France, Summer 2010: Week 10

Sunday 1 August - Saturday 7 August

 

After breakfast in the hotel at Cluny we packed the car, did some shopping for lunch and then went to the Sunday Eucharist at Taizé.  Quite an experience with thousands of mainly young people in the vast church.  Afterwards we went with the Hurdmans, also all packed to go on to Châtel, for coffee etc at a café in Cormatin near Taizé, taking with us cat and dog on leads.

Then we set out for the Ecole des Trois Ponts at Riorges and our French courses, stopping for lunch by a tiny road in the middle of nowhere.  There was a huge storm as we approached Roanne and Riorges.  Here is a front view of the main Ecole des Trois Ponts building:

Gradually all the other people arrived, except for one who came during dinner.  There were ten people doing various levels of French and six of them doing cookery.  The people were:

Roger (Rothwell in UK) - advanced French + intensive sessions
Delia (Rothwell in UK) - advanced French + cookery
Alexandra (Romania) - debutante French + cookery
Jane (Welton in UK) - intermediate French + cookery
Ian (Welton in UK) - intermediate French + cookery
Isabel (Welton in UK) - intermediate French + cookery
Jackie (Sheffield in UK) - advanced French
Amy (New York in USA or Paris in France) - debutante French + intensive sessions
Paul (New York in USA) - debutante French
Merrill (New York in USA) - advanced French + cookery

Ian and Isabel were twin 15-year-old children of Jane; and Paul and Merrill were the other couple besides us.

At dinner each evening we should have talked exclusively in French but one or two tended not to play this game, apparently the first time this has happened.  One of the high points of each evening was the cheese course, when the chef (Mickaël) described the four cheeses for that evening, what animal they came from, how to cut them, whatever stories he knew about them and where they came from.  This was aided by a large wooden jig-saw of France, with the regions as removable pieces.  Each evening a different student held this up and found the four regions.  Under the regions were more pieces for the Départments. 

 

The first working day at Riorges, on Monday, started with a very quick test each, to decide what levels we were all at.  Then there was a three-hour morning session with Violaine for the four of us doing advanced French.  In the afternoon the four split up: Delia and Merrill had cookery from 4.30 pm to 7.00 pm, whilst Roger and Jackie had a two-hour session with Violaine from 5.00 pm to 7.00 pm.  Dinner, at 7.30 pm, was what the cooks had been making in the afternoon.  We both found that we could understand all that the "profs" said.  Although we spent many hours in class during the week it was not as exhausting as it sounds.

 

 Here is what the cookery sessions looked like:

 

 

The arrangements on Tuesday were slightly different.  Both of us had the 3-hour morning session with Violaine and in the afternoon Delia had cookery from 4.30 pm to 7.00 pm, but I had an intensive one-to-one session with Valérie from 4.00 pm to 7.00 pm.

On Wednesday morning we had the normal session with Violaine, then the afternoon was free.  We chose to go for a walk in the hills, starting at St Clement.  It was OK, but not spectacular.  We did find one nice building and a hamlet with a duck pond.

 

Thursday followed the same pattern as Monday   We found time in between sessions to go for a walk into Riorges as far as the Loire.  The nicest thing we found was a mural on a wall next to a car park that was really 2-D but looks 3-D:

The pattern of lessons for Friday was similar to Tuesday.  In the early afternoon we went for a little walk to Beaulieu park, quite nearby.  This really is a "nice place", the nicest thing being a half-scale (probably) working model of a water mill.  In the evening after dinner we had the presentation of certificates:

So, on Saturday after breakfast and goodbyes we set out for Neffiès.  We got stuck in a bouchon for about half an hour, which turned out to be the queue for the tolls at the end of the A72, just NW of Clermont-Ferrand.  The A75 traffic was very heavy and slow sometimes, but rarely actually stopped.  This was the second most busy day of the year so delays were to be expected.  We stopped at the Intermarché next to the autoroute at Le Bosc, near Lac du Salagou, which turned out to be quite large.