19/03 - I had the remains of last night's enormous pizza for breakfast (classy), and we set off on another vineyard mission, this time to Camplong d'Aude, which supposedly is home to a vineyard cooperative with great wines. However, every single place in the town was closed, so after we drove about for a while we gave up and drive on to Narbonne-Plage, near which was another vineyard we wanted to visit. As it was about lunchtime we thought we would explore the town a little and seek out the vineyard later. This turned out to be a mistake, in my view. Narbonne-Plage is one of the most depressing places I have ever been. It is clearly a holiday resort in summer, and in winter it is just a collection of empty identical orange buildings, ugly and desolate. Nothing whatsoever was open, there were no people on the streets, and there were zebra crossings roughly every 20 metres so the elderly people living in the awful houses could toddle over to the promenade/carpark. We didn't stay any longer than we could help, fleeing north immediately. The problem was that Narbonne-Plage became St. Pierre sur la Mer, before petering out and turning into the Etang de Pissevaches, a somewhat grim lake/swamp/marsh which we had our lunch by the side of.
L'Etang de Pissevaches. This translates as Lake of Cow Urine, I believe.
Well, we stayed in the car and I angrily threw an unripe pear into the water as an act of protest. During our meal I managed to get a reasonable amount of cornichon water and roquefort on the seats, but hopefully managed to do a good enough job of clearing it up. On the upside, when I packed the picnic I had included the Limoux and some orange juice, so we were able to make buck's fizz to brighten up our grim surroundings.
Kelly enjoys making some buck's fizz.
I grumpily do the same.
We soon decided we had had enough of Pissevaches, so we drove off in search of the vineyard we had bee told about, but had forgotten to bring any details of. In the end we stopped at the Caveau de Sarrat de Goundy, mainly because there were clearly people going in and out. It was pretty impressive, they had huge vats with what looked like petrol pumps attached, with the variety and price chalked on the side - the cheapest was only €1 a litre, ranging up to €6 for the rosé - we asked to try a few of the bottles, and the lady was very obliging. We tried maybe 3 reds, 2 rosés and 3 whites, a few of which I bought - three of the sweetest white, and one of the middle-priced red. Also I made what I see as a very important and frugal purchase (in the long run) - a gallon 'bag in box' of the cheapest red we tried (but by no means the cheapest in the shop), 5 litres for €10.30, which I definitely view as a bargain. I am drinking some now as I wrote this a few days later, it's pretty damn good. We headed home via Intermarché, where we picked up a few things for dinner. We intended to have a cheap, simple meal, but ended up buying scallops, langoustines, steak, rocket and 6 kinder eggs. This may be my fault as I had not been spitting out any of the wines we had tried, unlike sensible Kelly. Consequently I had probably ingested about 600ml on top of my earlier buck's fizz, so I had probably had the equivalent of about a bottle of wine. And it was four o'clock. Consequently I was rather sleepy in the car on the way home, and had a mild hangover by the time it came to cook dinner, which I combatted by opening one of the whites.
Our 'cheap and simple' dinner.
After our delicious and sumptuous dinner we had to go over to see Ken and John, a couple who live in the village and look after the house in Kelly's aunt's absence. They are an odd couple, who Kelly described as having "rejected Britain because it had rejected them". They are two gentlemen of 60-odd, who live in part of a fantastic house up the road. When we got there they mildly berated us for being late (we were 20 minutes late and had phoned earlier to let them know), gently mocked our choice of wine to bring (to be fair it was the remains of the one we had with dinner, and the one I bought yesterday more out of politeness than choice. We ended up staying for a couple of hours, discussing topics as wide-ranging as the location of prostitutes in London to Ken's PhD in Scottish literature at Stanford and John's brand new tooth (he had one more today than when he had popped over on Wednesday). Eventually we said our goodbyes and went home, drunker than we had expected - 'the boys', as they seem to be known, had provided us with a very nice bottle of white and then kept us topped up with "a bit of rough" from their unmarked bottles - possibly the same stuff we had seen in the vats earlier.
No comments:
Post a Comment