Southbound and headed for sunshine

Can you believe that my last post came in June? Yes, you can, because you know me and I tend to get distracted living life to the fullest instead of stopping to write about it.

And boy have I lived up the past four months!

Let me pick up where I left off... carpooling my way to Grenoble, France.

As I said back in September last year after scratching my arms to bits picking blackberries on La Ferme d'Esmeralda, I found a new appreciation for a jar of jam. What I didn't know at the time, is that I was only involved in the harvest and not the preparation. Seeing Danièle and her husband, Jean-Pierre, slave away every day in their orchard and in the lab, preparing various jams, coulis and sorbets, earnt a new level of my respect.

And... higher culinary expectations, and... how amazingly dangerous (for my hips) it is to have ice cream and sorbet produced in a lab attached to the house you're staying in!

Situated in the Belledonne mountain range, their farm Clos de Martin in the small town of St-Martin-d'Uriage had a gorgeous view of the valley below and the immense snowy peaks above.

Jean-Pierre doesn't hesitate to put anyone hard to work. I certainly paid my way. I spent 98% of my time weeding raspberry bushes. That meant sore back, sore knees, long days in the sun and scratched arms. My time spent with Danièle made the aches and pains irrelevant. Her cooking was superb and our giggling sessions over glasses of wine taught me so much.

Crowds quickly gathered in search of yummy sorbets at a local running event. One scoop for them, one scoop for me...

On the few days that I ventured away from the farm, I found myself either pleasantly lost in the mountains or enjoying nearby towns and their histories.

The château below in Vizille was where the Assembly of Vizille took place in the lead up to the French Revolution.

Jean-Pierre and I, hiking in the Chamrousse ranges.

Enjoying a beer and a sandwich by the river in Grenoble.

As was the case with many of my French hosts, I was treated as the newest adopted member of the family and made to feel at home. Three weeks flew by so quickly and before I knew it I was struggling to repack my uggs and carpooling my way down to Carcassonne.

Carcassonne: poetry, history, wine, sunshine and so close to the beach. I'm still surprised I ever left.

Arriving in Carcassonne, it was hard to believe that I was still in France. The south is so vastly different from the Norman fields where I began my French adventure.

What better way to complete my WWOOFing experience than in the vineyards of the quaint village of Montlaur?

Life slows down quite a bit in the south. My work at Domain Baillat with Christian in his vineyards was started at the crack of dawn so that we were finished by the time the sun was out at its strongest. If I wasn't walking through the vineyards, reattaching fallen vines and trimming overgrowing ones, I was hanging off the back of the tractor treating them with either copper or sulphur.

The contrast of organic and non-organic vineyards in and around Montlaur was shocking. It really made me think about the amount of harsh chemicals which are added to your average non-organic wine. The non-organic vines grew in seemingly infertile soil and were regularly sprayed with awful smelling pesticides. The organic vines are only allowed to be treated with sulphur and a strictly limited amount of copper. Spraying the sulphur took me back to Indonesian volcanic hikes - this time I was prepared to protect my eyes with swimming goggles!

Hard work in the vineyards was made easy with my comedic co-workers. Eric, concentrating on his work below, his wife Françoise, and Mathilde, who I unfortunately don't have a photo of. They kept me giggling, most of the time because I could not understand half of what they said! Eric, missing most of his front teeth, and Mathilde with her thick Spanish accent, both speaking a strong Carcassonne dialect of French, were probably relieved when I left so that they could stop repeating themselves.

I ventured out to Carcassonne to see the old Cité and was blown away. Walking through the old streets felt like a walk in a time machine - unfortunely one where all the tourist cafés and souvenir shops had opened. Truly life within a postcard.

Part of the time I spent at Christian's was shared with another WWOOFer, Loic. He was a Frenchman travelling around France learning about agriculture. I jumped at the offer of a trip to the Mediterranean Sea and off we went to Narbonne.

Mediterranean sea salt fields. The photo below doesn't do the beautiful colours justice.

On my birthday, Christian took me to a gorgeous nearby lake for a swim and a picnic. Ironically, my birthday was probably the only day at Domain Baillat that I didn't drink wine!

Loic and I walked a local poetry trail, scattered with works of varying lengths and depths by the poet Joseph Deteil. Here are two of my favourites below: "L'imagination de la nature est inimaginable." (Nature's imagination is unimaginable.) and "Ce que tu rêves, fait le." (That which you dream, do.)

Having the view below to come back to, pondering the statement above, it's fair to say that I am.

While in staying in Montlaur I also had a whirlwind of a trip to London, leaving Carcassonne airport at 5:30pm and arriving at the same time the next day - so excited to see and grateful for being spoilt by David and Vini! I met David Chaplin, the founder and CEO of Rwanda Aid, at South Bank and my smile below tells of how relieved I was to officially be offered the position I'd been working towards.

Relaxing in the southern sunshine, with a job lined up in Rwanda at the end of August, I was ready to complete my French farming adventure and head further south (via Germany) to surprise my parents back home!!

Below: Me, Day One, and Me, Day Two Hundred and Seventy Eight.