Rivers! France is full of them. And sometimes they get crazy.

Our little village, Laurens, has 3 tiny (most of the time) streams that run through it: The Naubine, The Libron, & The Sauvanes. They actually meet in the middle of town, each coming from a different direction. I love these canals--they are one of my favorite places to walk as they are most always dry & shaded, & very quiet.

We live on the canal called La Naubine. It's not the American idea of a canal, it's a wide cement plateau, 4 stories below our terrace. In the middle of it is a little trough, normally either empty or with maybe 2 inches of flowing water. That all changed last Friday at 4:00 pm.

It started to rain, then thunder, then it changed into a torrential downpour. All of a sudden, a neighbor banged on our door, telling us we should move the car out of the canal where we normally park. So of course we did, & in a hurry. By this time the water was getting higher, & big shoots of water were coming out of the side of the canal about 3 feet from where we had the car parked.

Our canal never got higher than about 2 feet, but the other 2 did. See our pictures & watch the video to see (& hear!) this incredible act of Mother Nature. Water pours out of the mountains behind us, & heads toward the Meditarrean Sea as fast as it can go. Normally these kind of rains happen in September, but this year this region, like the rest of the world, is experiencing the volatility of climate change. There's a sign in our medieval walkway (the entrance to our house, actually) that recalls the height of a "crue" (their word for huge flood) in 1868. It must have been a doozie because the sign is about 15 feet above the walkway, which is on a hill, & about 30-40 feet above the bottom of the cement canal, which was probably built as the result of either this Crue or another.

Well, good for them because these canals work! And good for them, since they've been experiencing a drought. Even the subterranean river systems are very low.

Saturday was a sparkling day, & we headed to Sommieres, a lovely city halfway between Montpellier & Nimes, to the east of us. It lies at the bottom of the Cevennes Mountains, & it too has a history of flooding. Their river, Le Vidourle, is our blog photo. It looked so peaceful on Saturday, but they too, had the heavy rainfall the night before. Their last really big flood was in 2002. See our album to see how high the water got then. The entire valley was a lake, & the medieval town's first floors were all flooded.

We love this town & its neighboring town Villevielle--it's full of life & there's so much to do there! We also have friends there, who had invited us to dinner in their lovely house overlooking, of course, the RIVER! It was such a pleasure to sip wine by their lovely pool, & look out on this beautiful valley.

However, getting there was a BIG issue! Not the river, this time, but a FETE. The French love summer, & each town has its particular fete, or, usually fetes! Chicagoans & Charlestonians--do you think we have lots of festivals? Do you ever get annoyed when streets are closed & you can't get to where you want to get? Well, that happened to us Saturday night. It took us 45 minutes to get to a house that we could have walked to in 15 minutes. Our GPS said it was 3 minutes away, but obviously not when every single street we tried to go into was "barre pour la fete". We do understand why you would put up barriers for a bull run, however. (Not that we understand why you would even have a bull run, though!)

Anyway, it was a delightful evening once we got there. As was our dinner the next evening, at our former villa in a vineyard, about 20 minutes from Laurens. Our hosts were our former landlords, Phillipe & Marie-France Bec. We are hoping to see them in Charleston in the next several years.

I mentioned climate change. Today we are experiencing "La Tramontane" a strong wind that comes from the north, bringing cool air. Normally it's about 92 at the end of July, today's temperature is 68. Who knows what it will be like next week? As we learned this week, Mother Nature is definitely in charge!

Wherever you are, we are hoping you had a wonderful July, & will enjoy August, which will be here so soon. We've just finished week 6, & have booked our return train to Paris on Aug. 23. Que le temps passe vite!

Love,

Elise & Les