Predictable floods on this causeway, Passage du Gois

Calling all fools, daredevils, and people who welcome unhappy surprises or have always wanted to pilot a submarine. The Passage du Gois challenges you to beat its rapidly rising tides. Not respecting tide timetables, or the many flashing and nonflashing red warning signs, will result in submerging your car under 12 feet of water and having to be rescued or climbing one of nine rescue poles to wait for the next low tide. This happened to five unhappily surprised people just Tuesday. Respecting timetables for low tide, you can also park your car alongside the narrow stone causeway and taking your small bucket, walk across the sand to collect edible seashells, mostly clams, oysters, and cockles to enjoy later with your favorite white wine.

Yesterday, Emmanuelle, tour guide from our hotel, drove us 2.5 miles across Le Passage du Gois—at low tide! She showed us lots of photos of inundated vehicles whose drivers dared and lost to the Bay of Bourgneuf, the waters between the mainland point of Gois and the island, Île de Noirmoutier. The island had prehistoric inhabitants, and the only means of access was by boats, which the Vikings used to attack the island’s monastery in 799 A.D. Gradually, the bay silted up, and people and animals could walk across at low tide. The Passage du Gois first appeared on a map in 1701. In fact, the name Gois derives from the verb goiser, to walk getting one’s shoes wet.

In 1780, the first buoys were installed along the causeway. In 1786, 18 balises, or rescue poles, were installed, of which 9 remain today. In 1840, regular crossings by horsedrawn carriages or on horseback were offered. From 1935 to 1939, paving stones were laid on the sandbank causeway. Finally, in 1971, a bridge, unflooded at any time of day, was built to link the mainland village Fromentine with l’Île de Noirmoutier.

Taking calculated risks on the Passage du Gois are athletes running the Foulées du Gois race at the onset of high tide and Tour de France cyclists in 1993, 1999, when one took a serious fall on the slippery surface, and 2011. And of course, intrepid tour guides like Emmanuelle.

This last photo is of an inlet at Port du Bec, just after the Passage du Gois. It is used by professional oyster fishermen. I include this photo to show the height difference between low tide, where these boats sit in the mud, and high tide, the level of the wooden piers.

Our olive mill experience

Back in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Kathy and Charley of European Experiences took us for an explanation of an olive mill at Moulin du Calanquet. The mill’s rep, Joseph, explained to us they produce 400 tons of olives in a year, some from their own Calanquet olive groves, some from trees of agriculteurs in the neighborhood. Wind spreads the seeds, so the fierce Mistral wind that people shelter from is an olive grower’s friend.

Joseph showed us a chart of their olive varieties. The same variety can be picked at different times, resulting in green to black colors. Green is youngest.

Too rough a picking process or crushing method results in oxidation, which is bad. Joseph showed us a long-handled tool with flexible tines that they use to not bruise the olives. We dubbed it the olive tickler.

Processing has five or six steps, each further broken down. For example, Étape 2 = le nettoyage, le broyage, and le malaxage. 

We were impressed that the Calanquet company crushes and burns olive pits to fuel the entire plant’s operations. And it processes olive leaves to make a kind of peat moss to naturally fertilize their olive groves.

We were able to taste many of Calanquet's olive-related jams and tapenades.

My cup overflows. Ma coupe déborde.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul.

L'Eternel est mon berger: je ne manquerai de rien.
Il me fait reposer dans de verts pâturages, Il me dirige près des eaux paisibles.
Il restaure mon âme.

Psalm 23 just seems to fit this time in France.

Gratefulness. La reconnaissance.

Goats!

Don’t ask me why I’ve wanted to milk a goat—no logical explanation can possibly exist, especially if you know me at all. Put me in an organic garden, and I’m a farm girl, mud up to my elbows, yeeha. Put me around farm animals, and I’m a suburban spectator, placing one finger gingerly on the animal, declaring it eew-bristly, and backing away. Yet this bizarre milking-a-goat dream lives in me. When Kathy and Charley Wood of European Experiences announced we’d go to their friend Marianne’s goat farm, Cabriole, and there might be a possibility of milking a goat, I was excited. A wee bit apprehensive, but kind of giddy too.

Next to Marianne’s driveway, about forty goats grazed in a field of poppies! One goat came over bleating up a storm. Marianne explained she (that momma goat) was crying because she had lost her baby; it had gotten loose the other day and hadn’t come back. Our group felt sad and offered to form a search party, but Marianne said a wolf had likely gotten it. And here we’d been worried about mosquitoes when wolves roamed the countryside. Hah!

We fed leaves to some goats and met three males, kept separately. They had been born on that farm and had big curved horns and long black (eew-bristly, I imagine) goatees. Marianne explained her goats live about ten years. 

Alas, our visit did not coincide with the milking schedule, but we did get to see the clever contraption used for daily milking. A goat stands on a table and sticks his head in a slot to reach a wooden food trough. The slot keeps him in that position while food pleasantly distracts him from the fact he’s being milked from behind. I took a close look at the milking tubes, and by gum, I think I could do it.

Marianne introduced us to three two-day-old babies. Okay, I did pet this one, who was the cutest, softest, sweetest little thing.

Slipping blue plastic booties over our shoes, we then entered the cheese-making room. Marianne showed us how she makes cheese and then prepared a tasting for us. She makes fresh, creamy, and dry from the same cheese. Some she coats with pepper, ash, tomato, herbs. My absolute fave is the just-plain, one-day-fresh one for its smoothness, although the tomato-enrobed one tingled the tongue with such a bright tomato flavor, I hesitate to relegate it to second place.

Interesting and very personal tour. We were delighted to see Marianne at the Friday Bonnieux market with all her cheeses and yogurts. And I still have my dream. :-)

 

Bories in Provence

On our way to Saignon and Marianne’s goat farm, Kathy and Charley stopped by some farmland to show us another of their “special spots.” As we traipsed past a hedgerow and across the next field toward their surprise—one of 3,000 dry-stone huts left in France—we noticed rows of fragrant cilantro mixed with wildflowers, scattered poppies, thyme, and rosemary. 

This borie was more elaborate than some others, which are basically stone igloos. This one had a side corral for animals and a separate, smaller borie to cover a well. When we ducked in the front door, we saw a bed frame. 

 

Kathy and Charley speculate that a shepherd or farmer needed to tend something up here, where it might have been too far to go home every night, so camped out here. Or maybe shepherds waited out storms or Provence's famous wind, the Mistral. Some bories simply stored peasants' tools, but this one seems to have been lived in.

It is an old borie though because there is no mortar between the rocks. Dry-stone architecture from as far back as the Bronze Age has been found in most of the world.