April 12th - Chateau Doh!

I came up with the title of this post as John and I were doing a bit of impromptu mountaineering this afternoon (see below). However, as we came home to find the dastardly duo eating two beautiful veal escalopes that I had stupidly left out to defrost for dinner, perhaps I should have called it “Dinner’s on me”. Bloody cats!

Anyway, back to the point. For most Pyrenean ski stations, the season ended last Sunday. Sad really, as we had a good snow fall the preceding week, and the mountains now sport a healthy dusting. Tant pis! Spring has sprung, so we bought ourselves a couple of new maps and started walking again.

On Wednesday we gave dinner to Lizzie and Carl, a young British couple who are bravely restoring a seriously dilapidated little house a few streets away. They have their work cut out. They had to install a new staircase just to reach the first floor (second, if you are American), and have to lean a stepladder against an unreliable stairway to reach the loft. There is only one window in the front of the house at ground level, so lighting is supplemented by open metal grilles in the first and second floor landings. At the moment, they are concentrating on the earthen ground floor, which they have had to level manually before they can think of installing anything more modern, like wooden floorboards …

Anyway, I digress. Having a dog, Lizzie and Carl are also keen walkers, so they kindly brought round a couple of maps to show us some good routes. One of these showed ‘grottes’ (grottos) nearby and an intriguing chateau that we didn’t know existed, “Chateau d’Eau”. So, today, we set off over the river to Gourdan Polignan to find them.

Last week, John and I decided to explore an intriguing group of buildings visible from the golf course on the southern bank of the Garonne. Apart from finding that there is no footpath the other side of the river, and having to pick our way through an overgrown railway depot, we were disappointed to find that the buildings we had taken to be an ancient fort were, in fact, a disused gravel quarry. Today we arrived by road and, with the benefit of our new map, found our way onto a very pleasant riverside walk. The grottes and chateau were marked half way up Bouchet, a small round hill that bears the scars of centuries of quarrying. From the contour lines on the map, it appeared that the path passed a couple of hundred metres below.

Not to be disuaded, if Lizzie and Carl and their dog had walked to the grottes, then so could we and, seeing a rough trail tramped into the hillside, we followed it - stumbling over rocks, slipping and scrambling up mossy banks, then back into the trees to be stung and pricked by thorns and nettles. At last we came upon the grottes. Nothing too exciting, just caves in the rock, the largest of which had been extravagantly barred with new steel gates. “Perhaps to prevent underground access to the Chateau”, I said, hopefully. There was no shortcut, so we had to retrace our steps back to the open hillside. We could see there was a road a couple of hundred metres further up, and this seemed a better bet than risking our limbs, slipping on the way down the slope. However, there was no beaten track this time, and John and I found ourselves inching our way, rather gingerly, over loose shingle and boulders to the summit.

In reality, we never got anywhere near the summit, but we did stop once or twice to admire the magnificent views and take some pictures.

John was none too impressed being asked to stop climbing and pose, as the ground under his feet threatened to fall away with every slight movement.

Once on the road, finding the Chateau was a doddle. Impressive, don’t you think.

When we got home, I looked up Chateau d’Eau and discovered that it is French for ‘water tower’ … Doh!

PS: We bumped into Lizzie and Carl in the Auberge this evening. They were amazed when we described our walk to the grottes. It seems they found some small ‘tunnels’ about 20ft above the riverside walk, and assumed that these were the grottes. They will be going back tomorrow …

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