France

Saturday, June 17 – in the morning, Liz and I went into Aubenas for the market which is held all through the streets and square of the centre of town. It was a typical Provencal style market with plenty of fresh produce and other stalls. We bought some excellent cherries and some wine. After lunch, Pascale took us for a drive up into the mountains onto the Massif Central which is a large elevated area covering 15% of France. It has been quite volcanic and the terrain and formations reflect this. The highlight was a walk to the Ray-pic waterfall which is quite high but interesting because it is surrounded by volcanic/lava formations hexagonal in shape like those at the giants causeway in Ireland and the organ pipes national park in Melbourne. The air was much cooler at the top and there were still many wild flowers on the meadows. On the way home we stopped in Val-les-Bains at a famous ice cream shop called Beatrix for some excellent indulgences.
 
Sunday, June 18 – On our last day in France, Pascale took us to a new tourist attraction called the Caverne du Pont d’Arc. It is a faithful recreation of a nearby cave found in 1994. The caves are famous for the quality and age of the art found inside. It is the oldest cave art found in Europe at 26,000 years. The reality of the reproduction is amazing with details such as straw stalactites, bones, footprints and of course the art looking like it is the real thing. We will find some pictures for our web site. We finished the dy with a nice lunch at a local restaurant in Vallon-Pont-d’Arc. It was very hot so we came home to do a bit of washing and cool off. We weren’t prepared for the warm weather on most of the trip and particularly here. Our warm jackets haven’t left the case.
 
Tomorrow we drive back to Avignon, get the TGV to Charles de Gaulle airport and fly to Tokyo (all going well).