Vendettas, nuraghi and the marches: La Belle Bordeaux

When we realised that Bordeaux was on our top 100 Places to Visit List we drove halfway across southern France to tick that box. Enroute we stayed at our favourite Aire ever. An Aire in France (or a Stellplatz in Germany) is virtually a free overnight camping site, especially for camping cars, as motorhomes are called here, usually established by the local community in order to encourage expenditure in the local town.

This Aire was on a beautiful canal front at Caumont-sur-Garonne, at one time a powerful city inhabited by nobles supporting the French kings, but now a sleepy little commuter village on the Garonne, idyllic in its setting, with some gracious old homes with canal views just waiting to be snapped up and renovated.

So sleepy in the early evening that everything, even the local bar, had closed up for the day, and probably gone fishing. We parked along with 8 or 9 other campers, set up our chairs, and watched the canal and bicycle path traffic drift slowly by.

Just on dusk a lone Irishman, overdue for his evening pint, rode up in thongs, unpacked his pup tent and lay it out on the lush grass at one end of the Aire; then with incredible luck, as he came ill-prepared and had no provisions at all, found a man selling chilled bottled beer along with, of all things, wood-fired pizzas out of the back of his wee van at the other end of the Aire. This was the Irishman's first day on the canal. I wonder if his Irish luck will hold every night of his planned 30, to cover the 400 odd kilometres of cycling paths along the Canal du Midi and its extension into the Garonne, from Bordeaux to Toulouse. We wished him well.

Bordeaux, our next stop, turned out to be one of the most beautiful cities, in the style of Vienna and Paris, that we have ever visited. Wealthy from wine production, supplemented by income gained distributing slaves and sugar from the West Indies, Bordeaux built a city of townhouses, expansive parks, fountains and boulevards, and majestic public buildings, none more beautiful than the mass of structures along the Place de la Bourse.

The city itself has been inscribed on UNESCOs World Heritage List as an "outstanding urban and architectural ensemble". So beautiful, that when Haussmann was transforming Paris he used Bordeaux as the structural model. And it feel so like Paris, right down to its distinctive little neighbourhoods: here in this little alley an alternative enclave, there under that arch a more elegant one. Added to which Bordeaux has cleverly added tram line arteries right through the heart of the city centre. Stylish trams slide along the wide boulevards meshing seamlessly with the thousands of elegant older buildings they service. Another exceptional city I could happily spend a month or a year in, if ever I find the time.

oooOOOooo