Captain cook
At this time of year a lot of the campsites have started closing for winter so, as we made our way back towards the Alps, our choices of where to stay became a bit limited and we ended up choosing campsites that we might not normally stay at. Which is how we ended up staying at a fairly surreal place in a little town called Torre Daniele. It’s not a massive town but we still had difficulty locating the campsite itself and, even after spotting it, couldn’t find a way in and somehow ended up driving over a sort of rickety old foot bridge. The place was full of old knackered caravans and looked abandoned, apart from a single dog who was barking loudly. Claire hopped out to see if she could find someone in charge and approximately 20 seconds later was back in the van with the barking dog hot on her heels. We drove a bit further into the camp and an elderly couple emerged from one of the caravans. They were Dutch, very friendly and told us that they came here for two months every year to help harvest the local vineyards. As if to illustrate the point, the husband disappeared for a couple of minutes and returned with a magnum-sized bottle of red wine which he promptly presented us with. “Four euros,” he squealed, “good, no?!” Good, yes!
We were about to open the wine (we’d been in the camp about five minutes by this point) when we became aware of a strange ringing sound, faint at first, but rising in volume until it became an almighty jangling cacophony. A massive herd of cows were being, er, herded down from the mountains along the main road. Each cow sported a very large cowbell and the din was incredible. In fact it was borderline unbearable. The farmers doing the herding must have been deaf or, at the very least, have suffered from extreme tinnitus. Chaos reigned and traffic came to a standstill as the bovine orchestra ambled down the road clanging and rutting. Yes, there was rutting being attempted along the way too.
Back at the campsite, it never really became clear who was running the place and our suspicions were that it might have been the noisy dog – it even had its own chair outside the office. There were humans around but none of them seemed to know (or care) what was going on. When we went to pay the next morning, the dog ran into the office and through a door at the back to fetch a little old lady who came out to take the money. Then she disappeared again and it was the dog who stood at the gate and barked its goodbyes as we left. Very odd.
As some of you may know, we are going to do a season as chalet hosts this winter so we thought it might be a good idea to get some practice in. To that end, we’d booked a place on a “Chalet Hosting and Cookery Course” in the French Alps. To get from Italy to France, we took the very steep and winding San Bernardo pass, the same route taken by Hannibal and his elephants when they famously crossed the Alps to attack the Romans. Those elephants were possibly more suited to the journey than our clockwork campervan.
The cookery course we were booked on was to take place in an actual chalet and we assumed it would be attended by other like-minded couples hoping to become chalet hosts. When the rest of the students turned up it became very clear, very quickly, that they were actual students – all aged between 17 and 19. None of them had ever cooked before, most of them had no interest in cooking and a lot of them were there simply to complete some sort of module on the Duke Of Edinburgh scheme. This meant that the course started off on a very basic level. So basic, in fact, that on day one we were taught how to wash our hands properly and how to chop an onion. As Claire and I looked at each other in despair, one of the students, a fairly posh 17-year-old girl, took it upon herself to faint. It wasn’t clear whether this was caused by boredom or that her brain couldn’t cope with the complex information it was receiving and had simply shut down.
As the week went on we were subjected to highly intellectual lectures with titles such as “Why Germs Are Bad” or “What Is A Herb?” after which we had to answer frustratingly patronising questions and if we answered correctly we were rewarded with a sweet! Even though to us it felt like being back at primary school, for some of the other students that sweet was often a hard won thing – one lad was given a multiple-choice question about where to store raw meat and somehow came up with “by the bins”.
Each mealtime we were split into groups and were charged with preparing and cooking various cakes, breakfasts and three-course dinners for the instructors and other students – 16 of us in all. The quality of the cooking varied greatly from group to group and there was a fairly high state of apprehension whenever anything was being made by Group D, three 18-year-old lads who actually had to be shown the difference between a sieve and a colander. A memorable highlight of their week’s endeavours was a cake that had been made with salt instead of sugar.
To give the course its due, Claire and I did learn how to bake at altitude, are a lot more confident about cooking for large groups and (because they were all teenagers) got first-hand experience of what it will be like when guests are tired and grumpy. On the last night we all had a big drink up and, as well as being novice cooks, some of them proved to be novice drinkers. The last lesson of the week for us was that a sieve is the best way to remove teenage vomit from a hot tub. That’s a sieve and not a colander.
We were about to open the wine (we’d been in the camp about five minutes by this point) when we became aware of a strange ringing sound, faint at first, but rising in volume until it became an almighty jangling cacophony. A massive herd of cows were being, er, herded down from the mountains along the main road. Each cow sported a very large cowbell and the din was incredible. In fact it was borderline unbearable. The farmers doing the herding must have been deaf or, at the very least, have suffered from extreme tinnitus. Chaos reigned and traffic came to a standstill as the bovine orchestra ambled down the road clanging and rutting. Yes, there was rutting being attempted along the way too.
Back at the campsite, it never really became clear who was running the place and our suspicions were that it might have been the noisy dog – it even had its own chair outside the office. There were humans around but none of them seemed to know (or care) what was going on. When we went to pay the next morning, the dog ran into the office and through a door at the back to fetch a little old lady who came out to take the money. Then she disappeared again and it was the dog who stood at the gate and barked its goodbyes as we left. Very odd.
As some of you may know, we are going to do a season as chalet hosts this winter so we thought it might be a good idea to get some practice in. To that end, we’d booked a place on a “Chalet Hosting and Cookery Course” in the French Alps. To get from Italy to France, we took the very steep and winding San Bernardo pass, the same route taken by Hannibal and his elephants when they famously crossed the Alps to attack the Romans. Those elephants were possibly more suited to the journey than our clockwork campervan.
The cookery course we were booked on was to take place in an actual chalet and we assumed it would be attended by other like-minded couples hoping to become chalet hosts. When the rest of the students turned up it became very clear, very quickly, that they were actual students – all aged between 17 and 19. None of them had ever cooked before, most of them had no interest in cooking and a lot of them were there simply to complete some sort of module on the Duke Of Edinburgh scheme. This meant that the course started off on a very basic level. So basic, in fact, that on day one we were taught how to wash our hands properly and how to chop an onion. As Claire and I looked at each other in despair, one of the students, a fairly posh 17-year-old girl, took it upon herself to faint. It wasn’t clear whether this was caused by boredom or that her brain couldn’t cope with the complex information it was receiving and had simply shut down.
As the week went on we were subjected to highly intellectual lectures with titles such as “Why Germs Are Bad” or “What Is A Herb?” after which we had to answer frustratingly patronising questions and if we answered correctly we were rewarded with a sweet! Even though to us it felt like being back at primary school, for some of the other students that sweet was often a hard won thing – one lad was given a multiple-choice question about where to store raw meat and somehow came up with “by the bins”.
Each mealtime we were split into groups and were charged with preparing and cooking various cakes, breakfasts and three-course dinners for the instructors and other students – 16 of us in all. The quality of the cooking varied greatly from group to group and there was a fairly high state of apprehension whenever anything was being made by Group D, three 18-year-old lads who actually had to be shown the difference between a sieve and a colander. A memorable highlight of their week’s endeavours was a cake that had been made with salt instead of sugar.
To give the course its due, Claire and I did learn how to bake at altitude, are a lot more confident about cooking for large groups and (because they were all teenagers) got first-hand experience of what it will be like when guests are tired and grumpy. On the last night we all had a big drink up and, as well as being novice cooks, some of them proved to be novice drinkers. The last lesson of the week for us was that a sieve is the best way to remove teenage vomit from a hot tub. That’s a sieve and not a colander.
Great to read your latest adventures
ReplyDeleteLol. Very funny. Love it!
ReplyDelete