Jeannine & Roger's French Cheese Odyssey

Privas - 7th May

The above photo is reflective of our day.
The intention was to do a cheese related geocache in the hills 19 kilometres from Privas, however the car GPS likes to take you to the centre of the nearest town no matter how busy it is and how narrow the streets are. We left Montelimar with the sun shining after a light drizzle and the temperature was 30 degrees, by time we got to Privas black clouds and thunder loomed.

Cache abandoned we went to Privas' only tourist attraction, the Site of Montoulon: three crosses on a hill, that light up at night, wasn’t worth parking a kilometre down the road and running uphill in the rain.
Next plan was to go to Aubenas, however the GPS had other ideas so she was quickly turned off and we went home randomly stopping at any town that looked interesting.
First stop Saint Vincent-de-Barres medieval old town on a hill.

Second town, Rochemaure, has some very old ruins from medieval times. Most medieval towns are built on the top or sides of hills with narrow steep paths for pilgrims on foot, therefore the foreign tourist has to park at the bottom and walk the village to see the best attractions. A couple going down the hill said something to Roger in French, which we guessed had something to do with his jandals as they were looking at his feet and tut-tutting. We saw the same couple when we came back down and assumed the guy asked Roger if he got to the top in his jandals, he was honest and said no, they laughed. We got half way to the top, visited the 12th century church, decided we had done enough penance for a Sunday and moved on.

Are you looking for a place in France? the below street has a number of do ups for sale, complete with cat.

The following photo is Roger’s idea of how to park to avoid other people opening their doors onto our new SUV. In France if there is an uncontrolled intersection, no lights, signs or road markings, you give way to the right, in theory. However in practice if you have white number plates you just drive at any other car going through the intersection and blast your horn. If you have yellow plates (VIP) you drive on blindly believing you have the right of way. If you have red numbers plates like us everybody gives way to you because they think you are a crazy driver from NZ and want to avoid an accident.

Cheese Experience No.16 - Maroilles: Today is Sunday and the supermarkets are open for a short period in the morning, tomorrow they are shut for VE DAY (end of WWII) so we headed to the supermarket to stock up. Unfortunately so had everybody else, the shelf stacker was obviously on holiday and so the choice of local cheese was nil.
I chose this Northern France cheese because it has interesting history.
It was supposedly first made in 920AD by monks of the Abbey of Maroilles and later made famous by many French kings as one of their favourites. It is considered one of the oldest French cheeses protected by the AOP production standards. The colour of the rind comes from the cheese being placed in a ventilated drying room to form bacteria, it is then brushed regularly to remove the natural white mould and to allow the red bacteria to turn the rind red-orange; not sure why you would bother in my amateur opinion as it didn’t add to the flavour.
Maroilles is produced in squares and sold in 4 sizes, we got the quarter size block, with the posh packaging.