I wasn’t expecting to have a weekend away, but yesterday I got an email from the SNCF telling me that to celebrate the semaine de la mobilité, 1000 TER tickets a day were being sold for 1€, so I looked at a map and chose a destination.
The Nouvelle Aquitaine is vast. It’s the largest region in France in fact, comprising 12 départements, and is served by a comprehensive rail network that stretches all the way from the Pyrenees on the border with Spain (Hendaye) in the south-west to the Massif Central in the north-eastern Creuse (Guéret).
This means there’s plenty to explore, and I don’t have to go far to get to a station; my nearest non-mainline station is closer than Angoulême and I can leave the car there for free. Today I elected to use Thiviers, because it seems to be more frequently served than La Coquille (my favouritest little station ever).
The TERs are funky little diesel trains which potter along what the SNCF consider to be the less glamorous routes on the network, and have a maximum speed of about 120kph with a prevailing wind. So there’s plenty of opportunity to look at the world as it slides past the window.
The Thiviers-Bordeaux train left at 09:08 and before long I was asleep, after rueing the extra beers I’d promised myself I wouldn’t have yesterday evening. For some reason, I’d also woken up at 4am this morning and failed to get back to sleep, so the gentle rocking was a most welcome movement. In any case, it’s mostly green until you get near Bordeaux — not missing much — at which point it becomes green and viney, and then in an instant Bordeaux proper is upon you.
I had an hour and forty-five minutes to change train, so dutifully wandered to the nearest bit of green I could find near the river — via a church, some street market, and a pigeon coop — where I sat, just next to the Pont de Pierre, to eat my sandwich. A kindly gentleman with more conversation than teeth shared his Guinness with me as thanks for using my bottle opener as opposed to sacrificing a tooth, bought his “afternoon weed”, and proceeded to tell me about being from Guiana (fun fact: as an overseas département of France, it’s the western-most part of the European Union) whilst attempting to ponce fags off random passers-by.
I left him trying to score a light at about 12:15 to walk back to Saint-Jean and board the packed train to Mont-de-Marsan about a minute before it departed. My own fault. I chose a seat next to a woman who seemed offended when the conductor suggested that seats were for people, not bags. Other seats were available, but she’d made such an effort to clear the one next to her it would’ve been a waste not to take advantage of it.
We didn’t speak.
Eventually, things quitened down a few stops down the line and I secured myself a window seat with a little less atittude — not that there was much to see, really. Even from near a window this part of France is quite foresty, and the train is for the most part flanked on both sides by a variety of differently-sized conifers and occasional scrubland just to mix it up a little.
The hotel I booked a bit last-minute can be seen as you disembark, and is right next to a level crossing that doesn’t look as if it gets much train action. Originally the station was on the Bordeaux to Irun line but is now a terminus, perhaps as a direct result of Mr and Mrs Bonaparte’s failure to stop their imperial train at the station’s inauguration ceremony on the 18th August 1859, despite the presence of an orchestra who’d assembled along with the prefect and some bunting.
Mont-de-Marsan is the capital of the Landes département, which produces many gastronomical delights including but not limited to Armagnac. The city sits on the confluence of two rivers – the Midou and the Douze – which meet to form an imaginatively-named third river, the Midouze. It has a military air base, medieval streets, churches, and lots of sculptures. Lots of sculptures. I know very little about sculpture, but am relatively confident that a lot of those ladies must catch their death in winter, having observed the state of numerous nipples in the gardens around the Despiau-Wlérick Museum.
There are plentiful sculptures (and almost twice as many nipples) to be seen throughout the centre-ville too, the most alive possibly being La Plongeuse, a bronze of a woman diving into the river below. All have information panels next to them so you can read about the artist, and as a sign of things to come, the first sculpture you seen when leaving the station has a QR code so you can a) find out what the hell it is and b) follow a tour.
No mention of the nipples.
A wedding was taking place in the town hall and at the same time there seemed to be some kind of agricultural celebration which involved herding cattle and sheep through the city centre under a police escort. There was a book festival outside the theatre and tomorrow there’s a gastronomy festival (including Armagnac) which I’m not sure I’ll be able to go to. But it’s good to know about for next year.
After a lot of walking for most of the afternoon, I sampled a selection of terraces before deciding on something to eat in the evening. There are plenty of options, not all of them duck-themed, but after a powernap in the evening I decided my feet would prefer pizza from a place five minutes from the hotel. Not original, I know, but I really didn’t have the energy. Not even a home-made tiramisu could pick me up, so I waddled gently back up the hill to the hotel wondering where the sound of brass band music was coming from.
I never found out.
