Table of Contents for this Episode
[00:00:15] Introduction
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Annie: This is Join Us in France, Episode 547, cinq cent quarante-sept.
Annie: Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.
[00:00:31] Today on the podcast
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Annie: Today, I bring you a conversation with Ken Ives about his magical 25-day journey in France.
Annie: From exploring historical battlefields and ancient caves to encountering the stunning wildlife of the Camargue, Ken shares captivating stories and hidden gem I think you’ll enjoy.
[00:00:50] Podcast supporters
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Annie: This podcast runs on chocolatine, caffeine, and the support of lovely humans like you. You book itinerary consults, take my VoiceMap tours of Paris, ride shotgun in my electric car, or even slip me a few euros on Patreon, and I love you for it.
Annie: Want to keep me going and skip the ads? There’s a link for that in the show notes. Head to joinusinfrance.com/boutique and vive les podcast fans!
[00:01:20] The Magazine segment
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Annie: For the magazine part of the podcast after my chat with Ken today, I’ll discuss the changes coming to French toll roads that you will need to know about.
Annie: If you want all the links and the full transcript of this episode, you’ll find them on the episode page at joinusinfrance.com/episodes.
[00:01:49] Welcome, Ken Ives
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Annie: Bonjour Ken Ives and welcome back to Join Us in France.
Ken: Bonjour, Annie, and I am delighted to be back. I had so much fun the first time, just had to come back again.
Annie: Wonderful, thank you so much. So you had another great trip to France. Tell us when this trip took place and how many days you were in France, and how you got around. You know, just tell us briefly, we started here, went there, there, there, et cetera.
Annie: Okay. I don’t know if I can do it briefly but, it was in basically October, most of the month of October of 2024. We’re in 2025 now, right? Okay. Yes.
Ken: So it was a little later than I would have preferred to go, but there were various family events that just gave us that window. So that’s the window we took.
[00:02:37] Exploring Fontainebleau and Sancerre
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Ken: So flew to Paris, like always. Spent a couple days in Paris just decompressing and trying to power through the jet lag. Then we took a train down to Fontainebleau, spent overnight in Fontainebleau. I wanted to hike in the Fontainebleau forest, so I got to do that, and also wanted to see the Château de Fontainebleau, which I had been told was sort of Versailles without the crowds, and I think that’s pretty much right. We rented a car in Fontainebleau, drove to Sancerre.
Annie: Uh-huh.
Ken: And we stayed in Sancerre for a week. We met my son and our four-year-old granddaughter there. And my son and I, did a week of French class at the Cœur de France language school there, which I think you’ve talked about on other podcasts.
Annie: Yes.
Ken: And I’ll put in a plug for these folks. It’s a great place.
Annie: Cœur de France, yes.
Ken:
[00:03:30] Journey through Poitiers and Oradour-sur-Glane
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Ken: So after Sancerre, we split and went our separate ways. My wife and I went to Poitiers first, and then did a kind of a swing through southeastern France, Poitiers and then down to Cabreret.
Annie: Yes, Cabreret. Oh, so that’s the Pech Merle thing.
Ken: Right, it’s the town where the Pech Merle cave is in the bluffs above the town.
Annie: Yeah.
Ken: We stayed there one night. We went through, let’s see, Limoges. We stayed in Limoges, but the reason we were in Limoges was to see something you’ve talked about for an entire podcast, which is the town there that the SS destroyed during World War II. There was a massacre and just a… an ugly story. But I thought it was one that… I’m a history nutcase, I wanted to see it.
Ken: And my wife even, who is decidedly not a history nutcase, she had even heard about it. She said, “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard about that.”
Annie: Yeah, Oradour-sur-Glane, yes.
Ken: Oradour-sur-Glane. We went there prepared to be depressed, and we were. Stayed overnight.
Annie: Yeah, it does not disappoint that way.
Ken: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it’s… it’s just an awful story, and you find yourself just getting involved in… at least I did looking at, like, that rusting car and wondering who the owner was, and “oh, I hope he survived,” and you know he really didn’t.
Ken: And the cemetery is, to me, was very moving. There are tombs on the surface, these are family crypts there. And sitting on the crypt they put little plaques with people’s names in them.
Ken: I saw one tomb, family tomb there that had eight people’s names in a row all with the same death date on the date that the SS came. It was just, like, eight people out of one family, you know?
Annie: That’s terrible.
Ken: Yeah.
[00:05:17] Southern France Adventures
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Ken: Anyway, we then went on down into your part of the world. Did a swing down and saw Carcassonne. Went to Béziers. And then kind of we went to a town on the Mediterranean, it’s called Le Grau-du-Roi.
Annie: Yeah, Le Grau-du-Roi, very nice place.
Ken: Yes, it was… I was looking around. This was the part of the tour that was for my wife. Her idea of a good vacation is beach, sunshine, gentle breeze, feet up in the air, reading a good book for several days.
Ken: So I was looking for a hotel that was on the beach. And actually, in Southern France, those are not as common as you’d think. A lot of them actually sit up on cliffs and such. You get great views, but then you got to climb down the cliff to get to the water.
Ken: So we stayed there for three days, and while we were there, we were right on the edge of the Camargue, so we spent three days exploring the Camargue and giving my wife some feet-in-the-air-reading-a-good-book time. And then we finished up in Avignon. We spent three days in Avignon, and then took the TGV back to Paris.
Annie: All right, excellent. Okay.
[00:06:23] Discovering Poitiers Battlefield
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Annie: So we’ve decided, the two of us, to concentrate on a few things that you particularly enjoyed and that we haven’t talked about so much on the podcast. And the first is the things that you did in Poitiers. We haven’t done an episode on Poitiers, yet. So, tell us what you found that you really enjoyed in Poitiers.
Ken: Okay, well I should warn everybody that we only just barely saw the city of Poitiers. We were close, but I went there because I specifically wanted to go to the Poitiers battlefield.
Ken: There were actually two battles of Poitiers, by the way, in history. We’re talking about the one during the Hundred Years’ War. One of the most important battles in French history, and the French, I don’t think, even talk very much about it probably because the French suffered just a horrible, humiliating defeat. They had all the advantages and the English beat them anyway.
Ken: In fact, the King of France was captured. One of his sons was captured, and a whole slew of knights and counts and bishops and such, all were captured and imprisoned in England and ransomed.
Ken: In fact, King John of France actually died in England. France never raised the entire ransom. Raising the king’s ransom bankrupted France for the next, geez, like, almost a century.
Ken: So it was quite important in French history. Like most medieval battles, we don’t know a heck of a lot about it. We do know sort… We know where it happened, and a small piece of the battlefield has actually been preserved as a park. The rest of the battlefield is private property. There are houses on it so you can’t necessarily see it. But you can go there and… For me, I could go there and sort of envision the armies fighting there. So anyway, I want to go for that.
Annie Sargent: And that’s called the Bataille de Poitiers?
Ken: Yes. I think there’s a… Yeah, let me look at my map real quickly.
Ken: What you’ll find on, at least on Google Maps, it’s called the Memorial Historique Champ de Bataille.
Ken: If you put in your browser, Battle of Poitiers 1356 was the year, you have to specify which one.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, because there’s a 700 and something as well, like you mentioned. Yeah.
Ken: And that one happened north of Poitiers. This is actually a little bit south of Poitiers, right on the Moisson River. You have to find it because it’s not on a main, what is now a main road. But there’s a long ridge there that the British used to great effect and… anyway.
Annie Sargent: And beat the crap out of us another time.
Ken: They did, yes. The Hundred Years’ War is a great study in how to lose all the battles and still win the war.
Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah.
Ken: Because in the end, France came out ahead, you know, but…
Annie Sargent: But it took 100 years.
Ken: Yes. So we went, saw the battlefield there.
[00:09:10] Nouaillé-Maupertuis town and abbey
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Ken: Near the battlefield, there’s also a medieval abbey. It was there during the Battle of Poitiers and actually figured slightly in the battle. At the time, it was called theAbbaye de Nouaillé.
Ken: And it’s now, there’s a couple of towns merged so it’s now the Abbaye de Nouaillé-Maupertuis. But nonetheless, that was really a neat place. It’s something that you know, it’s off the beaten path and nobody’s ever seen it.
Ken: In between, there’s the Moisson River, and the valley of the Moisson River is a very popular place for hiking. There’s an area called the Bois de la Garenne pretty much between the battlefield and the abbey along the Moisson River that just criss-crossed with hiking paths and just a neat area.
Annie Sargent: Yeah.
Ken: So you got all the things I like here. You’ve got history and you’ve got hiking, and I’m a happy camper. Yeah.
Annie Sargent: That’s good.
Ken: And then the town, I should mention the town of Nouaillé-Maupertuis. I’m trying hard here. Is a very small place. There’s one restaurant there, and nothing much in the area.
[00:10:20] Dining Experiences in Poitiers
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Ken: So, one of the restaurants we went to was in Poitiers and you would never think that I’d be singing the praises of a fast food restaurant. But I’m going to sing the praises of this one. There is a… I had never heard of it, but there’s a small chain of fast food restaurants, I think they have maybe 15 or so scattered across Southern France and it’s called Le Brut Boucher.
Annie Sargent: Le Brut Butcher. The Brut Butcher.
Ken: That chain was founded by a family of butchers, and they are all about the meat. They’re not about anything else. It’s the meat. They advertise they use only the highest grade French Charolais beef. And you know what? You can get a hamburger. My wife did, and she said it was a really good hamburger. But you can also get steak.
Annie: Aha. In France is, you know, I don’t usually recommend steak in France. It’s not what we do best. So it’s good to know that there it’s good.
Ken: No, it is not. I got to tell you, I’ve had a few French steaks, and they were all disappointing except here.
Annie: Yeah. Well, that’s great.
Ken: This was the best steak I’ve… One of the best steaks I’ve ever had. I got this, I don’t know the French name for it, it’s basically a flank steak, sliced. Nice flank steaks, slices of flank steak cooked exactly right, with roasted new potatoes. There’s a huge drink list. Of course, they’ve got soft drinks, but there’s a long list of wine and beer also. And they also have, by the way, chicken and duck and a couple different kinds of steak, and yes, you can get burgers.
Annie: Uh-huh.
Ken: Really good.
Annie: So flank steak in French is bavette.
Ken: Okay.
Annie: B-A-V-E-T-T-E.
Ken: Okay.
Annie: It’s also one of my favorites because it, it’s usually tender.
Ken: It was really good. And, you know, you walk in and they’ve got this automatic kiosk. We went in there, and it took us a while to, you know, read and figure out because my wife speaks almost no French and I speak, eh, enough to get by. But we order, then we go… And then you go to the counter and you pay and they hand you your drinks, and they hand you one of these pager gizmos. You go to your seat. It was maybe three or four minutes later, the pager goes off, and I went and get our burger and our steak, and it all comes in, in cardboard trays, okay?
Annie: Yeah. Yeah.
Ken: It’s not high dining, but it was really good.
Ken: We were both really impressed with it. So anyway, so we went in there for dinner that night. And the next day after we toured the Abbaye de Nouaillé, we went to the only real restaurant in the town, which I think was called L’Auberge de l’Abbaye. It’s a kind of a… Oh, I would you say kind of a bar/restaurant, but really small place, very friendly, very informal. And I like that too, so…
Ken: So, anyway, we had a lot of fun there.
Annie: Very good. Sounds like it’s a fun area, and not one that a lot of people have mentioned. You have a knack for going to places that other people don’t.
Ken: I do. You’ll frequently find me out on the farthest point of land sticking out into the farthest ocean away from wherever I am, or on the top of the highest mountain or something. I just have this thing about that.
Annie: Yeah, yeah.
Ken: And my wife has suffered through it for, well, we just had our 50th wedding anniversary, so she’s suffered…
Annie: Oh, wow. Congratulations, you guys.
Ken: … suffered with- through it for a few years.
Annie: Yes. For a couple of years, yes. So I just found this abbey you’re mentioning, Abbaye de Nouaillé-Maupertuis. That’s quite a mouthful.
Ken: Yes, it is.
Annie: But it looks very nice. It looks very medieval. Let’s put it that way.
Ken: It’s medieval. It’s a walled, fortified abbey with a moat around it. Now, the moat and the fortifications were not there during the battle.
Annie: They did it after?
Ken: They’re an later edition probably. I mean, this was not a safe place to live during the Hundred Years’ War.
Annie: Yeah.
Ken: But anyway, by the 20th century, it was pretty much in ruins, and Ibelieve that it’s now owned… I think it’s owned by the town. I think it’s owned by the town of Nouailles-Maupertuis.
Ken: And they’ve done some restoration, and it’s… well, it’s small, I mean, you can walk through and see pretty much everything you’re going to see in 15 or 20 minutes. But then if you want to… You can do a hike around the moat and such, and then out into La Garene, we spent a couple of hours in the town altogether.
Annie: That’s cool.
Ken: Yeah. So very nice. There is a church in the abbey that is open sometimes and not others. If the church happens to be closed, you can go get the key from the Mairie, which is… The Mairie is actually in the abbey gatehouse. And so we did that, and somebody there picked up the key, which was this big… It’s a key that’s, like, a foot long. It’s got to be original. And we went over to unlock the church, and then discovered that the church was actually closed that day for a special event, and he couldn’t unlock it, couldn’t let us in. So we didn’t get to see the inside of the church, but nonetheless.
Annie: That’s always a good thing to try, by the way. If you went somewhere and you would really like to go into the church or into a tiny museum that’s only open occasionally or whatever, it’s always worth a try to go to the Mairie and see if they’ll open for you. Sometimes the right person with the key is there, sometimes not but it’s worth a try.
Ken: Well, this guy was… He was really friendly and he really wanted to show us the church, and he was just so apologetic when he couldn’t let us in that day. It was like, oh man, he thought we were going to be mad or something, but we weren’t.
Annie: Very nice. All right.
[00:16:08] Visiting Pech Merle Cave
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Annie: Are we ready to move on to Pech Merle? Another place that you really enjoyed.
Ken: Oh, yes.
Annie: Pech Merle is near Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, so it’s closer to Toulouse.
Ken: Right. The Lot department I believe it is, if I remember right.
Annie: I think so, yeah. And it’s a beautiful, beautiful painted cave. So tell us why you enjoyed it so much.
Ken: Most of southern France is underlain by limestone, which means that you’ve got caves all over southern France. And something on the order of 200 of those caves they’ve discoveredpaleolithic cave art, you know, stuff drawn on the walls by very early humans in Europe. Out of those 200, there’s just a handful of them that you can actually go in. Those paintings, obviously, they’re delicate. They cannot be replaced. You can’t screw this up, and we have screwed it up a couple of times.
Ken: I’m sure you’re familiar with the story of the Lascaux cave, and my understanding is that many of the paintings in the Lascaux cave you can’t really even see anymore, if you could go in. They don’t let anybody into the cave, but they’re still trying to control the damage that was done by tourists, not intentionally. It’s just a matter of, if we could go in the cave and view the paintings without any light and without breathing, then it would be no problem at all. Okay?
Ken: But humans going in the cave, it’s a small area, and we breathe and we breathe out carbon dioxide and water vapor, and we change the atmosphere in the cave. And in the case of Lascaux, changing the atmosphere allowed molds to start growing on the paintings.
Annie: Yeah, it’s green mold that keeps growing, yeah.
Ken: Yeah. And how to kill the mold without killing the painting is something we haven’t really figured out yet.
Ken: Anyway, so most of them are closed. Pech Merle is one of the few where you can actually go in the real cave and still see the actual cave art. I’m always for the real thing, rather than a mockup. So that’s why we went. That was the main reason to go there. I should mention that there’s, even if you don’t like cave art, that area is just gorgeous. The Lot valley and the Célé valley are just fantastic.
Ken: In fact, when we were in Cabreret, it was one of those days when it was raining off and on a little bit, and from our hotel room, which was looking out over the Célé river, we looked and we’re in the sunshine and it’s raining at the same time, and we looked out, and lo and behold, we ran and grabbed our cameras and we got pictures of a double rainbow over the Célé valley.
Annie: Very nice.
Ken: Just awesome. Anyway, Pech Merle Cave. It has a bunch of paleolithic cave art inside that cave. And the cave art is just fascinating. The stars of the show are a couple of horses painted on a wall in there, but there’s several hundred figures and paintings and so on and so forth. And our ancestors painted what they saw. There are pictures of mammoths and of horses and cave bears and this sort of thing.
Annie: Yeah, it’s interesting because they painted what they saw, but they didn’t paint everything that they saw. So there’s very few birds in painted caves. There’s very few people. There are few, there are few, but…
Ken: And in Pech Merle, there’s one that appears to be a man, and then there’s several other sort of stylized female figures, which they’re not really a picture of a woman so much as a picture of parts of a woman, you know?
Annie: Breasts and hips.
Ken: Yes. With no head. And large breasts and large hips. But nobody’s sure about the meaning of those, if there is a meaning even.
Ken: Okay, so you’re going to see these fantastic paintings, but you have to be really careful, so people need to know that there are a bunch of rules. The obvious one, there’s no food, no drink, no chewing gum, no smoking in the cave, obviously.
Ken: Also, no photography whatsoever, flash or not. There are very strict limits on the number of people that can be in the cave at one time, and also the total number that can go through in a day. I think it’s 25 people at a time and a maximum of 700 people per day.
Annie: Which means that it’s a very well ventilated cave, naturally. Because 700 people is a lot of breathing.
Ken: Yeah. Your time in the cave is limited. Believe it or not, it’s 43 minutes that you’re allowed in the cave. The scientists have figured this out. I mean, they sit and they figure out how much we breathe out and so on and so forth, and how much can the cave take and so on. You put all that together, and it’s obvious that, first off, the tours are scheduled. There’s a certain number of people, 25, counting the guide, that can go through at once. Those tours are on a schedule, and when it’s scheduled to leave, it has to leave. If you’re late, you aren’t going.
Annie: Yeah, yeah.
Ken: You have to stay with your guide, and obviously, when you think about that, it means you really need to make reservations in advance.
Annie: Yes, you do.
Ken: And I would recommend making them very far in advance. We made ours a few months in advance. The tours, by the way, are mostly in French, but there are English tours available.
Annie: They have very good guides in English. I mean, some of them are better than others. I’ve heard a lot of them guide in the cave and, my favorite is a young man. But, you know, it doesn’t matter, they’re all pretty good.
Annie: And you do have to reserve, go to their website, I’ll put a link in the show notes. And if you see nothing, it’s always worth calling them. They speak English, so don’t worry if you don’t speak very good French, because they’re not very good at websites, okay? It’s happened to me that their website said it was full when the place was almost empty.
Annie: And that’s because they don’t manage the website very carefully.
Ken: We didn’t have trouble with their website, but I did have a problem, which was, when you make your reservation, you pay with credit card, you tell them you’re going to pay with a credit card, and it kicks you to an external website that manages their credit card payments.
Annie: Sure.
Ken: That website was 100% French, and we ran into a problem there. It simply would not take our credit card and it kept making the reservation, but then it said it couldn’t process the payment. For no known reason. I tried several times, it wouldn’t do it. I came back a day later and tried again, it still wouldn’t do it. And there was no explanation of why. And then I just pulled out my number two credit card and gave it that credit card number and everything worked fine. But I have no idea to this day what was going on there, but we got through it.
Annie: Right, right.
Ken: So anyway, when we went, we checked the day we were going to be there, and I looked, and there was, that day, there was one tour in English, and it was at, I forget what, might’ve been, like, 2:00 in the afternoon. So we basically just built our day around that tour time.
[00:23:26] Exploring the Pech Merle Museum
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Ken: Got there in plenty of time. There is a museum that you can go through while you’re waiting for your tour.
Annie: Yes, and it’s good. I’ll say, so I’ve been to Pech Merle many times, and usually, I don’t take the time to go into the museum. But one time, I had a cold, like I do today, maybe I have too many colds, I don’t know. And I decided, “No, I’m not going to infect everybody in the cave, I’ll just stay out.” And I had driven some people to the cave, and I took the time to look at the museum, and it’s really good. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in there.
Ken: I agree. it was a very… In fact, I could’ve spent more time in the museum, but we reached the point that… They tell you, I think you’re supposed to check in for your tour, I think it’s 20 minutes before tour time or something like that. So not wanting to be late…
Annie: It’s 15 minutes before tour time, yeah.
Ken: We got there early, figured out where to go and all that.
Annie: It’s pretty, I mean, it’s pretty self-explanatory. You just walk down those steps and you wait in that area and your guide’s going to come and call you.
Ken: It was pretty easy.
[00:24:25] Touring the Pech Merle Cave
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Ken: And our guide spoke very good English, was very nice. I thought, the way they did it… Now, our guide was very good. Remember, you’re limited in time. You can’t sit there… You would like to sit and look at that painting for 20 minutes, but you can’t. You have to look and then move on and she was very good at keeping us moving, and also making sure that everybody could get there and see what they wanted to see.
Ken: And the way they do that, by the way, if you think, a cave, it’s very hard to get 25 people in one spot in a cave. In fact, you can’t do it. So what they do is, when you start your tour, they give you a little, I guess it’s a little radio receiver, it kind of looks like the old Walkman with this little thing, and then a set of earbuds, and the guide has a microphone, and when she talks, you can hear it in your headset.
Ken: So you can hear her even, if she’s up at the front of the group and you’re clear at the back, you can still hear what she’s saying, and she can tell people in the back, “Okay, you folks move on up now,” that sort of thing.
Ken: The other thing they do, by the way, people should be aware of is, again, we’re trying to protect the paintings so no more lighting than is necessary. You walk into a part of the cave, the guide turns the lights on. As you walk out, she turns them back off again. So most of the cave is in darkness except when there’s actually people there.
Annie: Yeah, and it’s also great because you gather around and she tells you where to stop, and then she turns on the lights and you’re like, “Oh.” You know?
Ken: Yeah, yeah. And she had a couple technical problems with the lighting, and just about managed anyway. There was one area of the cave where the lights wouldn’t come on for some reason, so she had a small, like a pen light, and she used that. She had two of them and she put one on one side and then she stood on the other side so she could illuminate the painting for us so we could see it.
Annie: Oh, I’ve never run into that problem. Huh. Interesting.
Ken: Yeah, yeah. It was interesting.
[00:26:14] Dating the Ancient Cave Paintings
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Ken: Now, one thing everybody seems to be interested in how old are these paintings, and that turns out to not be as easy a question to answer as you might think. What I can tell you after digging around a lot is that Pech-Merle, one of the reasons it was so well preserved was that our ancestors used that cave. By the way, cave bears and all other kind of animals did too, and then at some point there was a rock fall that blocked the entrance. So nobody went in for a long time.
Ken: And then I believe the 1920s some kids found another entrance, a very… It was small but they were able to crawl down through it and get into the cave, and it turned out that the local priest was an amateur historian, archeologist, and he encouraged those kids and he helped explore the cave and document everything there.
Ken: Anyway, where I’m going with this is that the scientists have been able to date that rock fall at about 10,000 years ago. So first thing we know is that everything in the cave is more than 10,000 years old. The second data point come from… One of the best techniques for dating things is carbon-14. I’m sure you’ve heard of that. But it only works for organic things.
Annie: Yeah, it has to contain carbon.
Annie: Or you can’t date without carbon.
Ken: Yeah, and the paintings, the paintings in Pech-Merle, in some caves they used soot.
Annie: Yeah, chalk.
Ken: Carbon black for their black colors, but in Pech-Merle they did not. The paints there are all inorganic so you can’t date them, but on one of those horses, those stars of the show, those horses, up in the mane of one horse the scientists found a little particle of charcoal. And they got enough of it that they were able to date the paintings, and they come, turns out the paintings of the horses were done about 25,000 years ago.
Annie: Right.
Ken: Okay, which is, if you think about that, that’s 250 centuries.
Ken: Here in the US something that’s 100 years old is really old, okay? And you know, if it’s one century, it’s old, and this is 250 centuries ago.
Ken: Then the second thing we can say is on the same wall with the horses there is a fish painted.
Ken: You won’t notice the fish unless somebody points it out to you because the horses were painted over the top of it.
Annie: Yeah, they did that a lot.
Ken: Which tells us that the fish is older than the horses, so the fish is more than 250 centuries old. How much older? We don’t know. But anyway, it’s fascinating.
Annie: Yeah, it’s fascinating, yeah.
Ken: Their best guess is that the earliest paintings in there might be as much as 28,000 years old maybe. But for example, that fish, we know it was painted before the horses. It could have been 10 minutes before or it could have been 1,000 years before. Just don’t know.
Annie: Right, we don’t know.
[00:29:11] Accessibility and Ease of Visiting Pech Merle
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Annie: And Pech-Merle is a pretty easy cave to visit as well. I mean, there are some steps but it’s developed well. The path is all paved.
Ken: Oh, yeah.
Annie: So it’s smooth, you know?
Ken: Paved path and there are lots of hand rails and such.
Annie: This is not always the case. There are some caves you visit in France that are pretty rough. Like Grotte de Niaux for example, further south, the Grotte de Niaux, it’s not as easy to visit.
Ken: My wife and I we’re in our mid-70s and my wife is starting to have some mobility problems. She has some metal joints that just, walking is something that she doesn’t want to do a whole lot of, and she was able to negotiate the cave just fine, and she said… Her comment about it was she said, “You know, even without the paintings the cave is really neat.” You know?
Annie: It’s true. Yeah.
Ken: Yeah, she really enjoyed it, and you’re limited to 43 minutes so it’s not going to be a real long hike, and it’s mostly level. There are some steps and obviously it’s not even, but my wife managed it okay, I managed it fine.
Ken: It’s one of them that, where you don’t need it to be in… You know, there’s others,Font-de-Gaume, for example. To get to the entrance of Font-de-Gaume you need to hike, I don’t know, it’s perhaps a kilometer all uphill, so there are some people who would find that difficult just to get to the entrance. Well, if you had to go in the entrance that those kids used it would be a whole different matter, but they’ve actually…
Annie: Correct.
Ken: They’ve actually made a new entrance into the cave. They have done a little bit of modifying in there, the entrance that you use now is not natural.
Annie: Right.
Ken: And there’s also one area where the painters practically had to lay on their backs to paint, and they had to crawl in there to do it. Well, that area they’ve actually dug down right through the rocks and you can see where the floor of the cave was, and it’s up at my chest, is where the floor of the cave was. You’d be on your hands and knees crawling through there to see those if they hadn’t done that.
Annie: Yep.
Ken: You know, one other thing we should mention, we talked about the cave paintings. There is one other thing that’s pretty inter- well, there’s a couple other things interesting in there.
Ken: First off, if somebody points them out to you, you’ll be able to see these depressions in the ground where cave bears hibernated, and you can also see big scratch marks on the walls made probably by cave bears and cave lions.
Ken: The other thing that blew my mind was one area of the cave where, there’s a depression that had some, I guess I’d say mud in it. The mud is pretty dried out now, but in the mud, there are human footprints from-
Annie: Yeah, including a little kid.
Ken: … 250 centuries ago, according to the experts who measured them and tell us what shoe size the kid would have worn had he been a modern kid. They say it was a kid who was about a human probably about 10 to 12 years old, walked through that mud, you know, 250 centuries ago and left footprints that are still there.
Annie: Yeah, it boggles the mind. it is lovely.
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[00:32:23] Discovering the Lot Valley and Surroundings
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Annie: And the other good thing about this place is when you go to Pech Merle, the nearest attraction is Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, which is a beautiful medieval village, and also there’s a beautiful path that you can hike between Bouziès and Saint-Cirq-Lapopie along the river. Did you do that one?
Ken: I did. Well, we did, we started at not Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, the other end of it that’s Bouziès, which by the way, just the bridge to get into Bouziès is interesting.
Annie: It’s old.
Ken: Old, one-way bridge. You crawl up on your car, you crawl up to the bridge and look to peak up to see if anybody’s coming from the other way, and if they aren’t, then you go ahead, and if they are, you back up and let them come across.
Ken: Anyway, yes, that’s a very easy path. It’s an old towpath, as you said. We started there and walked towards Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. Didn’t go all the way.
Annie: Right, it gets steep as you get towards Saint-Cirq.
Ken: The interesting part is before you get there anyway, there’s an area there where, naturally, I mean, we’re talking a valley with cliffs on both sides. Well, in one place, the river has swung over and the river is right at the base of the cliff. There’s no place for a path, so they actually cut the path into the cliff side.
Ken: And when you walk through there, it’s like walking through a tunnel with one wall missing. You’re walking along and above you is rock, on one side is rock, under your feet is rock. On the other side is open air.
Annie: The river.
Ken: Really cool. You walk past one or maybe even two locks that were built around small rapids in the river so that, you know, canal boats could get past them.
Annie: And these locks were being renovated last time I was there. They’re probably done by now.
Ken: Yeah, they are. I understand there are still canal boat tours you can take on the Lot River.
Annie: Yes, and because they were renovating the lock, they had modified the path, well, we’re recording this in January 2025. By the time this episode comes out, probably it will be all done, all renovated and you’ll be able to…
Annie: That’s one of the joys of this area is you can take little boat tours, you can take little hikes. Or longer, I mean, if you want to go on a long hike, you can too. There’s plenty of that as well.
Ken: Yeah, there are hiking paths along the Lot Valley and the Célé Valley all over the place. You can actually, if you want to, you can oh, say come down the Célé Valley and then walk up the bluff. There’s a path that goes up the bluff all the way up to the Pech Merle cave if you wanted to. If you’re on a week-long hiking trip and want to take a detour to see the cave.
Annie: Well, theCamino people, the people who walk to Santiago de Compostela, that’s one of the paths that they can take.
Ken: Right.
Annie: So definitely some serious hikers going through there. And when I was there last time, they had, a triathlon was organized and they were running through the town of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie and they had come up all of that hiking path, and that was the running part. They had done bikes before and swimming, and… anyway. There’s often events going on in this area because it’s gorgeous.
Ken: And even in Cabreret there’s actually , a call it Cabreret Beach.
Ken: We were there in October and it was pretty cold, chilly, and the water was pretty chilly, but I’ve seen pictures. There’s a huge sandbar, and I have seen pictures in the summer where that sandbar looks like a Mediterranean beach. There are people out there in beach chairs and towels and all that sort of stuff.
Annie: This area is full of campgrounds. French families love to go camping. And so this is an area where you can set up your tent at a municipal campground. And you don’t pay very much and you can go, you know, boating and hiking and all of these good things.
Ken: The whole area is pretty neat. We went from there to Rocamadour and that’s another fascinating place. It just…
Annie: That’s also beautiful, yeah.
Ken: Just gorgeous, you know? And was just a short, you know, I think it was two-hour drive, something like that.
Annie: Yeah, it’s not right next door, but it’s doable.
Ken: And so anyway, it’s a great area, that whole department.
Annie: Fantastic.
[00:36:41] Visiting the Camargue and Bird Sanctuary
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Annie: The last part of your trip that we want to talk about is you went to the Camargue and the Parc Ornithologique du Pont du Gau, so that’s… that would be a bird sanctuary. And your wife particularly liked that. Tell us about that.
Ken: Okay. When we got to the Mediterranean, we went to… we got a hotel for a few days at Le Grau-Du-Roi, which sits right in the corner of the Camargue.
Annie: Yep.
Ken: If you’ve been to Southern France but you haven’t been to the Camargue, you would think Southern France is pretty rugged. There’s lots of hills and cliffs and, you know, that sort of thing, like we were just talking about. The Camargue is the exact opposite. It’s the delta of the Rhône River, which I think maybe the biggest river that’s in France, is it not? I think it’s the biggest river that’s totally in France, not counting the Rhine. I believe that’s true.
Annie: Could be, could be. I don’t know.
Ken: Anyway, for Americans, if you’ve ever been in the Mississippi Delta, you’ll know what I’m talking about here. But it’s basically a triangular area, the Rhône River flows through it. There’s actually a couple branches of the Rhône River, right? Right around I think at Arles, the Rhône River actually splits into two pieces, both of which flow into the ocean separately.
Ken: So we’re talking an… at a triangular area and if you can imagine that the top point of the triangle’s about at Arles. So what is that? Maybe 40 miles from the coast, and then it’s probably about 50 miles wide along the base of the triangle. And it is very low lying, very flat, poorly drained. If you start down at the ocean,what you’re going to see mostly is a… generally is a barrier island. People living on the East Coast of the United States know all about this. It’ll look just like, oh, I don’t know, the Outer Banks in North Carolina or something.
Ken: And right behind that, there’s generally usually some kind of a bay, and acres and acres and acres of salt marshes and as you work your way northward, the salt marshes become freshwater marshes and then meadows, and then eventually flat agricultural land.
Ken: Now that’s how it was back in the day. Nowadays, well, humans have been living here a long time, so there’s now lots of canals and dams and drainage ditches, and so even in the marshy areas there are fields.
Ken: And the area’s known for several things. One being Camargue horses and the other being Camargue bulls, and bullfighting, which is not something people think of when they think of France.
Ken: But anyway, just driving through the Camargue we saw a lot of Camargue horses, which are really neat horses. They’re kind of medium-sized and they’re basically white. They have been living sort of semi-wild in the Camargue for as long as anyone can remember.
Ken: And I saw some… there was some recent DNA studies somebody did that indicate that that population of horses probably has been living there since the Ice Age. They are native to that area, it appears.
Annie: Very cool.
Ken: Anyway…So, flat land, we’re talking horses, you’re talking bulls, there’s lots of birds, which we’ll get to in a second, agricultural land, they are known for… well, it’s low lying, so there’s Camargue rice.
Ken: Which is good stuff, by the way.
Ken: And it’s France, so there are wineries. There’s also a large salt industry. And we actually toured the salt industry there, and that was pretty neat. We might talk… if we have time, we might talk about that for a little bit.
Ken: But it’s also a large part of the Camargue is natural preserves of some sort or another.
Annie: Right.
Ken: And the one you specifically asked about is, well, I think it’s… the whole thing altogether, I think, is called the Parc Naturel Régional de Camargue.
Annie: Yes, it is. Yes.
Ken: And then the one that you were specifically asking about was the Parc Ornithologique du Pont du Gau, which is on the road down to one of the few towns on the coast there is called Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, and on the way to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, you pass the Parc Ornithologique du Pont du Gard, which is a large bird sanctuary, preserves some ponds and shallow saltwater marshes.
Ken: So we stopped there, parked in the fairly small gravel parking lot and went for a walk. I think we were there for two and a half hours, something like that. And started walking, and yes, we saw, you’ll see water birds, I mean, we saw herons and those sorts of things, you know.
Ken: But after the first, I think we probably walked about 30 yards, got to where we could see the first pond, and we saw our first thousand flamingos. It was just stunning. These guys are everywhere there.
Annie: Yeah.
Ken: In the rest of the Camargue, wherever you see water, look and you might see one or two flamingos. Here, thousands of them. I mean, you can’t imagine it.
Ken: But I know my wife was, we were walking and we came around a curve in the path and there’s that pond full of flamingos, and she just stopped and looked and just said- … “Oh, wow.”
Annie: Yeah.
Ken: You know? So, anyway.
Annie: They are beautiful.
Ken: You want to see flamingos, this is the place to go.
Ken: They are the stars of the show, and yes, there’s egrets and herons and stuff there. And if you’re a real bird person, you’ll notice those, and everybody else is just going to be staring at the flamingos.
Annie: Yeah. And they, I mean, flamingos migrate, but those don’t. They seem to have acclimated to staying there year round.
Ken: I got that impression because… Now, we were there, remember, it was October and it was chilly. And I was wondering when we went, “I wonder if we’ll see flamingos or if they will have migrated away.” But no, they appear to be there forever.
Annie: Yeah. So long as there’s food, you know, birds do fine. Well, not all birds, but…
Ken: Yep. Yeah. there’s apparently plenty of food in the water there.
Ken: Flamingos need a specific environment. They need shallow water or they don’t like anything, they don’t swim. They wade around on these big stalk-like legs. And generally, where they’re walking, the water is no more than a foot or so deep, something like that. And they’re just nosing around under water doing whatever they do with that curved bill of theirs, they’re digging up something and eating.
Annie: Yeah. And they are beautiful creatures.
Ken: Oh, yes.
Annie: They’re really fun to watch. Like, if you take the train, say from Montpellier to Barcelona, you’re going to be… The train’s going to be riding down along the Camargue. And you will see some flamingo for sure. But it’s true that seeing like a thousand at a time is like, “Whoa.”
Ken: Yeah. It was one of our better stops. Andlike I said, my wife enjoyed it a lot. I enjoyed it.
Ken: And again, we’re talking, there, there are a few miles, probably, of paths that you can walk around all these ponds and such. But they’re all very well signed, easy to find your way around, and we’re talking flat here. We’re talking as flat as it gets. I don’t think the paths were not asphalt, but they were like hard packed gravel and easy to walk on. My wife had no problem at all walking around there.
Ken: And some places, she walks for a while and then says, I’m getting kind of this, my knee’s starting to hurt, you know, or my hip’s starting to hurt. How much farther should we go in?” This place, she didn’t, she was not talking about how much farther should we go.
Annie: She kept going.
Ken: She kept going and I never heard about her joints while we were there.
Annie: That’s great. Well, we’ve been talking a long time. We need to put an end to our conversation.
Annie: But I do want to say that you sent me excellent notes with a lot of very specific recommendations for hotels and for restaurants. People should go to the episode page, which is the episode number. So you do joinusinfrance.com/episode number. I’m not sure what episode number is this going to be yet, so I can’t tell you right this second.
Ken: Well, you’re over 500, aren’t you?
Annie: Yeah. I just published 528, so yeah. A lot of them. But if you type, for any episode, if you do joinusinfrance.com/ and the number for the episode, you’ll get to the show notes. And then if you scroll to the bottom of the page, you’ll see Guest Notes, and this is where I’ll have a lot of stuff that you sent me because it’s very interesting. I love it when people give me some details about the foods they liked, and the hotels and things like that, because people always, every time somebody comes on the podcast, I get several emails about, “Oh, your guest mentioned this. What was it?”
Ken: Okay.
Annie: So I like the specifics, you know?
[00:45:42] Culinary Delights of the Camargue
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Ken: Well, when we’re talking food in the Camargue, I got to mention one thing.
Annie: Okay.
Ken: And this was one of those accidental discoveries. I’d never heard of it, but after the Parc Ornithologique, we drove on down to the beach, to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.
Annie: Beautiful beach.
Ken: Yeah, a beautiful beach, the day we were there, it was cold and windy, and the sand was blowing and it wasn’t so beautiful. But we went to a restaurant there. And on the menu, there was something called gardiane de taureau.
Annie: Huh?
Ken: … I had never heard of this. And so I try it, turns out it’s a Camargue thing. You can find it on restaurant menus all around the Camargue.
Annie: Ah.
Ken: And gardiane de taureau, as I understand it, that gardiane de taureau is… I guess the best English translation would be a cowboy. The guys that take care of the bulls.
Annie: So gardiane is the people who guard the bulls, yes.
Ken: Mm-hmm. So anyway, so this might be, I guess if you wanted to translate something like cowboy stew or something like that?
Annie: I mean it, it means it’s made of bull meat.
Ken: Yes.
Annie: So it’s a bull meat something or other.
Ken: Yeah. So, to make gardiane de taureaux, you need, well, to make the authentic thing, you need those Camargue bulls. You need meat from the Camargue bull. You cut it up in kind of cubes, and then you marinate it overnight and then cook it for a long time in red Camargue wine and some spices, and you throw in a few probably carrots, that sort of thing. And you cook it until the meat is tender, which takes all day.
Annie: Yep.
Ken: And you end up with this meat and some carrots and onions and such in a kind of a thick red wine sauce, and then you serve that on top of Camargue rice, have to have the Camargue rice.
Annie: Of course, of course.
Ken: In my first one, there was actually the pile of stew meat and sauce in the middle of the plate, and on one side was a pile of Camargue rice. On the other side was a pile of French fries, all with the red wine sauce poured over top of them. Anyway…
Annie: Nice.
Ken: I was just head over heels fantastically in love with this stuff. It’s a little bit like, actually similar, I would say, to beef burgundy, except to me the sauce was thicker and had a stronger flavor. Anyway, so I had it like three different times, I think, while we were in the Camargue.
Annie: Wow.
Ken: And again, it was something I’d never heard of and just stumbled on it by accident and just loved it, so… that doesn’t always happen. I mentioned in my food notes there was at least one thing I tried in France that, hey, glad I tried it, won’t try it again, you know?
Annie: All right.
[00:48:31] Conclusion and Future Adventures
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Annie: Ken, thank you so much for talking to me. You have been very interesting, very well… you study this stuff, it’s great. I love it.
Ken: Well, I told you I’m a history nutcase, and then a secondary interest in geology. So put me in a cave, and especially a cave with paintings, I’m like ecstatic.
Annie: Exactly.
Ken: Or give me a battlefield. My poor wife, she usually sits while I hike across the battlefield, you know?
Annie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ken: And she sometimes sits for a couple hours while I hike in the footsteps of, oh, well, in, around here, it’s those Confederate soldiers or Union soldiers, but battlefield, I’m in, you know? Painted cave, I’m in.
Annie: Thank you very much, Ken, and hopefully I’ll have you back on the podcast after your next adventure in France.
Ken: After our next adventure, yes. Well then the next adventure is in my wife’s ball court, and she’s saying Ireland. But then the year after that, I think back to France.
Annie: Very good. Merci beaucoup, Ken.
Ken: Okay. Au revoir, Annie.
Annie: Au revoir.
[00:49:39] Thank you Patrons
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Annie: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting this show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that. You can see them at patreon.com/joinus.
Annie: I’m pre-recording a few episode intros right now, so no new shout-outs today, but I haven’t forgotten you.
Annie: Every single patron helps the lights on at Join Us in France. If you’ve been enjoying the show and want to give back, consider joining us on Patreon. It starts at just $3 a month, and you’ll get access to exclusive rewards and ad-free episodes as soon as they’re ready. Visit patreon.com/joinus to learn more. And if you’re already a patron, thank you, thank you so much.
Annie: And to support Elyse, of course, go to patreon.com/elysart.
Annie: I won’t have any new reviews of my VoiceMap tours to share, but if you’re curious about what other people think about those VoiceMap tours of Paris, head over to joinusinfrance.com/vmr. VMR stands for VoiceMap Reviews.
Annie: You’ll find lots of feedback from fellow travelers who’ve walked the streets of Paris with me in their ears. Maybe your review will be the next one I read.
[00:51:00] Discount for podcast listeners
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Annie: Podcast listeners get a big discount for buying these tours on my website.
Annie: It’s best for me as well, because I get to keep more of what you pay instead of giving it to Apple or Google, but if you buy from my boutique, it’s a manual process, so don’t expect it to be instant like it would be if you were buying directly from VoiceMap app. But most of you listening to me plan their trips ahead of time, so it shouldn’t be a problem.
Annie: To use your code, open VoiceMap, tap Tour Codes at the bottom right, enter the code, and download the tour. You own it forever. Even if you change phones, just log into your VoiceMap account to access everything again.
Annie: The tours work without data as well, because the audio images and maps are downloaded to your phone, and GPS works anywhere, even without cell service.
Annie: Best of all, you can listen in virtual playback from anywhere in the world. Perfect if Paris is not in your immediate plans. Take me in your pocket with my VoiceMap tours.
Annie: And if you’re planning a trip to France and you need some expert help, you can hire me as your Itinerary Consultant. It’s a busy season, so book early at joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
Annie: Usually I have openings within a month, but right now it’s more like two or three months, so don’t wait.
[00:52:18] Changes to French Toll Roads
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Annie: Now, changes are coming to French toll roads. If you’ve heard about changes on the A13 and the A14 autoroutes between Paris and Caen, it’s because a lot of things have changed. If you’re planning to drive in that area during your next trip to France, here’s what you need to know.
Annie: The old toll booths, gone. They’ve been replaced by a flux libre. That’s a barrier-free toll kind of area. Sounds great, right? It is, if you know how it works, because no, these autoroutes are not free. And yes, people are getting caught off guard. So here’s the scoop. You can pay your telepéage badge if you have one.
Annie: Most visitors do not, so we can forget about that.
Annie: Or you can pay online after your drive at sanef.com, that’s S-A-N-E-F, the website of the company that manages that highway. No badge, no website? You can also pay at a tobacco shop that’s a participant. And some tobacco shops participate, they’re called Nirio Buralistes.
Annie: Now, if you don’t pay within 72 hours, you’ll get a fine, and it’s steep. The original toll jumps by 90 euros.
Annie: But if you pay within 15 days, the penalty is only 10 euros more than the base toll. The system uses cameras to read your license plate as you drive. It’s efficient, better for traffic and pollution.
Annie: And yes, they’ve added lots of signs to let people know about this, but some drivers still say it’s confusing. So if you’re renting a car in France and using these autoroutes to go specifically for now between Paris and Caen, keep this in mind. Don’t wait for a bill. Go check the Sanef site, S-A-N-E-F.
Annie: Do that proactively. And maybe bookmark the sanef.com site before your trip. Voila, drive happy and no surprise fines.
Annie: And again now, this is only between Paris and Caen. They’re trying it, but if it’s a success you’ll know they’ll expand it. So I’ll keep you updated when I know more.
Annie: My thanks to podcast editors, Anne and Christian Cotovan, who produced the transcripts and the audio.
[00:54:38] Next week on the podcast
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Annie: Next week on the podcast, an episode with Elyse about the amazing Marquis de Lafayette, and why he was beloved in America but controversial in France. History buffs are going to love that one.
Annie: Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can look around France together.
Annie: Au revoir.
[00:54:57] Copyright
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Annie: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent, and Copyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.