900' or mille neuf cent. Presumably this recipe appeared for the first time in 1900, perhaps as a way of celebrating the new century, who knows? On our return from the boulangerie we stopped off at our local charcuterie which a young couple, the Jouberts, have recently taken over. There are enough local delicacies on display there, including home made country paté and beautiful home made sausages (great as an alternative to back bacon for a full English breakfast) to put a West London deli to shame. We bought some 'paté de campagne' along with some 'jambon blanc' to grace our 1900.
A rather grand bridge for a small village like Saint Méard de Drône
At eleven we were mounted up and cycling along the back routes in the direction of Perigueux. Our destination? The river Dronne as it flows behind the village of Saint Méard de Drône. Apparently when one refers to the river, 'Dronne' has two 'n's but when one speaks of the town one of the 'n's is dropped (Drône). Best not to ask the reason for this.
The rosé, actually a 'Gris' from the Var region, awaits its opening
The sun was high in the sky and the temperature we are reliably informed was a tarmac melting 36c. Besides all our foodstuffs and wine we packed a lot of water, a wise move as it turned out, because any form of exercise in this type of heat was extremely taxing.
Despite the heat, we arrived at the riverside around an hour later, and having picked a spot nestling under a rather grand 1920's type of bridge that spans the river just downstream from the Moulin de la Pauze, we settled our blanket down and cooled our hot feet in the cool river water. All was quiet. Now, the most important job at hand was to get the rosé chilling, so with this in mind I splashed about in the river on the pretext of searching for the right shaped rocks with which to anchor the rosé in the suprisingly cool river water. I located the perfect specimen with one side carved out like a crescent, the perfect curve for the bottle to nestle into, and so it was left to cool. We lay back and relaxed with our own different types of reading material watching the River Drône gently caress our anchored bottle of rosé as it continued its way downstream, Lesley, with a copy of Good Housekeeping, and myself, with an ancient paperback I'd been meaning to read for many a long year, 'With Lawrence in Arabia' by an American gent named Lowell Thomas, written sometime shortly after the First World War, but nevertheless an interesting read.
Lowell Thomas' masterpeice, published by Hutchinson's 'Pocket' Library, all yours for 6d
After an hour or so had passed we deemed the right temperature on the wine had been reached, so after popping the cork we settled down to our fantastic home made sarnies. What bliss it was, sipping the wine, exploring the different flavours to be found in M. et Mme Jouberts paté de campagne and watching the incredibly incadescent blue of the dragonflies flitting about the river surface. Later, much later, as we snoozed under the cool canopy of the riverside trees, we were disturbed briefly by a local canoe firm delivering a couple of lads and a canoe in order that they might enjoy an afternoon's canoeing. I think they would have had the river to themselves, much as we did.
'Les gars' head off downstream, the French at play
The young in France do seem to have an affinity with nature when compared to their UK counterparts. This stems, more likely than not, from the fact that there is so much more of it in France. It surrounds one; one doesn't have to put oneself out very much in order to get back to it. We never take any of this for granted and count ourselves very lucky to have all the wonders of nature and the foodstuffs it provides, just a few minutes from our front door, here in Ribérac.
On the cycle ride home we spotted this young cow sheltering under an apple tree
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