Free What the Traveller Saw by Eric Newby Page A

Bloody Marys in the world, and never spilt a drop of liquor other than down his customers’ throats.
    What many people came for, rather than to gaze at the ocean, or ride a mechanical horse, was the food. Breakfast was a sort of litany, as in the Queen Elizabeth , with nine different sorts of jam. But it’s what we didn’t eat that we remember. Looking at the menus today I wonder why I never had Pickled Herring in Chablis, Medallion of Huachinango Sauté Concarnoise, Broiled Rock Cornish Hen Saint-Germain (animal, veg. or mineral?), or a Religieuse with Coffee. At the Captain’s Dinner, which was followed by Le Dancing , there was Bird’s Nest Soup.
    Nevertheless, partly because the France was unable to replenish its store with fresh eggs in New York for the last lap to Southampton, the palm for food must be given to the Queen Elizabeth. The France was more sophisticated but, oddly enough, less fun. At Southampton, while queuing for immigration, we heard one well-heeled English person say to another: ‘I’ll telephone my butler and tell him to telephone your butler and say we need both Rolls.’

Travels in the Cévennes Without a Donkey
FRANCE, 1965
    T UESDAY A fine, windy crossing to Calais. Drove to Boulogne to find that night train to Avignon could not accommodate vehicles over 64½ inches in height. Land Rover 77½ inches. Forced to remove entire metal super-structure with spanners. Left with huge piles of nuts, struts and bolts, side windows, etc., like jumbo-size Meccano set. Shared couchette with family of five. Carriages very new with clean towels. The train left at 8.10 p.m.
    WEDNESDAY Arrived Avignon 8.20 a.m. Vehicles unloaded at rural siding complete with snack bar and wash place. French officials all trying to win courtesy prize.
    Exhausted by rebuilding Land Rover we spent rest of the morning under plane trees in Place de l’Horloge. How expensive it became sitting under plane trees in Place de l’Horloge!
    Crossed Rhône in sizzling midday heat; through gravelly wastes to Tavel. Drank excellent, cold Tavel rosé in deserted main square. Then through the Forêts de Tavel and Malmont, strange, stony, almost waterless wastes, peppered with ilex and dwarf oaks and scented with thyme and lavender. Ate very good charcuterie in the ink-pot black shade of an ilex tree and finished the other half of the still-cold Tavel, to the insane music of cigales.
    5 p.m. Alès, dreary industrial town on the Gardon d’Alès, a river which has almost as many branches as our bank. R. L. Stevenson came here after travelling with and selling his donkey, Modestine, but only to collect his mail.
    By winding, wooded D 50. Saw forest of giant bamboos, 20 metres high, in Parc de Prafance. With sun going down rapidly, drove along wooded valley of another Gardon, Gardon de Mialet, and stopped at a fine, unofficial-looking camp site in a grove of chestnut trees down by the river, beyond Le Mialet. Fearful job pegging down tent on iron-hard soil using alloy pegs which behaved like folding teaspoons from a joke shop. The farm had some likely-looking chickens raised on good farmyard grit running about. Wanda ordered one for the following day. She then cooked veal in wine. Slept soundly on punctured airbed.
    THURSDAY Very hot morning – tent like an oven. Re-pitched it under a tree. Magnificent swimming in deep pools. Thousands of butterflies. Collected blackberries. Dined on chicken cooked with thyme, ratatouille, blackberries in wine, and drank Tavel rosé. Afterwards went for black-as-pitch swim in the Gardon. At 3 a.m. heard weird noises outside tent. Shades of Dominici and the dead Drummonds? Finally, I emerged trouserless from the tent armed with a hammer, whereupon the noises ceased.
    FRIDAY Warm and beautiful day. To St Jean du Gard, little town with one long street where Stevenson sold his donkey. Outside the town bought the most delicious honey we had ever tasted – as black as treacle.
    Then through great, wooded mountains,