All Roads Lead to France: Chateau du Luc

The attached image displays a reasonably accurate map of our route from Styria (Austria’s southeast wine region) to Cantal (France’s south central cattle grazing and cheese making department). Our California camper van has now been outfitted with a “SLO” sticker, which reminds us of the Central Coast but actually stands for Slovenia, underscoring our state of homeless wayward disorientation.

The six-day journey included visits to an astonishing 15-mile-long underground cave in Slovenia and several imposing churches and cathedrals in northern Italy, as well as a spectacular drive over the Italian alps and into France. As we reached the home stretch, towards our new hosts at the Chateau du Luc, the not-so-smart phone directed us to the other Chateau du Luc, an ancient, decomposing ruin of a castle, about an hour and a half away from our true destination, the less dilapidated Chateau du Luc outside the hamlet of Saint Poncy, roughly halfway between the cities of Saint Flour and Clermont-Ferrand.

And now we begin another month, with our fourth host family, in a magnificent nineteenth century chateau, owned and occupied for the last five years by a British family with two school-age daughters. Each Work-Away experience has provided us with a new and different perspective on the world, and the variety of settings and lifestyles has been radically varied and colorful. Our current situation is no exception to this series of extreme circumstances, so mind-boggling that my incredulity leaves me speechless.