After stopping for a while here, enjoying a beer while overlooking Rocamadour and buying our very French style lunch ingredients at a mini supermarket, we were back on the road heading for the valley of the Lot river, which we remembered from 2005 as a stunning landscape. After a slight (and unintended) detour which took us through the town of Cahors which is situated within a large loop of the Lot, we eventually found our way to the road we were looking for.
The drive along the course of the Lot was enjoyed by all, with many beautiful views of the river itself, pretty little villages along the way, and of course the ever present spectacular geological features so prevalent in this region. The only interruption to this journey was for lunch (by the river).
Once we left the Lot behind we had a relatively uneventful 3 hour drive to Millau, punctuated from time to time of course by stunning scenery and many little villages and towns. Millau is a regional centre (pop. 22,000) spectacularly situated (no other words can be used) at the bottom of part of the Gorge du Tarn at the confluence of the Tarn and the Dourbie rivers, and overlooked by the now world famous Viaduc de Millau, designed by the much lauded English architect Sir Norman Foster (remember the dome of the Reichstag in Berlin), to allow the A75 motorway to cross the Gorge du Tarn. This magnificent structure spans 2.5kms and is up to 343m above the valley bottom. In its first year of operation (2005) it carried 4.43 million vehicles. It took more than 3 years to build at a cost of more than AU$750 million, and is a true icon of modern design and engineering.
Once we had crossed this superb bridge we were only 60kms from Lodeve. This section of the A75 (i.e. Millau to Lodeve) is quite superb, as it wends its way down the southern edge of the Larzac plateau, falling 500 or 600m and negotiating a long tunnel.
We drove into Lodeve about 7pm that night. It was good to be “home”! As we all wearily extracted ourselves from the car right outside of the apartment, a dark haired and well dressed Frenchman walked past, that none of us paid much attention to. As he passed us and was walking away we heard a quiet “aussie aussie aussie oi oi oi” which of course we all reacted to. Amazingly it turned out to be Michel Canac, a local doctor and good long term friend of Ian’s who has become our local guardian in Lodeve, as well as our friend. He just happened to walking by on his way to the local supermarket. Of course we were very happy to see him, and made arrangements to catch up on Sunday night at his place for a welcoming aperitif.
The apartment is looking great, particularly with several of Ian’s paintings now hanging on the walls. Ian de Souza (and his wife Ros), one of the four owners of the apartment, is a celebrated artist from Fremantle who recently had his first French exhibition here in Lodeve. We are very glad that he has left some of his works behind for us to enjoy.
We drove into Lodeve about 7pm that night. It was good to be “home”! As we all wearily extracted ourselves from the car right outside of the apartment, a dark haired and well dressed Frenchman walked past, that none of us paid much attention to. As he passed us and was walking away we heard a quiet “aussie aussie aussie oi oi oi” which of course we all reacted to. Amazingly it turned out to be Michel Canac, a local doctor and good long term friend of Ian’s who has become our local guardian in Lodeve, as well as our friend. He just happened to walking by on his way to the local supermarket. Of course we were very happy to see him, and made arrangements to catch up on Sunday night at his place for a welcoming aperitif.
The apartment is looking great, particularly with several of Ian’s paintings now hanging on the walls. Ian de Souza (and his wife Ros), one of the four owners of the apartment, is a celebrated artist from Fremantle who recently had his first French exhibition here in Lodeve. We are very glad that he has left some of his works behind for us to enjoy.
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