Saturday 5th June
Saintes to St Servinien
Another blazing day has been forecast and I was fairly nervous about having another bout of heatstroke/boiling over or whatever you might call it, so we decided not to be too ambitious with our route. We followed the river again along the same roads as last year, but this time heading in the opposite direction, through Crazannes and other villages. It was nice to see how different it all looks in summer.
Fishing net machines.
Saintes to St Servinien
Another blazing day has been forecast and I was fairly nervous about having another bout of heatstroke/boiling over or whatever you might call it, so we decided not to be too ambitious with our route. We followed the river again along the same roads as last year, but this time heading in the opposite direction, through Crazannes and other villages. It was nice to see how different it all looks in summer.
Crazannes Chateau across a field of barley almost ready to cut.
We ate our picnic on the banks of the river Charante which was very pretty and gloriously quiet until a family turned up to fish, play boules and generally enjoy themselves with Bob Marley blaring out full blast from their car. The river banks have lots of the nets which look similar to the crayfish nets on the Gironde, but we can’t believe it is tidal here so not sure what they are trying to catch. The holes in the net are far too large for eels or even the majority of the fish we have seen in the river.
Fishing net machines.
We saw a harrier catch quite a large fish and a stork was circling looking rather lost. We haven’t seen one of those since leaving Spain.
St Servinien is quite a pretty town with a little river port on the edge of the Charante which was used for transporting brandy and Pineau down the river in the old days. It now has a few pleasure boats and not much else. We stayed the night a couple of miles outside the town, overlooking the marshes. It was amazingly quiet. Madame very kindly let us put a load of horrid clothes in her washing machine which was a real treat.
We had an exceedingly good dinner with 4 other guests and we now know why all the hotels are full. It is the motocross world championships this weekend nearby and they were all going to that. It is becoming marginally less scary being a part of a larger group and they are all most charming and help us out when we are struggling to understand what is being said. Our host was a great ‘bon viveur’ and held forth most of the time anyway so we could just listen and learn. He makes his own Pineau which was very good, is supposed to be no stronger than 17% but he said when you make it yourself you can do what you like!
By the time we went to bed it was exceedingly humid and they are expecting a storm tonight.
St Servinien is quite a pretty town with a little river port on the edge of the Charante which was used for transporting brandy and Pineau down the river in the old days. It now has a few pleasure boats and not much else. We stayed the night a couple of miles outside the town, overlooking the marshes. It was amazingly quiet. Madame very kindly let us put a load of horrid clothes in her washing machine which was a real treat.
We had an exceedingly good dinner with 4 other guests and we now know why all the hotels are full. It is the motocross world championships this weekend nearby and they were all going to that. It is becoming marginally less scary being a part of a larger group and they are all most charming and help us out when we are struggling to understand what is being said. Our host was a great ‘bon viveur’ and held forth most of the time anyway so we could just listen and learn. He makes his own Pineau which was very good, is supposed to be no stronger than 17% but he said when you make it yourself you can do what you like!
By the time we went to bed it was exceedingly humid and they are expecting a storm tonight.
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