SOMETIMES A DREAM TRIP turns into, well, more of an adventure than a dream.
Adventure ensues when things don’t go quite as planned.
I just returned to Center Island from a major adventure in France. I’m glad I went, but boy, am I glad to be home.
Don’t get me wrong. Adventures can be good. This one was good, in the big picture. Good, sometimes great. With lots of difficulties along the way.
At the core of it was seven days on a chartered 38-foot motor vessel that I skippered with family and friends on the incredibly scenic River Lot — rhymes with “boat” — in Southwest France. Five of us aboard navigated the rocky canyons of the meandering rural waterway that included frequent locks that bypassed cascading weirs first created in the Middle Ages to divert water to grain-grinding mills. In the early 19th century more weirs were added to deepen the river for coal-carrying barges until railways rendered barges obsolete.
All but one of the nine locks we transited up the river and back were do-it-yourself, meaning two of our crew went ashore to work wheels and cranks that opened and closed sluiceways and big iron gates.
That was a fun novelty until an unseasonable heat wave pushed temperatures into the 90s every day. With the intense sun — our base of Cahors was just over 100 miles from Mediterranean shores — the heat was debilitating. Across France, May heat records shattered like an ice cube bouncing off a kitchen floor.
Our dream trip became a week of coping.
There were various complications. Two of our crew arrived with miserable May colds, which kept getting worse. Another discovered his severe intolerance for such heat. Neither a Catholic nor a Christian, he nonetheless spent much of his onshore time cooling off in shady churches lit by stained glass depictions of the Holy Mother. To escape the heat more than once, crew members booked hotel rooms when we arrived in charming villages. Air conditioning was a special lure the boat didn’t offer. Coming and going, our crew dealt with canceled flights and canceled train runs, even a derailment (of someone else’s train) that caused a long delay. (I hope passengers on that train were OK.) “Jinxed” was a term that came to mind more than once on our dream trip.
So it was a tough dozen days. But, hey, as one of my island neighbors noted upon my return: At least it was France!
Oui. That meant wonderful food everywhere we went, affordably priced compared to the Trumpian U.S.A. On arrival in France, I found that even a run-of-the-mill Monoprix supermarket in Paris offered deli salads worthy of Seattle’s better restaurants. Paul Hollywood would have drooled over the pastries. In the little river town of Vers, where daughter Lillian gifted me a night in a gorgeously modern air-conditioned hotel room in a renovated 14th-century tower, we dined well at an outdoor table near the pool. I enjoyed a dinner of asparagus soup, housemade pâté de foie gras, pan-fried trout, ratatouille and a tasty cheese platter, with a nice local rosé wine. The tab: less than $50.
My friends Daniel and Jean and I enjoyed a 4 1/2-mile roundtrip riverside walk from one of our moorages to the marvelous medieval village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, perched 1,200 feet up a rocky promontory above the Lot. We set out at 7:30 to enjoy the cool of the morning. The down side: We arrived too early to enjoy a good French espresso at a sidewalk cafe. Opening time in French villages is around 10.
Another day we escaped the heat by hiring a taxi to take us to the famous Pech Merle Cave to see cave paintings that carbon dating has confirmed to be 29,000 years old. In a cool and damp setting far underground, the most memorable images were iconic drawings of two leopard-spotted horses rendered by ancient humans using charcoal powder and red ochre. It was stunning to ponder the remarkable images surrounded by the artist’s own handprints among the limestone cave’s stalactites and stalagmites. Three local teenagers discovered the images while exploring the cave in 1922.
The boat voyage was, indeed, an adventure. If typical May temperatures in the 70s had prevailed, it might have been the dream trip we’d envisioned.
On our return to Paris, before catching a flight home, Lillian and her partner, Lux, accompanied me on another underground tour where we took refuge from the heat. In the Paris Catacombs, far beneath the city’s streets, millions of human skeletons reside. Parisians of every walk of life ended up for centuries in underground limestone mines, starting in the 1600s when the city’s cemeteries filled up. Today it is a sobering tourist attraction. The bones and skulls have been artistically arranged and stacked, in part to help structurally support the city above them. I came away with one clear thought: Pursuant to the foundational national motto of France, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” dating back to the French Revolution, the Catacombs clearly demonstrate how Parisians of past centuries were treated equally in death.
On a lighter note: My final morning in Paris I struck out early to explore the neighborhood around my 13th Arrondissement rental apartment. Wandering at random near Place d’Italie, I discovered and photographed a delightful variety of wall paintings — too sophisticated and elaborate to be called graffiti. I’ll end here with a sampling. It just might inspire me to make some new art on the walls of Nuthatch Cabin. Watch out, Center Island.
Cantwell's Reef 
