Speechaway

 

Duprat ... Delprat ... Delpratt ... ancestors

13th August 2008

Heading south west on the Huguenot’s trail

Two weeks have passed since the last blog and we have covered many kilometres passing through 16 French Departments. Our last week with the family was a happy time. We had a fun luncheon visit at Babeth (Dominic’s sister), Patrick and Aurelien’s place in Epernay at which time all five grandchildren were present. It was a great opportunity for a photo which we will have framed to present to Dominic’s mum as her seventieth birthday present. One week ago we bid farewell to Philippe, Marie Claude and the children until November and Nana until September. She will be joining us for a holiday in Provence for ten days. It is wonderful that she feels well enough to undertake this trip.

Last Wednesday(6-8-08), the car tightly packed with all our belongings, we commenced the next leg of our trip. Taking advantage of France’s excellent system of motorways we arrived in La Rochelle seven hours later. Our Chambres d’hotes, ‘Les Passeroses’ was our very comfortable home for the next four nights. La Rochelle is an interesting city with a rich history and a very pretty old port complete with three towers. It was from La Rochelle that many of the Huguenot refugees left for new and safer shores and so it was here that we started delving a little into the history of our ancestors, the Duprats. We had a good look at the Protestant Temple and Museum discovering interesting facts about life in La Rochelle during the late 1600s. We also spent some time sightseeing around the area visiting L’Ile d’Oleron (not a patch on Queensland islands), an oyster farm at Marennes  and Rochefort where a replica of a 1780 frigate “The Hermione” is being built and where there is also a very interesting museum depicting life at the turn of the century. Unfortunately the weather was not the best for the beach but I did put my big toe into the Atlantic Ocean.

On Sunday (10-8-08) our short but pretty route along the Charente River finished in Cognac, our stop for one night. Our Chambre d’Hotes was high on a hill in a small village just outside Cognac and commanded a magnificent view over the river and surrounding fields. Best of all for Natalie it had a lovely big pool which we all enjoyed. The owner of the house works at Hennessy’s Cognac and very kindly gave us a pass to visit the distillery which was very interesting, particularly the tasting at the end!

We continued our travels on Monday to Nerac, the birthplace of our ancestor, Daniel Duprat. As we drove into Nerac we were confronted with the stadium named “Stade- Andre Duprat” : a distant cousin perhaps?! The old part of Nerac is very pretty and very old. There is a wing of King Henri 4th’s castle still standing which now houses a museum. We were fortunate enough to arrive at the museum just in time for a performance by two actors dressed in medieval costumes who presented a play (much of which was in old French) interspersed with music played on old string instruments from the era. We also were offered refreshments afterwards! I was anxious to find out more information about Daniel and so we hung around Nerac in the pouring rain until the library opened at 2 pm. The library assistants were extremely helpful and found a book about the Huguenots in Nerac. We have organised to have some of the pages scanned and e-mailed to us. We found the name of Daniel Duprat in a list of Huguenot refugees to leave Nerac in 1698. His wife was listed as Isabeau Caillau ( a piece of information I don’t think you have, Aunty Catherine- presuming this is the correct Daniel Duprat!)

Our next stop was Juillan, a small village between Tarbes and Lourdes at the foot of the Pyrenees. The Chambres d’Hotes was magnificent, the best yet. It was an old farmhouse with the barn converted to accommodate four rooms upstairs and a large dining area downstairs. Patrick and Nathalie, our convivial hosts had taken five years to complete the project themselves. Patrick owns an MG and was keen to ‘talk cars’ with Dominic. Our room was named “Pic du Midi” as, in fine weather, it has a view of the mountain. Sadly we were not blessed with fine weather and though it did not rain too much it was very cloudy. Whilst in the Pyrenees we visited Lourdes (along with thousands of pilgrims as it was assumption day the following day), executed a scary drive up the Col du Tourmalet ( of Tour de France fame) in very cloudy weather and took the walk to the spectacular Cirque de Gavarnie.

We are now in Barcelona, which is a story for the next blog.