La Chasse
18th August 2018
Near Puisseguin, southwest France
Last night’s venue south of Boresse et Martron turned out to be trouble free and very quiet - even the trains stop during the night. Amy and I found a very decent walk this morning over heath and through forest during which I discovered we were closer to habitation than I had thought but it wasn’t any kind of a problem to us as the only vehicle we saw all day was the old post office van shortly after we arrived. Thinking about it now, perhaps it was a current post office van and just looked like an old one because it was dirty?!
Today’s food from an InterMarche just a few km away at Montguyon. IM don’t open until 9am so Amy got an extra session chasing plump rabbits on a large heathy area of ‘no man's land’ twixt the obviously new IM store and the surrounding ancient countryside whilst we waited for the store to open it's doors.
From there a direct route south over deserted minor roads through very wonderful terrain, mostly forest. I was sorely tempted to stop but I wanted to get a bit of a distance south today and so pressed on. By and by the landscape morphed into more widely inhabited rural France and as we approached our usual time to stop for lunch we were getting hard pressed to find anywhere suitable to pull over onto. Typical!
However we eventually found a little spot in an open to the roadside spacious sunny meadow with a large lake and good shade from the trees at it’s margins. We are down single track roads a ways from a quiet D road so its very peaceful as well as rather beautiful but(!) I have a strong feeling we might get ‘spoken to’ during the course of the afternoon as its obviously not public land and its all ‘the real-deal’ chateaus and many, many hectares of immaculately tended vines hereabouts - we are right in the heart of the St Emilion district after all!
As I write, anyway, we are here:
Google Maps
Latitude : 44.90335 (44° 54′ 12.05″ N)
Longitude : -0.08124 (0° 4′ 52.48″ W)
accuracy of signal : 5 m
I have a plan B though if it all goes tits up here and that is a short drive into Castillon la Bataille on the banks of the river Dordogne. Google maps on satellite suggests there are public parking spaces by the river in this old town and although it won’t be as peaceful there as it undoubtedly will be here I can think of worse places to overnight in - and, indeed, have done so in the past!
On little incident that bothered me on the way here: I was being tailgated on the main road at one point and needed to consult the map so made a random turn into a forested side road and drove slap bang into the middle of a very large hunt. Everywhere there were men toting guns moodily monitoring their packs of dogs.
August 18 and the hunting season has started Already! Really?!
I did hear a couple of double shotgun retorts in the distance at dusk last night and nearly ran slap bang into a white van menacingly navigating its way through a forest track on this morning’s walk so perhaps an extra early start to the hunting season is a popular phenomena in these parts?
If anyone reading this happens to know of an international organised committed to the eradication of all hunting globally I would be very interested to learn of it. I know that the Born Free Foundation is, amongst other things, committed to getting all zoos, worldwide, closed but I don't know of any organisation who tackles the issue of hunting on a global scale.
