Cheese, Pate, Pastries and Wine

Travelling in France has mixed blessings, after the bustle of English roads driving is very sedentary. You never seem to encounter traffic jams, everyone actually seems to be able to drive and when you stop at a service station the food is actually edible. The food is almost always interesting and different; I can’t recall seeing a single McDonalds or Burger King. Maybe it is this which prevents hoards of Brits descending on the country. The restaurant opening times are a bit haphazard, they seem to open and close when ever suites the owner. Finding only the one restaurant out of a high street of six restaurants open on a Friday night was bizarre and to compound this, the restaurant was a kebab house. I had been fully kebabed out for the year in Turkey and this was the last meal I wanted.

The Forest of Fontainebleau

The purpose of our trip was to avoid the usual bank holiday rain in England and enjoy the sun and sandstone bouldering of Fontainebleau. The vast forests surrounding the Royal palace of Fontainebleau where the hunting grounds for the Kings of France, well they where till they chopped their heads off. Within the maize of tracks and paths lies mountains of sandstone boulders, deposited their by some geological phenomenon. Each area has marked routes going up and down the boulders linking them together, providing a training ground for mountaineers from Paris going to the Alps. Each circuit is marked with a different colour, usually yellow the easiest, then orange, blue, red and finally white or Black. With each boulder typically being between three to five metres high and around fifty problems in a circuit you can quickly climb many hundred metres in a day. Or alternatively as I did just choice the problems which look the most fun and play about on them.

Me, about to fall off the last moves of this problem

When you are not bouldering you are usually either eating or drinking, the reputation of French cheese needs little introduction and this combined with some Pate and an ample supply of French bread usually ensures any calories lost climbing are quickly replaced at lunch. After climbing, just in case we hadn’t eaten enough for lunch the Patisserie’s offer such a vast array of sweet pastries with cream and chocolate in them that you are guaranteed not to lose any weight on a trip out here. If you are lucky after a day of Cheese, Pate, Bread and Pastries you might find room for the evening meal, which is never going to be light.

Yvette, enjoying one of the steep problems

After all this it is a relief to be back in control of my meals, but am coming to realise this summer’s trip around Europe might not be a very slim one.