The tourist season is in full swing. The roads are busy, the towns and villages are full and we see cars registered in the UK, Holland and Germany everywhere. Only one in three or four cars is locally registered as the rest of France has also descended on our normally tranquil area. Friends were telling us that the had to queue to get into the supermarket carpark one day this week – now that IS unheard of. So it was with some trepidation that we headed off to the supermarket this Saturday morning. We normally avoid Saturdays if we can.
We were amazed to find it all very quiet. Perhaps everyone was in town at the market and we just sped up and down the aisles and bought our few items without a hitch. So where are all the tourists?
I recently bought a book of local walks. We’ve exhausted all the beauty spots and feel the need to explore a bit more of the countryside so that future visitors can be directed to good local walks. We are on a boundary here, to our west we have an area known as the Bouriane; rolling hills, farms, trees and forests of pine and chestnut. To the east we have limestone hills, rough ground and sheep grazing. One of the walks in the new book took us across this rougher ground and through some scrub covered copses.
There was one other car in the car park (how dare it!). It had a Parisian number plate. We set off following the instructions on the map having first checked out the helpful sign at the beginning of the walk on a noticeboard.
‘Please do not enter into the rock chasms. Unlike the first one, many are not fenced off’.
Having checked the helpful plan of some of the chasms, we had no intention of venturing into dark deep caves where there may be water (or worse, snakes!) thank you.
We walked for over two hours and didn’t see another soul. One car, loads of sheep droppings and many, many butterflies, but not one person.
Absolute bliss. But where are all the tourists?
