Tuesday, October 1, 2002

    We decided today to search for statue menhirs in the mountains, driving toward Roquebrun through the Espinouse to St. Pons. This would be a new type of monument. The statue menhirs are supposed to be smaller stones, with carvings on their fronts. It was a wild day—cloudy and misty in the distance and once up into the mountains we were in the clouds. It was much cooler than lower down—17° C. Our target was the Prehistoric Museum in St. Pons (past Olargues).
    We saw very good signs for the museum and wound up and up on smaller and smaller roads until we were on a little street high above town. We turned a snailshell curve in the lane and arrived at what seemed to be someone's stone patio! But no, there was the door to the museum, in a converted old house. A nice docent told us the museum was just closing for lunch break, and that the menhirs were all, unfortunately, reproductions. We asked about local restaurants. She recommended one we'd also seen in the red guide; the Auberge de Le Cabaretou, in Le Cabaretou, up in the mountains. We said we'd be back and took off for lunch. The drive up into the Espinouse Mountains took a long time—winding around hairpin turns, up and up! As we drove, we decided that after lunch we'd just continue on, and look for some real statue menhirs.
    Fog, or clouds I guess, closed in as we drove up the mountains, and soon we were in blind, total white. We couldn't see more than a few yards up the road. The auberge appeared by the roadside, and we found it a cozy refuge from the chill. We sat in plush chairs at a little round table with a thick tablecloth. Windows that reached down to the floor gave us a nice view of the cloud-fog swirling by flowers in boxes. Very snug, with the scents from the kitchen all warm and delicious!
    A fixed menu of terroir had a few choices, and B asked whether, if we both took that, the chef would choose for us. That pleased our hostess, but she would not let the chef choose just anything. It was important that we not be served a type of meat that we would not enjoy. We had to discuss the types of dishes we might like, such as fish or game. At first we didn't understand "gibier," but then a light dawned! I can't now remember the conversation exactly, but "gibier" was wild game, as in the sign at the elusive dolmen. Yes, we'd love to eat game. So, when our main plates arrived, we had medallions of breast of duck, with a lovely crispy skin. While we were luxuriating over our several hour lunch, a group came in with two dogs. When I went downstairs to find the lavatory, a small brown bearded dog (Mocha) gave me the evil eye from his cushioned chair—he had no English and was not interested in tourists. The French are so civilized.
    And then the cheese course. Our hostess adored her Chariot du Fromage. This was by far the most elaborate we had seen, with at least two dozen cheeses. When we had discussed their nature, dolce, forte or plus forte, and made our choices, she told us the order in which to eat them. B thought the idea was to begin with sweet, and work your way up to very strong. One should eat them each by each, not mixing! Goodness! B asked for wine, for a recommendation. He's falling in love with this routine of being educated. Of course with so many new foods, cheeses, wines and drinks, and so many traditions of how to enjoy them, we don't know how to choose. And everyone seems very pleased to help with choices and instructions.
    Our hostess told us that many people continue with the same wine from meat to cheese, but that it was better to have a new white wine with cheese. She brought us a half bottle of lovely, semi sweet local white, made she assured us by a family that had been vintners for generations. B wonders if they are friends. It was delicious, perfect with our cheese, and nothing we would have chosen.
    But then, dessert. B was in heaven. He chose chocolate soup, and it seems his life is now complete: a bowl of warm rich chocolate sauce, or soup, with a little scoop of vanilla ice cream melting in it, garnished with two small sticks of sweet, flaky pastry. While I was downstairs settling our bill, he told our waitress (not our hostess) that he had always tried to make soup from his ice cream; that his mother would not allow it; (the waitress said, "Oui, mangé vite") and that now he had finally had what he had always wanted.
   As we were leaving, I asked what the cheese was that I had liked so much. I thought something like "contay." The hostess told us "comté," which at first we didn't hear any differently. But when B repeated "contay," she corrected him, and he said, "Oh, cum le Comté de Toulouse." Now she was all smiles, and we marveled at the, to us, subtle, but to her, glaring difference in pronunciation. I was stuffed full and very sleepy. All I wanted to do was take a little car nap, but B must press on. His oohing and ahhing kept me from sleeping well, but I did drop off for a few minutes while he stopped to take pictures. We were driving through what he described as a cloud forest, all mossy and luminously green.
    Then we tried to find some real statue menhirs "in situ," beginning in Fraisse sur Agout, where the white guide told us there was one carved with a serpent and egg. Well, we found some menhirs, but the folks who said they were carved had been having too much pastis! There was a nice tourist office in Fraisse, on a lovely little square with flowers all around. But the giggly girl and her friends staffing the office had no idea what we were looking for. They did give us a photocopied, hand drawn map that supposedly led to some local stones. B agonized over finding the first, driving up and back the road, and finally we decided that it was the stone by which we had stopped for a pipi rustique. There were no signs of any carving on it, just a tomb stone shaped rock upright by the road. Another we found with the help of a local, who corrected B's "mainHEER" to "menEER." So much to learn. It was a wild sight, the menhir at the end of a farm lane, with another newer, cross-topped monument opposite. But none of the carving shown on the local map was evident to us.
    The funniest find was back in town. We had more or less given up on trying to follow the local map. It was just too poorly done to be of much use, and the day was waning. B thought we'd try once more to find the menhir in town, and a rest room. He once again took the white guide into the office, where a new lady was now at the desk. She knew nothing of a local menhir, but walked out with B to point him to the rest room and the town office, where she said someone might know of the menhir. I was sitting in the car, waiting for B, and when he came back he was laughing.
    "OK, look," he said. He led me across the little square, and said that when the lady had led him out to point the way, he saw the menhir! It was right there, behind a little bit of flowers, nestled against a stone wall. "I pointed it out to her, and she said, 'Oui, une menhir,' like of course, that's one," he said. At last, the infamous serpent and egg menhir, right there in the center of town! We looked it over; perhaps there was a bit of roughness near the top that might have been carved, but if there was a "serpent and egg" it was imaginary at best. Oh brother.
    Fraisse was a pretty town, though. We walked back a bit to find the rest room and found it and a colorful flower- and garden-lined lane leading along the little river. Very pretty pictures, I think. I had not been feeling well all day; a bit out of sorts with too much fun. B agreed to a comfort food supper at home. Now, we are finished supper, I'm caught up in the trip diary, rested and feeling better, and we've got a big day planned for tomorrow!

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