Auvergne (Sam)

Sunday 7th of November 2010

We’ve left Paris and are now staying in the Auvergne, a hilly, sometimes mountainous, region in the middle of France. It is a traditional area famed for its cheese and sausages.  We have a nice gîte in a small village near St-Nectaire.  Today, we explored the town of St-Nectaire itself. The town is a popular tourist destination in summer but it seems that everyone has gone on vacation for this week; we figure they have all gone to Corsica, as it is the only place in France where it’s not raining. The bakery is closed half the week and most of the sites and attractions are closed also.  Luckily, they had a nice Romanesque church for us to see.  It had very ornate, colourful pillars.

Monday the 8th of 2010

SNOW!!!!!!!!!

We wanted to go to Mont Dore today, to do some hiking. Somewhere along the 1400+ meter mountain pass, it started to snow. By the time we got to the top, it was so snowy and windy that we could barely see where we were going, luckily, we could see enough that we knew we were at the edge of a big downhill. We pulled over to the side of the road and got out to look around. The wind was blowing so hard that as soon as I stepped outside my jeans were frosted with the cold, blowing snow. When my sister tried to get back inside during a particularly strong gust, her door would not open. We decided not to continue and instead we went back to the gîte and sat around in front of the fire and read all afternoon.

Tuesday the 9th of November

After our failure to hike yesterday, we decided not to give up and to try again. Unfortunately it was still slushy. We went for a 3 km hike around a lake then decided our feet were too wet and we returned home.

Wednesday the 10th of November

After two failed attempts to hike and knowing it was going to rain we gave up on that and went to Clermont Ferrand, local metropolis and home of the Michelin tire empire. When we finally parked our car, we walked through the old town up to the “Lord of the Rings-esque” black volcanic rock cathedral. Since it, along with everything else was closed till 2 pm, we went to the tourist information office and watched a movie about Romanesque architecture, very interesting and educational too.  When 2 O’clock came we went to the Michelin Boutique in the main square. They had all sorts of interesting memorabilia, including Michelin Man keychains (known in France as “Bibendum”), Michelin Bags, Michelin t-shirts, Michelin postcards and a little Citroën C3 with the Michelin Logo and pictures of Bibendum all over it. Since the C3 was less than two Euros, I decided to ignore any discouraging comments made on my blog, (Janet!) and add it to my collection of little Citroëns.  Then we visited the cathedral and another small church too. On our way out, we drove past the city’s huge Rugby stadium “Stade Marcel Michelin” (Clermont Ferrand are reigning French champions), The Michelin Adventure museum, and many Michelin warehouses and factories.

Thursday the 11th of November

Happy Birthday to Mady and Christy, our cats! They are 5 today.

Well, our first sunny day yet. We took advantage of it and headed out on a sixteen km hike. Three hours, tons of amazing views, a few big hills, one muddy road and one cow with giant ears. A hike worth waiting for.

Friday the 12th of November

It turns that the nice weather was too good to last. Another rainy day. Despite the rain we had a good day. The snow had melted on the road and we made it to Mont Dore. Although the snow was gone it was still gusting with wind and pelting with rain. The highlight of the drive was when we saw someone in the distance whom we thought was on a motorbike. When we got closer we realised it was a scooter. At this point we were blown away by the fact that it had not been blown sideways on the road up. When we passed it, we looked and saw that it was an elderly women bringing her groceries home. We still do not know how she managed to do it.

The town of Mont Dore was not that great as everybody was away and most of the stores were closed. Besides we could only see a couple hundred metres in front of us. We went for a three km hike between three waterfalls it was all very nice, but wet. On our way back to our gite, we stopped at some caves that used to be Roman baths and are now a major tourist attraction. We had to wait for 45 minutes and pay a bit but it was all… not worth it. A couple of years ago I went to two amazing caves in South Dakota. They had all sorts of Amazing stalactites, and the walls seemed to be covered in snowflakes and diamonds. These caves had some cool limestone stalactites but nothing that amazing, there were only a few “rooms” you could go into and the Romans seemed to have left without a trace. They just used the pools as they were, No columns or statues like in Bath.

I rate it a 1 out of 4 fountains in our new rating scheme.