Travel

The Sleeping Volcanos

| Mairead

(View from the top)

There’s a lot I didn’t know about volcanos. Like, they are called dormant if they’ve erupted in the recent past and they are extinct if they’ve erupted in the distant past. We visited Le Puy de Dôme volcano and it’s dormant… sleeping. So not extinct then? Fortunately, I didn’t know this before we stood on top. As I also didn’t know that recent past, can mean 15,000 years ago, no harm done. Unless we are very unlucky today isn’t the day it blows.

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(Oh look a train…)

We were driving for about an hour when we saw signs for Puy de Dôme. We’d been here years ago on the motorbike and Denis said, Pourquoi pas? (his favourite French phrase) meaning, why not? The sun was shining and it seemed like a nice opportunity for a walk. It was… after a train ride up the steep bit.

P1080407(That’s a visitor center on the right)

This whole area, Chaîne Des Puys, is full of volcanos and I learned that there are three different types. (1) The Dome, lava seeps our through a gap near the top of the mountain, leaving a dome shape when it cools. (2) The Cone, where the lava blows the top off the mountain leaving a saucer shape. (3) The Maar, lava and water mix and there’s a huge explosion creating a crater with a lake. There are examples of all of these around here.

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(That’s one of the cone volcanos)

The Romans recognised Puy de Dôme as the perfect place to build a temple, so they built one. The ruins are still here. The Romans were way ahead of their time and invented creative ideas for lifting huge blocks. There was a video (in French) explaining how they did it. It involved a notch in the huge stone block and a block of wood, a similar size to the notch and some clips. I wish I had pictures to help me explain but trust me it was ingenious. Oh, now I’m wondering if the notch shaped block of wood might have actually been a notch shaped block of metal… apologies to any Romans reading.

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(There was a beautiful view out this window…)

The French recognise the beauty here and have been visiting the Dôme for a long time. There was even had a steam train at one time. It used to be you could drive up to the top too but now you can only walk… or take a little tourist train. We took the train.

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(Our fellow travellers)

The train leaves every half hour at this time of year and travels slowly up to the summit, passing walkers and even cyclists. We didn’t wave out at them but they made us feel absolutely thrilled to be sitting inside. One needs to know one’s limits after all… or does one? Possibly one is just choosing an nice easy day in France.

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(And Denis on the edge…)

Pourquoi pas? Mairead.

Ps Puy means ancient mountain, isn’t that lovely?

(There’s the Puy de Dôme)

Village Étape

| Mairead

(Our view)

The difference a few hours makes. We drove to the town of Massiac after the fog show. The sun shone the whole way and the temperature rose… to 23 degrees! That’s 19 degrees hotter than in the morning. Massiac provides a beautiful space for camping cars (that’s motorhomes) alongside the river, so we were very comfortable.

(It’s also on the Camino de Santiago)

Actually this town knows what travellers want. It’s a Village Étape. Literal meaning is a stage village and it makes me think of a stage coach. You know in historical movies when the stage coach stops at an inn and they change the horses? Or the passengers take the opportunity to have a meal? Or stop for the night?

(Petrol pumps are very important here)

Well, these towns are all over France, near the main routes and they are designated places travellers can get a meal, stay in a hotel and buy fuel for their vehicle (oats for the horses?) There’ll be a supermarket, a boulangerie, a tourist office and public toilets. Massiac has all those things and it’s bustling and friendly.

(Can you see the rock in the distance? There’s a church on top!)

We stopped at the Library Cafe this morning before we left, it’s a book shop and cafe. That’s another thing travellers need – books! Unfortunately, none in English so I bought a copy book and a notebook.

Now we’re off to see a volcano! Mairead.

Four Degrees!

| Mairead

(Sunny evening in Coubon on the Loire)

We stayed in a town called Coubon last night. It was 4 degrees Celsius this morning when I got up. Four…. It was 12 degrees at home in Greystones! I got dressed in no time and went outside. We were surrounded by fog.

(Four degrees and fog)

When Denis got up he went to the boulangerie so we have bread – we won’t starve. Is bread enough? I was thinking about the places people choose to live. On the banks of the Loire in a cute town with a cafe, a bar, a restaurant and a boulangerie seems lovely and it is lovely but it means for this town, as they are situated in a valley, they probably get a lot of foggy days. On a sunny day they possibly get less sun than their neighbours up on the hill.

(Can you make out the top of the cloud?)

I was still thinking about this when we drove off. We were leaving anyway but the fog made it easier. Our drive was taking us uphill and in no time we we’re above the clouds and it was glorious. It was hard to believe that ten minutes away everything was so different. There was nowhere to stop on the narrow roads so I took pictures through the window as we continued up and up. Then we turned away from the river and we could no longer see the valley.

(We seem to be we going down again…)

I couldn’t stop thinking about the people in the town, still stuck in the fog. Do they go up the hill on days like today? Do they forget that the sun is up top shining to its heart’s content? Do they just put up with the fog and get on with their day?

(That little line of white behind the tree line is the fog)

And then we turned a corner. We could see the valley again, stretching for miles and miles. There was a blanket of fog laid out all along the river’s course but it was a blanket with holes, where the hills peeped through.

(It’s good to be alive)

We spotted a patch of grass just big enough to stop. I set off down the road and into a field to get photos. I was about to take the first one… and the battery died in my camera. When you find a little hill peeping through a hole in the fog you can put up with almost anything.

My feet were wet, I was freezing cold but I was on top of the world, Mairead.

Ps I had a spare battery in the van.

(There’s Coubon)

Brives Charensac

| Mairead

(Cheerful flowers)

We were passing through a lovely little town, with a long name, this morning and we stopped to have a look around. No big deal, you think… but it kinda is. You see, we’re normally too big to fit in the car parks in the lovely little towns unless they have assigned camping car parking or big supermarket parking – with no height barrier.

(Can you see the old bridge?)

In France there’s so much assigned camper car parking that we don’t mind when we can’t stop everywhere. But I saw a knitting shop and two seconds later a car park with a wide entrance – it was a sign. Stop here.

(Reflecting on the Loire… see what I did there?)

We got a grand spot too, it might have been for a bus so we fitted in just fine. Then we went off for a wander. This town is also on the Loire, so we’re definitely getting better acquainted with the longest river in France, and it was looking beautiful today.

(There’s the old bridge from the new bridge)

We stopped for a quick cafe long (might be spelled allonge) it’s the French version of an americano and then a little look at the wool shop. I’ve been thinking of knitting a cushion with huge needles in very chunky wool. Every time I think of it I get a warm feeling in my stomach or could be my gut, somewhere in the middle anyway. I know exactly what I want. I didn’t find it… yet.

I’ll keep looking, Mairead.

(There’s Brives Charensac!)

Here’s the link: Amazon.co.uk where you can go to get yourself, or a friend, a copy of Everyday Fearless… I’m off to my next project but before I go I have two favours to ask. 1. If you have a friend who likes reading please let them know about the book, I have such a small community and I’d love to share my work with more people. 2. Please leave a rating or review on Amazon, it really helps people find the book. Thank you so much! xxx

Everyday Fearless

| Mairead

(The Book!)

I did it! I finished writing my book about our journey earlier this year to Portugal and I’m really excited. (I’m sick with anxiety too but as that feels very like excitement I’m grand.) Do you remember I was telling you about the book I was going to write and publish on Kindle in a post in June? At the time I was not feeling very confident that I would finish it. I had a story running – on repeat – through my head. The, You never finish anything, story. Well… that story is gone now and I’m really excited!

Actually, my excitement is a bit boundless at the moment so bear with me I’ll make sense in a minute. Maybe if I make a list? Yes, I like lists. Here goes…

(love this bell!)

Things that are making me feel excited

  1. Finishing. I am completely amazed at what a difference it makes to finish a project but I nearly missed this step – the one where I notice I’m finished.
  2. Getting rid of the, You never finish anything, story. Stories are great because they have a message. When we tell stories to children we are telling them a useful message. For example, The Boy Who Cried Wolf – don’t tell lies. Le Loup qui changer de couleur – accept yourself. But sometimes we hang on to a story with a message that is no longer useful. You never finish anything– don’t try something new you’ll be disappointed.
  3. Telling you! You have no idea how lovely it is to have you on this journey with us and in particular on this journey with me. I love writing and it’s way more pleasing to write to someone. Thank you for being that someone.
  4. The name of the book, Everyday Fearless, came to me after a conversation in Dijon with a friend. Sometimes it takes courage to do ordinary everyday stuff. Like ask for help. Or speak in French. Or find your way in a strange town. Or take a picture. Or start a conversation. Or say, I’m sorry. Or make a phone call. Or run screaming, into the sea at Magheramore Beach. Or do anything that would make me look silly or stupid or flawed. Like telling you before I’m ready that I was going to write a book.
  5. Being alive.
  6. Letting go of waiting to be perfect me, I’m ok with just being me. A few years ago during autumn I went for a walk along the driveway to Powerscourt House in Enniskerry, looking for leaves. I wanted the perfect leaves, the ones that looked symmetrical with no spots or cuts. I couldn’t find one. I searched for a long time. None of the leaves were perfect. Maybe perfect is unnatural?
  7. Imagining myself in twenty years time… at 78. I’m in my art studio. It’s an old run down former car mechanic’s garage with old grease stains on the floor and oil blackened benches but very well insulated so it’s warm and cozy. I make art, I practice Everyday Fearless, I share how to be everyday fearless, I write books (my 16th book was a bestseller) There is laughter all around and I am beyond happy.
  8. Everything starts now….

(Magheramore Beach in Co. Wicklow)

So off you go, click or tap anywhere here and have a look at the book that made me realize that feeling sick with anxiety is just another kind of excited! Mairead.

Ps. If that link doesn’t work for you, go to Amazon and search for Everyday Fearless Mairead Hennessy. Thank you!

Gorgeous Gorge

| Mairead

(Gorges de la Loire, from the village on the hill)

We stayed a second night looking down on the Loire and it was just as quiet as the first. We didn’t get to use the jetons though as we were too far away from the electricity connection. We managed fine.

(Here’s a picture for my brother-in-law. There’s a lot of varieties of fish here, Micheal!)

We did also have to dig into the emergency rations. I knew those celery sticks I packed would could in handy. They were lovely with some just out of date hummus.

(Everywhere you turn there’s another path to follow)

It turns out our view is created by the dam (called barrage here) that was built up river. This is for the creation of electricity and for tourism in the form of fishing and a sailing school.

(Can you see the sail boats in a row? That’s the sailing school taking some school children out for a lesson)

We left this morning just as the sun was coming over the hill thinking about how lucky we are to have the opportunity to stay in places like this.

(The sun rising over the hill behind us)

Practicing gratitude, Mairead.

The Loire

| Mairead

(We got a good parking spot)

We drove about an hour south from Lyon and now we’re in a most beautiful place called, Saint-Victor-sur-Loire. The Loire. I was surprised by the name but the Loire has to come from somewhere… it’s doesn’t just arrive between Orleans and Nantes.

(View from the bed)

I’ve looked it up and the Loire is the longest river in France and rises 100km south of where we’re parked in a place called Mount Gerbier de Jonc.

(There was a little path through some woods. That might be a church on the other side)

It’s so peaceful here and quiet even though there a sailing school and a ferry boat close by. We went for a walk up a very steep road to get the jeton (token) for electricity this morning. It’s overcast and we aren’t making much from solar.

(The view from between the houses at the top of the hill)

At the top there was an adorable little town with a castle which we didn’t go see as it would have meant bearing slightly off course but downhill and that just wasn’t happening. There was also an old church which was closed. We were still panting when we arrived at the Mairie (the mayor’s office, where you get jetons) so I sat outside and Denis went in.

(The view of the river from outside the Mairie’s)

While I was out there I could see in the distance hundreds of feet below the path of the river meandering in gentle curves. This is a magical place, no coffee, no bread, but the natural beauty is stunning. (Be nice to look at it through a cafe window, sigh.)

(The old church)

As I was waiting a man passed me, he was very well dressed and quite good looking in a distinguished way. We exchanged bonjours. About half an hour later Denis arrived out. He’d been in a queue behind someone with queries about land.

(Look at this beauty… what is it?)

Well to be honest we have no idea what the queries were about but he did have a map out on the desk… So anyway Denis was still waiting when the mayor, or the Maire, came in and shook hands with everyone, including Denis.

(Can you see there’s a beach too?)

Turns out it was my distinguished man! If only I’d know I would have asked him about opening a cafe…

From the banks of the Loire, Mairead.

(Here we are beside the meandering Loire)

Walking Lyon

| Mairead

(Cathedral Saint-Jean-Baptiste)

We walked Lyon yesterday and clocked up 11 kilometers. It’d be nice to think we are very fit now, but no, we both fell asleep when we got back to Ruby. I was even too tired to write. Probably the smart way to get fit is to start small but repeat. Every day. Yes, that’s probably it.

(Well that’s very familiar)

Anyways, Lyon is big, much bigger than Dijon. We’ve never been before and we didn’t have any idea what to go see. Denis was interested in the food as Lyon is called the belly of France, in a good way. There’s an area called Vieux Lyon, old Lyon, that seemed to be a good place to start.

(Less familiar, a bouchon restaurant, traditional Lyon)

After a stressful (for me) drive through the city on Friday afternoon we arrived at the International Camping campsite. We picked it because it had good public transport links to the city. If I had known we had to drive through Lyon to get to the good transport links I might have suggested giving Lyon a miss. I’m glad I didn’t though, it was worth the temporary increase in stress.

(Thats the front of the train – there’s no driver on the metro…)

Saturday morning at 8.30am, we headed for the bus (just outside the gates) to the metro station and into Vieux Lyon. Half an hour later we were walking out on to the streets of Vieux Lyon not knowing which direction to turn. Left seemed as good a choice as any. Very soon I was experiencing déjà vu. What does this remind me of? Over there was a cathedral, down that alley the river, there’s an Irish pub and another one here and oh, there’s another one… Probably just homesickness but this was looking a lot like Temple Bar on the morning after a few stag parties. I couldn’t shake the feeling we were in the wrong place. We kept going regardless, maybe Christchurch would be just around the corner.

(Footbridge crossing the river Saône – it was a little wobbly)

Everything was better when we crossed the river, well one of the rivers. Lyon is built across two rivers that meet in the city, the Rhône and the Saône. We crossed the Saône and wandered for a while until we found ourselves in a beautiful square, Place de Terreaux. Well, it would be a beautiful square again, at the moment it is in the middle of a facelift.

(Place de Terreaux getting its facelift. Also can you see the graffiti? On the chimneys? Artists without fear)

Then somehow we were led into the garden of the Musée Des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. Possibly because of my earlier wobble of stress, this garden had the most powerful effect on my mood and just standing in it, I felt completely at peace with the world again.

(Here’s my peaceful garden at the Musée Des Beaux-Arts de Lyon)

Then it seemed like the right thing to do, was to go and visit the museum and we did. It’s a lovely space, the layout and art works are very attractive. We spent two hours wandering and looking and pointing and taking pictures and although we were ready to leave after the two hours we didn’t feel exhausted.

(I rarely love sculptures but I loved so many here. These two are my favourites. The first one is called The Mountain, by Aristide Maillol and the second is called The Mad Virgin by Rik Wouters – is it strange that I find her inspiring? She looks so happy!)

I think our lack of exhaustion could be down to the building itself and its high ceilings and the fact that we just wandered. So often I get the audio guide to make sure I don’t miss anything. I listen to the guide tell me a lot of information while at the same time I’m taking in a lot of visual inputs. It does take a toll on your energy. Whatever the reason, the Musée Des Beaux-Arts de Lyon was a beautiful experience.

(I also loved this one, it’s supposed to be Mary when the angel says she’s pregnant. She seems to be saying, Will ya get away outta that!)

We had a lovely lunch and afternoon hot chocolate to give us energy and then we made our way back to the campsite. We will have to return to Lyon, we’ll do a walking tour some day, that worked very well in Porto. Whatever happens I’m definitely coming back to that Museum.

From now on I only want to be referred to as The Mad Virgin, The Mad Virgin.

(There’s Lyon)

Afternoon from Switzerland…

| Mairead

(Sunny day at CERN)

We visited Switzerland yesterday afternoon, as you do. We were there for the science. You may have heard of Conseil Europeén pour la Recherche de Nucléaire?(Me neither.) CERN, for short was set up after the Second World War to create a place in Europe where scientists could be scientists and share their work with this new postwar world. During the war a lot of scientists left Europe to work in the United States. People like Robert Oppenheimer, who invented the atomic bomb. Albert Einstein moved before the war and became an American citizen in 1940.

(We booked spaces on the free tour)

More recently you may have heard of CERN because of the Large Hadron Collider? No? Okay… if you had I could just bypass an explanation of it… are you sure you haven’t heard of it? If you’re sure I’ll give it a go but don’t ask any questions, I don’t know the answers. The Large Hadron Collider, LHC for short, is a device thought up by some people from CERN to work out what happened at the beginnings of the world. So far so good. Everything started off 13.8 billion years ago with the Big Bang. That’s the theory and scientists love theories but the theories bring up lots of questions and the only way to answer those questions is to create experiments. CERN is a place where scientists can perform experiments.

(Here’s our tour guide in front of lots of information)

Scientists have to be incredibly patient people because experiments take a long time, they often don’t work and then they have to keep tweaking things and re-experimenting. What’s more, they have to create devices or machines for their experiments. The people at CERN have been creating theses machines since 1949. We saw one that was created in the 1950’s called the Synchro-Cyclotron, the main part of it was bigger than Ruby and was housed in a three story building.

(Inside the tube of the LHC)

Two of the scientists involved with the first Synchro-Cyclotron experiments are still working at CERN, Maria and Giuseppe Fidecaro. Not because they have to, they really, really like being around science and scientists.

(There’s a lovely article about them at https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/february-2014/couples-history-intertwined-with-60-years-of-cern)

(All the information from experiments since 1949 is stored on tape. They are starting to move it on the cloud)

And that was just the beginning. The scientists kept designing bigger “machines ” as the experiments got more complicated or as they say, interesting. Which leads us to the LHC (remember, the Large Hedron Collider?). Now, if you thought the Synchro-Cyclotron was big, wait until you hear this… The LHC comprises a 27km long circular tunnel built underground with 4 experiment buildings attached. What’s more, it’s located just across the border in France! (Side note: there’s an open border between Switzerland and France at CERN… something similar could be useful to us if the exit goes ahead.)

(The location is surrounded by corn fields and snow capped mountains)

What does the Large Hedron Collider do? It makes teeny tiny particles move very, very fast and then bump into each other. And then it measures what happens next. We didn’t get to see the LHC – it’s closed down for an upgrade which will take two years! Can I refer you back to scientists having a lot of patience. But we did get kinda close… our tour guide, who was from South Africa, is a Phd student proving her own experiments at the LHC. I did not understand her experiments and you’ll just have to trust me they sounded impressive.

But… there is one thing that was invented at CERN, that you use every day. It was invented by Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist. He invented The World Wide Web here. What we all call (imprecisely as it happens, scientists are very precise…) the Internet! Without CERN you wouldn’t be able to read this… well yes, of course you could be spending your time more wisely practicing French or going for a long walk.

Thanks a lot, CERN, Mairead.

(By the way, just to let you know in case you were worried (I was..) I checked and even though nuclear is in their name, it’s not like nuclear power or war or weapons… it’s just to do with the nucleus of atoms.)

(There’s CERN)