{"id":1922,"date":"2019-05-27T05:45:46","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T05:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=1922"},"modified":"2019-05-27T05:45:46","modified_gmt":"2019-05-27T05:45:46","slug":"02-forties-and-fifties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=1922","title":{"rendered":"02. FORTIES AND FIFTIES"},"content":{"rendered":"

We took “advantage” of the Brittany Ferries 75p offer and booked a hotel at Parthenay – the Villa Ayrault.\u00a0 To be fair to BF (and that goes against the grain!) they did give us – or at least “promised to give us” – \u20ac80 each.\u00a0 Which got us the “Fifties Room” in the Villa, an amazing art-deco place built for the owner of the local brick factory.\u00a0 Clearly there was a lot of money in bricks in the middle of the last century.<\/p>\n

We parked the caravan on their front drive (they could have accommodated at least 50 units on level hard-standing).<\/p>\n

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Our sitting room…\u00a0 It really was a time warp sort of place.\u00a0 We were the only guests and ate dinner with our hosts Dany and Jean-Michel.\u00a0 They explained – or rather they tried to explain how they helped run a local currency – the G\u00e2tinelle.<\/p>\n

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This currency is in circulation within the G\u00e2tine Poitevine region and is tied to the Euro.\u00a0 One G\u00e2tinelle is worth one Euro.\u00a0 I’m not exactly sure how the system works but when G\u00e2tinelles are bought, the Euros generated are invested in local projects to the benefit of the community.\u00a0 The currency is used locally with a value of the Euro.\u00a0 This sort of doubles the available money locally.\u00a0 But as this was explained in broken Franglais we may have got the right end of the wrong stick!<\/p>\n

A little research has shown that there are about 60 of such local cash generating schemes operating across France!\u00a0 It seems to me that there should be a flaw in the logic – but I can’t put my finger on it<\/p>\n

In recent years, local currencies have emerged all across France.\u00a0 Legally (since 2013) coexisting alongside the Euro, they include the Tinda in Pau, the Radis in Ungersheim, the Heol in Brest and the Luciole in Ard\u00e8che.\u00a0 Since 2015, the French government has actively encouraged these schemes and just last year Paris launched it’s own currency – the Macron!\u00a0 I now see that there are some 10 – 15 THOUSAND similar schemes world-wide including at least two in the UK – in Bristol and Brixton!\u00a0 I didn’t know that!\u00a0 Amazing what you find out while caravanning – or in your case reading about us caravanning – in Europe!\u00a0 By the way the Parisian currency is really called the P\u00eache.\u00a0 It’s just I would have named it the Macron because it has an expiry date and is worth less (worthless) after expiry!<\/p>\n

Moving on – as we did the following day…\u00a0 To the “Forties” part of this episode.\u00a0 I’d always wanted to visit Oradour-sur-Glane.\u00a0 So Glenda located two ACSI sites close by and we headed off across country – well, on the country roads, obviously.<\/p>\n

The parking area by the historic site was well big enough for a car and caravan combination.\u00a0 And just like it wouldn’t be in Devon – absolutely free.\u00a0 The ruined village has been kept more or less as the Nazis left it on the 10\/11 June 1944.\u00a0 Such a sad story and such an amazing memorial to the 862 village residents who perished that day.\u00a0 The first photo below shows half of the “martyrs”.\u00a0 The other pictures show various views of the village.<\/p>\n

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Not a happy experience but thought provoking and educational.\u00a0 It was good to see that bus loads of local school children were being shown round the exhibition and the village.<\/p>\n

After two hours we set off in a subdued mood and didn’t stop at either of Glenda’s chosen sites.\u00a0 We ended up in a Dutchman’s field half way between Angoul\u00e8me and Bordeaux.<\/p>\n

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And Glenda’s back was really bad.\u00a0 She was taking so many tablets she couldn’t remember what she had swallowed when.\u00a0 Amazing she made it at all.\u00a0 Not having to drive hundreds of miles was the reason we booked a crossing direct to Spain!<\/p>\n

That’s enough for now!<\/p>\n

We will talk about missing friends next time!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We took “advantage” of the Brittany Ferries 75p offer and booked a hotel at Parthenay – the Villa Ayrault.\u00a0 To be fair to BF (and that goes against the grain!) they did give us – or at least “promised to… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spain-may-2019"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1922"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1941,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922\/revisions\/1941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}