Sospel

I got up at 6am on our last full day in France to wash our clothes and banged my knee on the corner of the bed in my half-asleep state.

Ja had to work but he agreed to drop us off at the hyper marche grocery store on the way down the hill. The hyper marche opened at 8:30 so we waited in some of the deck chairs outside the front door. I caught up with my journal and Amanda read a James Bond novel.

We bought liquorice and shampoo to replace the bottle we took from Celine. I was paranoid they would think we were shoplifting with our giant backpacks but we made it in and out without comment. My phone said we had a 2.8 mile walk to the beach.

We stopped half way and had croissants and a cappuccino at a small cafe. Sitting at a small table we watched the traffic navigate the narrow streets. A man stopped his car in the center of the road (blocking traffic) and jumped out to visit the cafe.

The beach was hot and bright and we swam in shifts so someone could watch our bags. I found some small reef fish and spent fifteen minutes sneaking up on a cormorant. Back at our beach towel I had view of the public shower and a French man in a speedo was going to town rinsing his junk - spending far too much time on such a simple job.

Afterwards we decided to try to take the bus back up the hill to Sospel (another small medieval town a little inland from Ja's house). As we waited at the bus stop we decided we would hang back to see how you're supposed to purchase a ticket.

The riders ahead of us gave their money to the driver (a burly French woman) and she gave them their change and a ticket. Then they turned and put the ticket into the box next to the woman and took their seat.

Ja said you pulled a cord to stop the bus where you wanted to stop but this bus didn't have a cord or any buttons and the driver didn't speak any English. Fortunately the bus went straight to Sospel so we didn't have to make fools of ourselves.

Sospel is a small mountain town built from stone with a stream meandering through the center. Despite it's small size it had a kitchen and a hardware store and a unusually nice cathedral. Recently renovated, the paintings and sculptures looked amateurish but new and they even had a roped off section full of old relics. The building was empty.

It was 3:00 when we left the cathedral and discovered all the shops would be closed until 5:00 so we stopped at a bar and had paninis and beer while the flies did lazy circles in the center of the room.

There was a stone bridge over the stream and an old tower set in the center with a sign on the side indicating free admission. A German man followed us up the narrow staircase and gave us a tour of the few war monuments they had there.

The tower had monuments to the 40 local men who died here in WWI. He told us the Germans blew up the bridge in WWII but the tower survived and actually dated back to the 13th century and when it was used as a house.

He told us the Maginot line extended through Sospel and connected with several small towns nearby. He also said if we had time we should check out the fort just outside of town. It was "that way" taking a left at the fork, past the cemetery, and another 100m further on.

We found the fort up a short driveway and walked across a steel drawbridge through a doorway covered by heavy plastic strips like you'd find in a walk-in freezer. It was cool inside and the old man behind the desk didn't know much English but he told us the tour was 6€. After paying our fee he pushed open a heavy metal door and we walked into the mountain.

Just inside the entrance there were rail lines on the floor which ran up onto a lazy susan which could be used to rotate carts and switch tracks in the narrow corridor.

The French fort was completely self-contained with it's own generator and water supply. It held 270 men and 80 beds, 6 troop toilets, and 2 officer toilets. There was poo in pit toilets and I somehow didn't believe it was from WWII.

In various rooms they had dummies dressed in military uniforms to show the men that worked there and in the artillery and telephone rooms they played recordings of men giving orders and receiving calls.

One room had a big map with an illuminated illustration of the local maginot line. The passage through the mountain was long and cold and it grew wet as we ventured deeper. At the end of a long straight hallway we came to a set of steel stairs leading deeper. The train track ran alongside these stairs and there were more museums and displays set up below.

At one point Amanda confused the racks for artillery ammo as a wine rack. Considering we were in France this wasn't a bad guess.

We were running out of time when we came to the base of a corkscrew staircase so I left Amanda behind and ran up the 12 flights of stairs taking pictures of the elevators, artillery emplacements and the spy holes that looked out over the valley.

00:16 (4.0MiB)

We were a few minutes late when we got back at the entrance and we thanked the old man and stepped back out into the humid heat. A minute later we heard a motor running and turned to see the drawbridge raising behind us.

We returned to the bus stop where we waited for the bus along with a teenager who rolled a small cigarette of skunk weed. Before we left the house I had taken a picture of the bus stop sign outside the Ja's driveway and I brought it up on my phone again to show the bus driver where we wanted to get off. She didn't understand and only responded in a flurry of French.

Fortunately the teenager stepped up to help us translate.

"Are you stopping at a hotel?"

"No, at house."

"Ah merde."

He explained this to the driver and we crouched at the front of the bus and jumped up as we neared the stop and she pulled over in the narrow road while we passed her with many "Merci Beaques"

Ja got back a short time later and we packed and did another load of laundry. That evening we had donkey saucisson and bread with butter and Jam. Ja brought out his special sausage (made with organ meat) and I drank three glasses of wine until the room started spinning.