I spent the Summer of 1979 as a kitchen assistant for PGL Adventure Holidays in the Ardeche and was in the first group of workers to arrive that year. We were a minibus full of kitchen assistants, cleaners, canoeists, canoe repairers, drivers, maintenance people and general dogsbodies. Due to the age and decrepitude of the minibus what should have been a twelve hour journey from London to the Segries centre took nearer thirty six.
By the time we arrived we’d gelled into a gang. Our odyssey became legendary and workers who arrived with school party coaches (which was how most of them got there or back home) looked on us with some awe when told the tale.
We were there to set up the centre for the summer and some of us worked right through from May to September. Other workers were there for a cheap holiday, particularly the canoeists who were doing something they liked in a wonderful location for a fortnight or so. We got our keep, pocket money pay and a day off a week. Whenever possible I took my time off in two morning shifts, preferably one on a Sunday so I could go to Mass in the nearby village of Vagnas.
Once the centre was ready my job was to help prepare ‘river boxes’; the food that would be carried downriver by the canoeists for lunch, and breakfasts, dinners and staff lunches.
After lunch most of us kitchen staff had a siesta until it was time to prepare the evening meal.
I first watched Le Tour de France in the last few weeks before Ferretfingers was born, and have attempted to follow it every year since. For those three weeks my afternoons are devoted to the Tour whilst ironing, knitting and yesterday drafting a blog.
Last week Stage 12 took us over the Rhone and up the Ardeche river.
Suddenly there was a helicopter shot of Vagnas.
Fester and Thunderthighs were brought downstairs by my delighted shrieks of
“It’s Vagnas! Look! Look! I went to Mass in that church.”
Then the Tour cycled up to and through Labastide de Virac, the village I’d walked through on the way to visit LeMas, another PGL camp on the lip of the gorge.
It took three or four days for school groups to canoe all the way from Vallon Pont d’Arc to Pont Saint Esprit and Le Mas was the first point they climbed out of the gorge for the night. I got a lift back to Segries on the school party’s coach with the canoeists.
So many memories …
That year PGL also had a Mediterranean centre at La Grande Motte, where the school parties would do watery things in the sea. On changeover days staff could travel down for the day with one school group and, after a few hours, return with their replacements.
The canoeists and river captain, a piratical looking chap we called Stevie B, took their days off on changeover days. Some went to ‘Grotty Motty’, others stayed in camp and enjoyed a siesta.
One leisurely staff lunchtime one of the canoeists expressed her astonishment that I’d never gone down to the Med and had no great desire to do so.
“But how can you be here and not want to experience the country?” she drawled in a superior manner.
“You leave Ben alone” piped up Stevie B “She goes into the village. She goes on walks and explores the area. She’s got more experience of the country than you have.”
Which quite surprised me, and made me wonder:-
1. How and why did Stevie B know, or even notice, what I did in my time off?
2. What she had done to annoy him enough he took the opportunity to have a go at her?
I told Thunderthighs this story, dug out an old album and showed him the photo of the Cookies (that’s what the canoe repairers called us) at Segries.
“There’s me in the pink sundress – oh I loved that dress – younger than you are now …”
He peered at the photo, then
“Good grief!”
No comments:
Post a Comment