More connections (road trip to France) part 1 - going there

Our trip to South Africa was poignant because it reminded us of the close contacts we had left behind when we originally left for America despite how quickly we were able to reconnect as if no time had passed.

One lost connection was with my goddaughter.  

It was not long after being asked and agreeing to be godfather to our close friend's daughter that I accepted a job offer that I had sought in America during the dot com boom.  When we visited South Africa around 10 years later I learned that I had earned the deserved title of "absent godfather". 

I had learned shortly before our recent trip to South Africa that she was studying for a masters in Toulon, France.  So at the end of the trip after reconnecting with our friends in Makhanda I was armed with contact information and reached out to arrange to see her in Europe before she was due to return to South Africa in early August.

So Anne began the research for a trip to France when we returned and we decided after looking at flights and train schedules and prices that it might be more interesting to do a road trip.  

Our road trip route

The total there and back distance is just over 41hour's driving so Anne added some scheduled stops at interesting places in both directions.  We decided to do a detour inland on the way to France and come back via the coast of Spain.

Anne chose overnight stops that were around 4 hours apart and looked for places with attractions that we'd like to see along the way.  In a couple of cases we would spend more than one night and eventually the trip extended over 19 days.

The two weekends in France were to be in Montpellier where we were to meet my goddaughter and in Toulouse where we were to stay with the family of an ex-colleague of mine who had become a friend when we worked together between 2001 and 2004.  We also contacted a friend I had met in the really early days of the digital age in what was a precursor to chat rooms.  We have maintained contact but had not seen each other since 2013.  He has an apartment in Alicante, Spain and we planned to stop there on the return trip.  As it turned out, we would make one other surprise connection with a woman who was a neighbor who, as a small child, had been the best friend of our oldest daughter. 

Our first stop was in Cordoba.  The heat wave of June 2025 was going to be a big one and it was just starting to make itself known as we headed out from our house.  We were lucky at all of our stops to have air conditioning and in some cases a place to swim, but in Cordoba after checking into our AirBnb, the walk across the bridge to the impressive mosque was like walking in an oven.

Bridge to the Mosque in Cordoba

 The river was bringing some cool air up to the bridge but not enough to really cool us so we took a walk on the opposite side of the bridge and along the river.  

We saw the ruins of a water powered mill which reminded us so much of the recent animated movie "Flow" and we wondered if a scene like this had inspired the creator.  There were a few stray cats that Anne decided were talking to each other and to the pigeons that they shared the terrace with.

Abandoned mill along a Roman viaduct in Cordoba

The next morning we were off to our next stop which was in a northern suburb of Valencia called Port de Sagunt.  The streets are mostly multi-story houses and small businesses but we made our way down to the sea and had a swim. 

Port de Sagunt - photo by Anne

The beach and surrounds didn't inspire us but the Mediterranean water was warm and inviting even though it was a bit murky.

Port de Sagunt beach - photo by Anne

Our next stop was in Llagostera, a somewhat mountainous area which involved driving through a few long tunnels. 

Road tunnel (one of many) in Spain 

These tunnels were even more of a feature on the return trip which went towards the coast through very hilly countryside. 

After we had unpacked our luggage - including the cooler box that we kept some food and cold water in - our AirBnb host told us that the best beach was down a mountain pass and featured a fortified village in a town called Tossa de Mar. 

Walled town and beach at Tossa de Mar

We were amazed at how clear and blue the water was and after a swim we walked up the road to the small village which has a few active shops and a lighthouse that is still in use.  The lighthouse structure was previously the home of a catholic dignitary.  We had an interesting conversation with the person in the lighthouse museum about languages.  He is multi-lingual and speaks Catalan, Spanish, English, Italian and French.

The small walled town has a statue of Ava Gardner.  She filmed a movie "Pandora and the Flying Dutchman" with a Spanish actor in the town and apparently fell in love with the town and her co-star.  She was engaged to Frank Sinatra at the time and he apparently flew to Spain to visit her during filming because he was jealous of her growing affection for her co-star.  The people of the town who worked with her had very fond memories of her and the life-sized statue was a result.

Anne had found an AirBnb in a small town near to Montpelier called Pignan (Anne kept on cracking up when the GPS pronounced the town name  "Pig-nan" in an American voice - the name sounds more like Pin-ow to an English ear.  Thus began what turned out to be an incredibly confused relationship between me and the French language.

I am already pretty confused to be honest, my 3 years of Spanish and 1 year of Portuguese plus a reasonably good ear for Afrikaans (even though I don't speak it very well) have made a scramble of words and phrases which take some hours of speaking to separate the current language from the noise of the others in my head.

French just put me over the top.  Aside from the written words not sounding anything like they are said and the tendency to not pronounce the last 2 to 4 letters of many words, I also found myself unable to recall the few common phrases I was intent on repeating:  thank you, good day, please etc.  I'd revert to one of the other languages and then find myself asking Anne ("what's 'please' again?").

I had an overwhelming reaction to the old town feeling of Pignan. 

An ancient alley -photo by Anne

The town has just celebrated its 1000th year and the small alley to the entrance to our AirBnb was low and ancient and featured a central sluice which evoked images of medieval life, when the streets were full of filth and disease was common, and then in half a breath, images of post WWII France where collaborators were humiliated for their relationships with German soldiers.  

It was a strange sensation which persisted as we went into the building which had doors and sections of rooms that I had to bend quite low to navigate through.

I remember how some first experiences in London felt - a similar transportation back to what admittedly were scenes that I had read about or seen in films depicting ancient times.   This was far more pronounced I think because of the weight of time that comes with knowing that a building or street may have been there for 1000 years! 

A couple of weeks later we'd get a reality check on this sense of "ancient" when we met our friend in Alicante who is from Iran.  She related how some of the artifacts and places there are more than 2500 years old - many of which have been or are threatened by destruction in modern wartimes and the shift in Western political sensitivities away from these cultures.

My god-daughter joined us that evening from Toulon after a train and tram ride.  It was so lovely to meet her as an adult and hear about what she has achieved since we last saw her.   It was also amazing to find the threads between our own stories of experiences with her family and the same stories as told to her by them.  It is how the fabric of a connection is sealed with these common threads.

We visited Montpellier the following day, taking a tram to the main plaza

Place de la Comédie - main plaza in Montpellier

ier

and walked in the heat of the city to see the narrow alleys nearby

Narrow streets of Montpellier

and a Cathedral

Montpellier Cathedral

 

We visited a beach on our way home and came back into the city again on the Sunday to visit the botanical garden.

Montpellier botanical garden - photo by Camilla

before seeing our god-daughter off on a tram back to the pressure of her final project for her masters.

 We spent the first day in Toulon exploring, which included a stop at a very quaint little beach with a collection of houses and a restaurant at the end of a narrow road with only a few places to park.  The parking gods smiled on us and we found a spot near the bottom and were able to explore the beach, swim and then have lunch there.

Beach at the Village de pecheur du Cap Brun

On the second day we took a ferry ride to La Seyne sur mer, a small town nearby, but because we didn't know the ferry, we got off at its first stop which is in the industrial area of the town near the casino and we had to walk in the heat to the marina.  It allowed us to see some wall art in a dilapidated building on the way.

Mural near La Seyne sur mer

Despite the very informal arrangement of art I find myself drawn to these murals - I don't know who finds simple tagging appealing other than the artists who do the tagging, but mural art has a much broader appeal for me.

In  La Seyne sur mer it is clear that mural art has become a feature of a number of buildings.  

La Seyne sur mer - another mural

That evening we had dinner with our god-daughter on the beach near our AirBnb and had a final goodbye before going to our next stop.

The next morning we decided to look for a place of interest in Toulon and ended up going to the Muséum départemental du Var, a small natural history museum in a garden called the Jardin du Las to pass the time to avoid arriving at our next AirBnb too early.

The gardens are beautiful and the little Natural history museum had some interesting exhibits showing the origin of man and a number of fossils and stuffed animals.

After lunch we were back on our way to our next stop in Arles  - a town associated with Vincent van Gogh.  When Anne told me that Arles would be on our itinerary I was vaguely interested in the fact that this was a place that was associated with Vincent van Gogh but I had no special interest in visiting it, imagining a small town with fields within easy reach.  I still find it impossible to pronounce the name of this town in French.  I imagine putting a few marbles in my mouth and a mouthful of water and trying to say "Owls" in English.

We stayed in an AirBnb in a single room cottage on a small event-and-holiday complex.  I found myself in what felt like the holiday place that is featured in the movie Dirty Dancing.  We saw busloads of people disembarking near the main activity center as we drove in.  Luckily our apartment was a little way away from the event center and near a pretty pond so we weren't bothered by the noise of evening entertainment.  

We had a trip planned to the town center for the next morning.  Anne had found a speaking tour that you could listen to on your mobile phone.  The tour was location triggered so you'd get audio as you arrived at each point of interest.  I wasn't anticipating the incredible sense of history that overwhelmed me as we went to the first place on the tour: the Alyscamps.  A tree lined avenue with Roman sarcophagi on either side. 

Alyscamps 

There are hundreds of them and it dawned on me as I was walking along there how ancient they were and how they exuded this sense of time.   The first of these were from 250BCE but the burial grounds were used into the middle ages.  Many wealthy people's bodies were transported across Europe to be interred here.  

Apparently during the Renaissance (14 - 16th centuries) the sarcophagi attracted the interest of builders and looters which resulted in the stone lids being removed and the tombs looted.

This avenue features in a few of Vincent van Gogh's paintings  which feature the tall trees lining the avenue.

Anne with the tall trees in Alyscamps

At the end of the avenue is a church called the Eglise Saint-Honorat à Arles which is built of cut stone.  The first church on this site was built in the 11th Century but it was rebuilt again in the 12th and 16th centuries and has never been completed.

The day spent in Arles ended up being magical.

We stopped for lunch at a quaint restaurant and wandered the streets and the gardens near the town's
central parking.  

Lunch

 We visited a circular tower that was part of the town's defenses and made our way across to a Roman Theater that has been restored somewhat and which obviously has live events.  There is modern lighting and a wooden stage.

Roman theater in Arles built between 17BC and 14AD

The virtual guide described how the stage in the theater featured pulleys and ropes for flying actors and sections that could drop or raise up for ancient special effects. 

The town also has a Roman Colosseum which was very impressive.

Arles Amphitheatre built in the 1st Century

 

The Coliseum seats 20000 people and was the scene of chariot races and bloody battles.  Today it hosts bull fights.

We stopped at a Roman bath.  The baths featured heated water and pools of various depths

Constantine baths in Arles

Since bathing was a common practice in Roman times, the baths were open to everyone in some cases for free or at a small cost.  I assume that certain areas of the complex were more expensive than others, but all of the social structure enjoyed access.

Our next stop was Toulouse but Anne was interested in visiting a famous region called the Carmargue which is famous for its ancient breed of white horses many of which roam free. 

Carmargue horses - Photo by Anne

We stopped at a beach for lunch and then drove to the Parc naturel régional de Camargue which is an area that has many wild birds living in the reeds and trees and the coastal wetlands.

We witnessed large flocks of flamingos feeding and preening in the shallow water.

Flamingos

Every now and then a group would fly overhead revealing their beautiful coloring and elegant flight.

Flamingos in flight

 

We were due to be in Toulouse in the early evening to stay with the friends we'd made when I worked at my first job in America.  

They have been living near Toulouse ever since going back to France after working in the USA and Canada in the early 00s.  They live in a small town called Bagnac, home of the AirBus company and it was really cool to catch up with them after all these years and to hear stories of his exploits since leaving the USA.

When they left America we adopted their two Guinea pigs (called Saska and Chewan after the Canadian state with their combined names) which lived a lot longer than average because Anne fed them sumptuous garden salads most days!

Anne and I decided to take the subway into Toulouse the next day to take a look at the city.  We did some walking after getting off the overland subway and visited the  Couvent des Jacobins which is impressive.  

Anne in Couvent des Jacobins

Later in the day we were due to meet our friends for dinner at one of the "pop-up" restaurants that are around for the summer - in this case one on an island in the Garrone river.   On the way we spotted a red devil in a cove under the bridge.  

Pont Neuf with the little red statue

The "devil" is actually a child wearing  a donkey cap and is the work of a local artist, James Colomina who installed it unapproved in 2017.  He installed it in March on the date of the beginning of the first baccalaureate test in France but he said that the donkey sculpture represents those who are marginalized and stigmatized.

 He was subsequently commissioned for additional works in a few locations in Toulouse and has since created installations, usually politically motivated and anti-war in various cities around the world including Bristol in the UK, Paris and New York.

On our last day in Toulouse we spent some time at the Aeroscopia museum in Blagnac with our friends.  The museum has several of the big Airbus planes and a few Concords on display.

Concord

They also have this awesome large Lego-brick model of the X-wing Star-fighter which was a really cool touch.

Giant Lego Star-fighter 

We were able to go into a Concord and see the setup that is used to conduct tests on the plane towards the end of the build process and the flight simulator of the concord which was used to train pilots and navigators.

Concord flight simulator

On the tarmac outside is a Concord that you can tour and I took a photo of the cockpit.  They are truly magnificent.

Concord cockpit

After we arrived in Toulouse we heard from someone who lived across from us in Grahamstown as a child and who was our oldest daughter's best friend.  

Anne had reconnected with her on the internet and remembered that she had lived in France.   She only realized after revisiting some messages from her that she actually lived in Arles and so we decided we were going to take the extra trip to go back to Arles for one more day to have lunch with her and meet her daughter.

On our return to Arles we visited the Van Gogh museum which had exhibitions that were interesting but we were disappointed not to see more about Vincent Van Gogh there.  The views of the town from the museum were interesting as well.  The sense of ancient town life is very strong in this town.

It was truly lovely to meet Kathy and her daughter and we were so glad that we had figured out that she was still there.

It is amazing how memories from so long ago flood back!  I so clearly remember the little girls playing in front of the house and crowding in front of the tiny little black and white tv in the lounge in the little house in Grahamstown in the early 80's.