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Cinq-Mars-la-Pile
Sep. 17th, 2009 09:34 pmStill in France, two years ago, but by now very much homeward bound. At this stage of the holiday, everything is a last chance: last day, last chance to go shopping, last picnic. When the whole holiday stretches ahead of you, a dull lunch doesn't matter, because tomorrow will be better; now it's... not a catastrophe, even now, but a disappointment, a lost opportunity. And the good things are something unexpected, we may be on our way home, but we are still on holiday and having a good time.
That's my excuse, anyway, for this loving photograph of my lunch:
We had bought bread and goat's cheese and figs, and to wash it down, bernache (a harvest-time treat, grape juice just beginning to ferment; I've met the same thing in Germany as Neuwein). Since I declined to drink the bernache out of the bottle - it is cloudy, and throws a heavy sediment - we had bought cheap tumblers to drink it out of, too (my favourite kind of holiday souvenir). Following the signs to the picnic site brought us into Cinq-Mars-la-Pile. where we spread out our haul on a picnic table half in sun, half in shade and wondered a) what was the Gallo-Romain pile which had given the village its name? and b) what was that brick tower over beyond those houses?
A short after-lunch stroll (past a wall on which lizards scampered away as we passed revealed that, of course, these two questions shared a single answer.
That's my excuse, anyway, for this loving photograph of my lunch:
We had bought bread and goat's cheese and figs, and to wash it down, bernache (a harvest-time treat, grape juice just beginning to ferment; I've met the same thing in Germany as Neuwein). Since I declined to drink the bernache out of the bottle - it is cloudy, and throws a heavy sediment - we had bought cheap tumblers to drink it out of, too (my favourite kind of holiday souvenir). Following the signs to the picnic site brought us into Cinq-Mars-la-Pile. where we spread out our haul on a picnic table half in sun, half in shade and wondered a) what was the Gallo-Romain pile which had given the village its name? and b) what was that brick tower over beyond those houses?
A short after-lunch stroll (past a wall on which lizards scampered away as we passed revealed that, of course, these two questions shared a single answer.
