Day 10 - Menu du Jour

I woke up at 7am having had a wonderful sleep, possibly still stunned from my previous night’s fall. Apparently it also caused me to snore and keep Jackie awake all night. So much for the 10pm to 8am quiet time!

I got out of bed, dressed and attempted to exit the tent. It goes without saying that I tripped up on the bulge at the tent door and my adventure sandal went flying. I have become a clumsy oaf!!

I sat outside in the cool morning non-mountainous air and commenced my blog. Jackie finally joined me at 9am, claiming she had only had a total of two hours sleep. We had a coffee and faffed around. The weather forecast was cloudy, but brightening up at the end of the day.

At 10am we went up to reception and spoke to the receptionist who didn’t speak quite as good English as Lydia had led us to believe. Anyhow, we managed to get her to book us lunch at L’auberge De La Fontaine in Laàs, which Lydia had highly recommended, particularly the €18 four course lunch. We had a table booked for 1pm, which was the latest we could arrive for lunch.

We showered, put on our best clothes and left at 12.15pm for the 7 mile drive to Laàs. We arrived 15 minutes later to find the restaurant already virtually full with lunchtime diners. We were shown to our reserved romantic table for 2. It was like we were celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary! The restaurant was quintessentially French as Lydia had promised.

We ordered the ‘Menu du Jour’ (also known as a Plat du Jour) and a large carafe of red wine. The waitress had doubts that we understood the size of carafe we were ordering, so she returned with two sizes of jug. We obviously chose the larger one.

The red wine was sumptuous and slipped down nicely. The 1st course arrived as a huge vat of Béarnaise Garbure, a hearty peasant soup with ham, duck, beans and numerous vegetables. We managed 2 bowls each.

The 2nd course was a large plate of Parma ham and succulent melon. The 3rd course was Guinea fowl, potatoes and petits pois à la française. Meat on the bone is generally a challenge for me, but I overcame this obstacle to the extent that I picked up the carcass and nibbled the meat off the bone like the locals were doing. As I always say “When in Rome”. We ate the lot.

The final course was dessert. There was a choice of nine desserts, Jackie ordered the crème brûlée and I had the tart avec apricots. Delicious. We finished the meal with a café au lait each.

It had been a superb lunch experience and the best part was the entire meal had cost us just €50. We were so impressed, I left them a nice tip AND because we will probably be going back!

During lunch, an elderly woman turned round and said it was nice to hear an English voice. It turned out to be an American woman called Mary who was having lunch with her husband, Bob and their Australian shepherd dog. We learnt that they moved to Navarrenx from North Carolina in 2003. They are friends with the previous owners of our campsite and have a grandson currently studying economics at Brighton University (small world). Mary told us that they lived in the pink house near the Fontaine Militaire in Navarrenx and she would love it if knocked on their door if we were passing. I hope she wasn’t just being polite, because she may live to regret saying that!! As they were leaving, Bob recommended another local restaurant which he reckoned was the best in all of the south of France.

We returned to the campsite via Audaux, where we located Bob’s restaurant recommendation, Auberge Claverie. We were too full just now for a second menu of the day, but we will definitely visit during this coming week .

As we were leaving we were followed out by the three diners sitting behind Jackie. The 2 women followed us into La Boutique du Palais De La Principaute, where we were confronted by a golden throne. One of the ladies suggested Jackie sit on it for a photo, but Jackie declined, by saying “No thanks, it’s so tacky”. As soon as she uttered those words, it dawned on me that the 2 ladies worked in the boutique. I ushered Jackie out of the building as quickly and as discreetly as I could with her exclaiming “Well I thought it was”.

I didn’t obviously take a photo, but I did find the throne on a website which I screenshotted and included in the photos for this blog.

We continued on back to camp and festered in our camp chairs too stuffed to contemplate going out for a walk. At 6.30pm, the sun was out and we summoned the energy to go walking. Jackie donned her new Navratilovas Mk2, which is a short beige skirt with built in undershorts that had a large gap in the gusset for air circulation, presumably.

Our first stop was the very enticing town swimming pool directly outside our campsite. Mary had told us that it was closed during CoVid, renovated and it never properly opened again. She liked to swim and was going to complain about its closure to the town mayor.

We then commenced my planned walk down Rue De La Fontaine Prat, then down Chemin De Bererenx, where we were attacked by spinning crop water sprayer. At the bottom we reached the river, Gave d’Oloron, where an unsavoury looking family had set up camp and were splashing around in the river. It would have been a very scenic spot if there had been no-one else around to blot the landscape.

We walked back the way we came and got attacked by the water sprayer again. Jackie tried but failed to outrun the spray with her little legs pumping below her Navratilovas. She reminded me of someone, then it finally came to me - Lofty from ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’.

We continued into Navarrenx and located the Fontaine Militaire, then Bob and Mary’s house with pink shutters. It looked nice, but not as big as we had anticipated and it didn’t have a garden. We returned to camp around 8pm, stopping at Carrefour Express on the way, where we bought bread and bacon for breakfast.

Cake and wine completed the evening, while we tried to plan the itinerary for the coming days and future campgrounds.

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