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Vikki: As I sit here typing, looking out our door at torrential rain and hail thanks to a passing storm, it's hard to believe that 2 hours ago we were in 35 degrees with blue sky, no clouds and scrambling around the remains of Chateau des Baux. One could say our timing is impeccable, as we were back at our digs, cooling down with a swim as it started and are now having hot chocolates with marshmallows to warm up. The thunder and lightening are still going for it, hard to imagine hail can happen in high temperatures, but I'm sure it will be gone as quickly as it came.
We started today in the wrong place, with me getting my towns confused, so a trip through St Remy and a wander through the local market was well in track until a picture in a shop window made me realise that was where we wanted to be and obviously it wasn't here. Not to worry, we stocked up on provisions for lunch (bread, rotisserie chicken and peaches), on-sold our day parking ticket (the Patel factor - need I say more) and headed off to Les Baux-en-Provence, a small medieval village with castle ruins. Driving past fields of sunflowers, we arrived quickly for a short climb up the hill. Whats left of the chateau is mainly ruins and we spent our time climbing up, down and around, and watching a couple of live demonstrations (in French) showing how the huge catapults work and a story of the history of the castle with various fighting scenes. While not understanding any of the language, you could get the gist of it, even the jokes. Great stuff. A meander through the shops on the way back down to the car ended what has been a very pleasant day. Big thanks to Trudi for suggesting a visit here, definitely worth it.
Anouk: Today when we went to the chateau. My favourite part was when we saw the fighting show because I got to be a volunteer and hold a crossbow. There were other weapons that you could hold like an axe, a spear and a metal spike thing. When it was my turn, a man came and held the crossbow with me and then we pretended to shoot it at people and then they would pretend to die like we shot them! I also got to stand in a little shelter and pretend I was positioning to shoot someone. Sometimes I felt like I was about to drop the crossbow because it was so heavy. Check out the video of me.
Harley: Today I visited the chateau. Some of the things that we saw were catapults. There were a range of sizes from big to small. My favourite was the big one. It was about 10 metres high and it threw a ball very far. Check out the video. Also there was a fighting performance where they did battles with weapons like swords, axes, spears, crossbows and shields. Later I got to fire a real crossbow. My arrow just flew over the top of the target. My dad had skill and just missed the bullseye. It was a really hot day and when we got home we had a swim. There was a loud thunder storm with rain and lightning while we were swimming. Later there was hail even though it was warm.
Today on the Raj factor: Check out the Castillon du Gard photo album (at/near the end) of Raj and the car, that says it all. Always looking for an opportunity to clean, Raj decided that the storm today would be a good time to wash the car. Hard at it with lightening and thunder overhead, he eventually had to conceed defeat when it began to hail. With quite big hail stones pelting his head it was too much and too painful to continue. Needless to say the car is now much cleaner and we are all sure that Raj is happy to have done some cleaning.
Raj: Whatever. Maybe the clean windscreen will help Vikki get us to the right place next time.
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