{"id":5327,"date":"2024-07-09T07:54:13","date_gmt":"2024-07-09T07:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=5327"},"modified":"2025-12-24T22:26:46","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T22:26:46","slug":"12-bumps-and-astroblemes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=5327","title":{"rendered":"12. BUMPS AND ASTROBLEMES."},"content":{"rendered":"

Camping Alouette in Cognac-le-For\u00eat is our next target.\u00a0 But getting there involves a fairish journey on N and D roads.\u00a0 The French have REALLY taken to speed bumps.\u00a0 It must be a love affair.\u00a0 Otherwise they would be up in arms.\u00a0 This should have been the trigger for hundreds of Frenchies to don yellow jerseys and drive through towns and villages at 5 kph sounding their horns continuously.\u00a0 They love a good strike or civil unrest.\u00a0 But they appear to love their speed bumps even more.<\/p>\n

They usually define, or are contained within, the 30 kph zones.\u00a0 The speed limit itself is OK if a tad slow in many cases.\u00a0 It’s the bloody 45 degree slope you have to ascend for three metres before leveling off for 10 m and then the sudden angular descent onto the bottom of the car’s springs.\u00a0 Tyre manufactures and breakdown companies probably sponsor the perishing things.<\/p>\n

Anyway, driving a car over them is distracting enough, especially if one is careless enough to get one’s tongue between one’s teeth at the critical moment.\u00a0 But to do it towing a caravan is another ball game altogether!\u00a0 If tackled at more than 5 kph the shock waves travelling backwards and forwards through the car’s chassis (do we still have those?) are enough to drive a sane person, insane.\u00a0 In my case, of course, that doesn’t take much!\u00a0 The first one of a trip is sort of OK, but after that I find myself yelling at any French person in earshot to put on their “Gilets Jaunes” and get demonstrating.\u00a0 The really severe ones actually cause the rear of the caravan to ground.\u00a0 And it’s a road-legal trailer with correct clearances.\u00a0 Today we actually drove over one of these damned things while already on an extended elevated section.\u00a0 A bump on a bump!<\/p>\n

While I’m on the subject of traffic “calming” measures, there are two sorts of obstruction designed specifically to cause collisions.\u00a0 Firstly there are the physical barriers.\u00a0 These, in their various forms, reduce the road width to a single lane.\u00a0 They range in severity from pretend ones, where the road surface of one side of the road is painted bright yellow or red, to massive great planters with bushes or trees in them.\u00a0 They never come alone.\u00a0 At the very least there’s one at each end of a village.\u00a0 In severe cases of road un-safety madness, you can find yourself running a slalom course through town.\u00a0 And the direction that has priority, changes, seemingly at random!<\/p>\n

The other sort of insane road furniture involves an extended hexagon with severe kerbs on both sides.\u00a0 These are to be found in the middle of the road at random intervals.\u00a0 \u00a0Around them, the carriageways are deflected to mirror the hexagonal shape.\u00a0 They are like a double chicane each way.\u00a0 To negotiate them, it is necessary to steer in towards the pavement and any passing pedestrian.\u00a0 That’s alarming enough, although hitting a Frenchman or two probably wouldn’t write the caravan off.\u00a0 But at the exit you have to steer towards the other lane and, of course any oncoming vehicles.\u00a0 Much more dangerous!\u00a0 Naturally, these are supposed to be negotiated at reduced speeds.\u00a0 But that’s not French driving style.\u00a0 They like to drive as straight as they can through the obstruction often using the angled kerb to help bounce them 45 degrees outwards and then 45 degrees back again.<\/p>\n

While towing a caravan it’s necessary to “over-run” corners to avoid hitting the kerb with the caravan wheels. Getting past these ridiculous features while towing therefore involves driving further to the right and subsequently further to the left than when driving solo.\u00a0 From the passenger’s perspective it must be a nightmare when coming out of the constriction.\u00a0 Driving what looks like straight into the wrong lane.<\/p>\n

They used to say that most pedestrian fatalities in France occur on zebra crossings.\u00a0 I bet if a survey of urban car accidents was done properly, these calming measures would feature high on the list as causative agents!\u00a0 Talk about distracting drivers from what’s going on around!\u00a0 Things like pedestrians, stray dogs, children, road signs and discussions about what we are having for tea all take a low priority at these times of stress!<\/p>\n

Sorry about the rant.\u00a0 I’m going for a lie down now!\u00a0 I’ve picked up some products to assist “driver-calming” measures!<\/p>\n

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Arriving at our new “home” after a drive in wet weather, we found large sections of the site were fenced off.\u00a0 Too wet to drive onto.\u00a0 A number of people were isolated in the no-go areas.\u00a0 The campsite owners were flying in supplies and drinking water by drone.\u00a0 Our choice was in a “marginal area”.\u00a0 If we hadn’t got 4 wheel drive, we wouldn’t have got in.\u00a0 Two (dry) days later, the track in was still “interesting”!<\/p>\n

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And the caravan wheels showed signs of a semi-submerged approach!<\/p>\n

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But our pitch is very spacious and open with a good outlook over surrounding fields and woods.<\/p>\n

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The nearby village of Rochechouart is world famous.\u00a0 Well, famous in certain circles.\u00a0 Well, at least Glenda knew about it – her extensive research had told her how this place (somewhat before I was born) experienced a life-changing event.\u00a0 Catastrophic, even!<\/p>\n

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But before we get to that, it’s time for a snackette.\u00a0 An excellent quiche and salad at a road-side delicatessen on the main route through town.\u00a0 While we sat there, the sum total of vehicles passing was exactly … none.\u00a0 OK,\u00a0 we weren’t there all afternoon, but a zero score indicates that this town is an LTN or, as the Lord Mayor of London would say, a low traffic neighbourhood!<\/p>\n

And now the catastrophe.\u00a0 \u00a0For a change, we weren’t involved in this one in any way.\u00a0 But as disasters go, it was pretty epic.\u00a0 There was a major meteorite strike just near where we are sitting.<\/p>\n

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These remnants may or may not be original star dust.\u00a0 As they are just sitting on the pavement, I suspect a bit of artistic replication may have been involved.\u00a0 But you never know.\u00a0 If we extrapolate our traffic survey, we can deduce that no cars have past them in living memory.\u00a0 So no cosmological expert or “meteorite-ologist would have driven by and recognised them for what they are.\u00a0 Anyway, real or copy, these fellows would have made the ground shake a bit when they landed.\u00a0 However, they are only fragments of the main event!<\/p>\n

It was actually a whole asteroid that struck.\u00a0 Calculated to have been about 1.5 km in diameter and weighing some 6,000 million tons.\u00a0 It hit Rochechouart at a speed of 20 km a second with an energy some 14 million times that of the Hiroshima bomb.\u00a0 It left a crater more than 25 km in diameter.\u00a0 (Someone’s calculator must have more buttons on it than mine to work that lot out!)<\/p>\n

Although this all happened a wee while ago\u00a0 – some 200 million years previously – the full extent of what had happened here was only recognised in the 1970s and 1980s.\u00a0 And it was as recently as 2008, that the French State acknowledged the heritage value of the Rochechouart Impact Structure, creating the \u201cR\u00e9serve Naturelle Nationale de l\u2019Astrobl\u00e8me de Rochechouart-Chassenon\u201d.\u00a0 Educational point – the term Astrobleme, (or Astrobl\u00e8me in French) is synonymous with “Impact Structure”.\u00a0 Literally it means\u00a0 “Star Wound”.\u00a0 The meteorite event is celebrated in town every year – and this year it’s next week!\u00a0 They already have the bunting up outside the ch\u00e2teau.<\/p>\n

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We are gutted.\u00a0 We were really looking forward to seeing all the locals (who don’t drive past the delicatessen) dress up as meteorites.\u00a0 The mind boggles!<\/p>\n

The ch\u00e2teau is home to a collection of modern art.\u00a0 They don’t have tickets for seniors, so they gave us student rates!\u00a0 (The reduction possibly more to do with a closed gallery than our pensionable status.)<\/p>\n

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The modern art collection was – well,\u00a0 modern art.\u00a0 Not my cup of tea really!\u00a0 But the ch\u00e2teau itself was lovely …<\/p>\n

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… they even unlocked the door to the terrace for us.\u00a0 Probably when they realised we weren’t into long rows of rubble masquerading as art!\u00a0 Here is Glenda admiring what was essentially the floor of a massive crater – the rim of the impact structure having long since weathered away.<\/p>\n

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The wall paintings were excellent.\u00a0 Above the rubble, you can see some of the ten tasks of Hercules.\u00a0 The mural below, depicted a hunting scene:<\/p>\n

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These two styles of fresco offer a rare combination of the colourful wall painting (characteristic of the style of the end of the Middle Ages) and the “grisaille” technique (shades of grey only).\u00a0 Apparently an innovation of 16th century art.<\/p>\n

The ch\u00e2teau has been completely and beautifully renovated inside.\u00a0 The roof space gives a clear indication of the structural complexity of the building..<\/p>\n

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We never did find the closed-off gallery!<\/p>\n

So that was how we spent a happy Sunday.\u00a0 Quiche and salad for lunch with no passing traffic.\u00a0 Followed by an OAP tour of an ancient building located within the crater of an even more ancient astrobleme!\u00a0 Old, ancient and prehistoric!<\/p>\n

More tragedy in the next episode!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camping Alouette in Cognac-le-For\u00eat is our next target.\u00a0 But getting there involves a fairish journey on N and D roads.\u00a0 The French have REALLY taken to speed bumps.\u00a0 It must be a love affair.\u00a0 Otherwise they would be up in… <\/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":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spain-and-france-2024"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5327","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=5327"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6735,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5327\/revisions\/6735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}