There's nothing like a bit of perspective to show you where you are in the world!
And this is where we are - in the port of Mortagne sur Gironde.
This is the view of the port looking from the main town on top of the hill. You can clearly see the basin for pleasure craft, which is guarded from the tides by a lock, and a tidal canal to the sea.
In this case, the 'sea' is the Gironde - the estuary of two rivers, the Garonne and the Dordogne which join just north of Bordeaux and flow past here, from left to right in this photo. A little to the north, or to the right, is the Atlantic Ocean. Every settlement on the Gironde is subject to the huge tidal flows of the Atlantic, something we don't see in mild, Pacific Australia.
We happened to pass the next village along the Gironde which also has a port, although smaller than ours. The tide was going out and the boats had to sit on the mud till it came in again.
It had ducks too, but their's were much better organised and appeared all in a row!
Paul and I are suckers for a good archaeological site and this one proved to be better than many. The platform you see under the tower has been here a very long time. The tower is only an 800 year old windmill but the base forms part of a large Roman city that traded from a port here on the Gironde in the first century.
The Roman city was quite extensive and filled all of the land you can see here. But only sections have been excavated and revealed - as here, a 'commons' type area at the front and at the rear, 'the baths'.
There was a garden display showing the types of herbs and vegetables the Romans grew here. Anyone with a herb garden would recognise the medicinal and aromatic plants grown in Roman times.
During the summer holiday period, the site has three artisans presenting workshops. This one was talking about the Roman army, it's uniform and it's organisation, with helmets and tunics to try, and swords to wield.
Another artisan talked about the objects that a community needed to produce complete with a small kiln for firing plates, bowls, urns and statues.
The third showed us how to carve a column to support a temple or create frescoes for decorating important public buildings or tiling a mosaic wall or floor.
And there was an excellent little museum displaying their finds on the site. As I said, we are suckers for this stuff.
And haven't you always wondered how the ancient mariners got the amphoras of wine (or olive oil or whatever) to stay upright in the hull of a heaving ship? Well - this is how! Sand on the bottom and then they all interlock because of their shape. Of course they do - why hadn't I realised this years ago?
Our apartment is in this building, an old renovated port buildling of some type, neither management dwelling nor warehouse, but in some way related to the milling and export of grain.
Yesterday was the highlight of summer for little Motargne sur Gironde - the Summer Fête.
Here are the highlights. Firstly, they opened the lock gates and two yachts sailed down the canal.
Next, we found this kindly man reading pirate stories to youngsters, but unfortunately there were no pictures, either for the children or for non-French speakers - although he did have a sign saying what he was doing.
Next we found horsey pedal bikes. It was 3.30 in the afternoon by this stage and we were getting worried that the other three bikes would never get a rider.
This was a great hit as you can see - model boat building.
And giant 'Connect Four'. This young woman is scratching her head - she obviously didn't grow up in our household!
Now this is how you do it - you hang up a shingle on your umbrella saying "Crepes - with sugar, jam or Nutella - €1.50" and they line up! But they have to be patient as it takes quite a while to make each one.
We couldn't work out whether this guy made rope and was selling it, or whether he just "had" rope. Finally he called up a father and daughter and showed them some knots. While it drew a small crowd you couldn't call it mesmerising.
And these two won my prize for the epitome of male "usefulness". The van with the trailer carrying the six little sail boats arrived at 3.30pm. It was 4.00pm before they got them unloaded and then they had to tie them together and tie them to the rubber ducky - that took another half hour. Oh, yes, the rubber ducky needed fuel which was in a large Coke bottle. Duly fueled up, the rubber ducky towed the six little skiffs to a floating dock inside the basin and tied them up there. One presumes this was so that children could be put in a lifejacket, given a bit of instruction and taken for a tow along the canal (with the ducks swimming alongside).
Wrong! Nothing happened. The tide turned and the lock gates were closed. Oh well, they could tow them around inside the basin - probably safer anyway. But no. The blokes just stood around - no one came. No-one knew they were there. Everyone went home.
I couldn't bear to see what happened to the little sail boats in the end - it was too painful. We retired to a sunny spot in the plastic chaired watering hole with our books and a chilled rosé.
We could have sat in the front row and watched the children on the horsey bikes or the giant Connect Four, but given that the donkey rides had been positioned exactly in front of the cafe tables and the animals had been led through the bicycle course and continually fouled the little bicycle route, we opted for the rear. Quite honestly, if you have ever encountered a shitting donkey, you'll know exactly what 'foul' means!
So we went to the Summer Fete with great expectations and lots of coins in our pockets. Alas, there was not one solitary thing we could purchase and I was almost beside myself with great ideas on how to run a better Summer Fete next year.
Some days are sent to try us!
No comments:
Post a Comment