A country stroll

Written Wednesday 05June, St Jean Pied de Port

Another perfect morning, in that we had nothing scheduled and it wasn’t raining. When I first awoke I opened our door to get a feel for the weather. Foggy! And cold! But I knew this was only temporary and that the fog would disappear as the temperature rose.

An hour later outside conditions were perfect; an absolutely clear sky and no wind. Over breakfast we discussed our plans. Mary’s involved shops, mine didn’t. For me the whole environment was screaming “WALK, WALK!” But where? Mary was going to walk too, but only a couple of hundred metres. But me, I could see the mountains and the vineyards hanging on them. Being a map sort of guy I dragged out the iPad.

Was there a way to hike on a scenic route for 10km or so without using the car? Unlike in the UK, there seem to be few inter-village walking tracks in France. Sure, there are truly big walking trails but the used-by-the-locals tracks from village to village found everywhere in the UK are not evident. Roads are plentiful of course so I turned my attention to these, especially those which were not attractive to large trucks and speeding commuters.

The iPad maps are adaptable to many situations, as I've been finding. Today I sat at the breakfast table and looked for a circuit starting and ending at home which was close to 10km in length. While there is no conventional scale on iPad maps, the route and distance between two chosen points is calculated by the device, provided that there is a known road, path or similar linking the two points. Within a few minutes I had a possibility, with several waypoints and a total distance of about 9km.

Testing the iPad’s capabilities for such a task was part of my plan, so into the backpack it went, with a 90% charge. For the first time on this trip I forsook the woollen beanie for my kayaking hat, which provides ample shade, necessary today.

Anyway, I set off, doing regular nav checks, as I would if using a map and compass or GPS, at every significant junction, of which there were many. In the event, the iPad made navigation an absolute doddle. When standing at an intersection of five minor roads I was able to see on the map exactly, to a couple of metres, where I was. The selected route was highlighted and the map also automatically rotated so that it was oriented correctly, thus enabling me to see which path I should take of the four options staring me in the face. To cap all this off I could instantly check the distance and estimated time to the next waypoint.

Nav check.

So I strode out and enjoyed the walk. Some pics and comments:

Truly a lovely day!

From a rabbit’s viewpoint.

Gate, definitely not Ikea.

Door in one of the quiet villages I passed through. At first I thought, as you probably did, that this was some lady’s undergarment. On closer examination it turned out to be a baguette bag, with the money bulging at the bottom. Presumably the local boulangerie drops off baguettes in much the same way as milk used to be delivered in Australia.

This was definitely a great way to experience the local area. I’ve found another slightly shorter walk for tomorrow and Mary and I will do it together, taking our lunch along.

Thanks for reading

Kev

Itsasoa Choir

by Mary

After our little sojourn by car around the villages nearby on Tuesday, we had dinner in the old town in a somewhat downmarket restaurant featuring a "Pilgrims' menu" which should have warned us that the fare would be mediocre. However, the venue was picturesque and the other diners, some with very sore feet, were more interesting than the food.

At 9pm we'd agreed to attend a concert in the old church featuring a 60 strong (men and women) capella Basque choir which was performing on that night only. Kevin went, under sufferance of course, but managed to sit through the one and a half hour performance on the hard church pews. The choir was excellent although we couldn't understand a word of anything. I thoroughly enjoyed it and the acoustics in the church were outstanding.

website

Kevin tried to take some pics of the performance but when the camera started beeping, the people near us gave us some black looks so he had to desist and get a pic off the internet.

St Jean Pied de Port is a pretty little place but although there are lots of visitors here, English is not widely heard. Most of the pilgrims seem to be French which is a bit surprising. The locals don’t speak English, even in the shops and restaurants, so it’s a constant battle to make yourself understood. I unfortunately have now read all the novels I brought with me plus two I exchanged in Figeac, so am bereft of something to read. I enquired at the Information Centre and found that there are no English language novels on sale in town. I’ll have to resort to fighting Kevin for time on this iPad which has various free books installed.

Mary

Basking in the Pays Basque

Written Tuesday 04June, St Jean Pied de Port

Just to show you that the sun has broken through, at last. In our back yard.

Having discovered on Sunday that the permanent no-parking notices all over town included the words “marche” and “lundi” and “0600-2000” we twigged that Monday, yesterday, was Market Day. Mary’s eyes brightened and so it was decreed that we’d attend. Weather forecasts available on-line had indicated for a couple of days that Monday would be sunny some of the time at least and would be followed by several days getting progressively warmer.

Monday morning was still overcast and cool but the market action was just around the corner so the weather was no deterrent at all and we were up and away by 10:00am. Finding some interesting pics was my goal while Mary’s goal was finding bargains; consequently we parted company for a couple of hours.

Serious trekker, presumably guarding his wife’s cart while she hits the shops (or perhaps she’s shot through!). He indicated to me that he was intending to go all the way, another 800km!

Black berets are definitely in, here, but always on males over about 60. Group at a brasserie.

Part of the market, the stalls of which were scattered over the town wherever space permitted.

Someone was making hay even when the sun wasn’t shining. The normal road traffic continued. Scene at a corner of the main street.

To our delight the sun broke through at around noon and we celebrated by removing many of our clothes, washing them (a little later), and sitting out in the backyard to eat our lunch and have an obligatory glass of red. It was now bask time, in Basque Country.

Part of “our” backyard, which is pretty big, bounded on the sides by ancient stone walls and covered by lawn mottled with daisies and buttercups.

Later on, as the earth rotated, the sun lit our apartment quite nicely.

Pelote Match

So, sports fans, here’s something for you. At 5:00pm Monday a pelote match was scheduled to be played in the town. Mary stayed home while I walked around to the nearby venue intent on finding out all about it. The ten euro entrance fee was a bit steep, I thought, but what the hell, and besides the ticket also included a free tour of a sheep cheese factory in some nearby village. Imagine a huge squash court with a few modifications to ensure that the ball bouncing surfaces are not all precisely at right angles to each other. On the left and back inner walls are lean-to structures about half wall height with wooden roofs about two metres wide which slope downwards and inwards.

Yes it’s all indoors. in this case inside a red stone barn-like structure built in 1937 specifically for pelote. The fans were accommodated on wooden benches around three sides, all looking down into the playing area. Modus operandi: similar to squash, but four players and oncourt ref. Bigger rubber ball allowed to be struck by the hand alone, no rackets, no feet. First to 50 points wins, no stipulated half-times or similar.

The right wall with spectators, from my point of view above the back wall.

Play under way. The ball is just visible (see arrow). In the bottom right corner of the front wall you’ll see a square cavity. Hitting the ball into that cavity means that the opponent has bugger all chance of predicting the bounce and thus it's an almost certain point.

Directly below me was the furthest distance on court from the front wall. Many shots were played at this position and it takes a fair whack to send the ball to the front wall from there.

The guys in green won in 90 minutes. 50-32, as I recall. After the game I went downstairs and made friends with the best player, who happened to be also the oldest. Those are his hands. Presumably he takes that stuff off between games!

Tuesday, bright and sunny. Yay!

Slept in till 08:45. Yay! Mary had been working on a plan, as she often does, involving me, and driving. An hour or so later we were trundling around an anti-clockwise tour which included several local villages and not a few potential navigation hazards. Lunch was a couple of ham, cheese and tomato baguettes assembled by the duty navigator and stored with a few other delicacies in a small Esky which we’d bought on day one and which is destined to become the property of our new friends Claude and Alain.

To be driving in strong sunlight again was a tonic. No damp sheep pics today!

Near the centre of many villages here is a church, and beautiful and well cared for they are. At this village there were several very large predatory birds (possibly golden eagles, or perhaps bearded vultures) riding the thermals. Look carefully and you’ll see at least one silhouetted against the lone cloud.

Nice cottage with big old oak tree on the right.

Headstones. These two have no Christian symbolism on them but instead favour a symbol widely associated around here with Basque culture. Curiously, on these examples the designs are mirrored. Whether that means anything I don’t know. The small bird is a fitting touch.

We stopped for a lunch break while driving through the narrow gorge known as Pas de Roland where the River Nive has carved a way through rock. It was great to see a river which appeared little affected by man, although we were on a road on one side and a railway ran parallel with the road on the other side.

Lunch spot, Pas de Roland

The villages have tongue-tying and memory-challenging names and as for keying them into the TomTom via the cumbersome remote, you’d better set aside ten minutes for each. I wonder how many villages in France have “Saint” as the first word of their names? Take as an example the last village we visited today, Saint-Etienne-de-Baigorry, by no means an extreme one. Makes Woolloongabba seem easy! Pics from SEdB:

Pont Romain, built 1661.

Mary peeping over the parapet.

Crossing the bridge carefully, lest it collapse.

Thanks for reading

Kev and Mary

Pied = Foot

Written 02Jun13, St Jean Pied de Port

As we drove toward it I must admit to some misgivings as to whether St Jean Pied de Port, where we’d chosen to spend a week and whose name contains references to foot and gate, would be able to maintain our interest for that whole time. The rural approaches were uninspiring, but the land quite suddenly became mountainous as we got closer to the Pyrenees, and thus gave us hope that it might be at least be scenic.

In fact, it is another great find, and another place I’d never heard of until a few months ago when a search for self-catering accommodation turned up two, and only two, possibilities here. It’s hard to attribute the location’s attractiveness to any one of the Basque heritage proudly on display, the town’s role on the edge of France’s southern defences over centuries, or the all pervasive mountain scenery. They all combine smoothly and produce a place where there seems to be a decent balance between activity and inactivity. Where all the visitors come from each day we’re not sure, but there are sufficient to support a bevy of restaurants, of which we’ll sample a different one each night, within a short walk of our accommodation.

View over part of the town from the Citadel.

Perhaps a reference to the recognition of Basque Country as a separate entity?

The River Nive runs through the town. This ruin is of an old mill which once was powered by the flow of the water.

Much of the human activity is a result of the town’s role as a key point for “pilgrims” trekking toward Santiago de Compostella, over 800km further to the south west, and across the Pyrenees. Plenty of them can be seen around town and some of the older buildings are put to use as accommodation, cheap and not-so-cheap, for them.

Portion of a placard in town, explaining the presence of real backpackers. Note the raindrops on the glass.

Pointing the way for arriving pilgrims to get their documents stamped, and find accommodation.

Sign on pilgrim accommodation place. Pic by Mary

Seen in a spectacles shop window. Probably the only reference to Australia in town. Weird, considering very few surfers wear glasses on the waves.

Bordeaux, the wine type, is abundant here, sold in the supermarkets and very drinkable. In our cottage/apartment Mary updates some friends.

Thanks for reading.

Kev

Into the Basque Country

Written 01Jun13, at St Jean Pied de Port, France

Spotted horses featured in our previous blog post and we saw them again today, the very ones, featured on a giant tourism poster along the motorway as we swept past at motorway speed. Figeac was behind us and we were headed about 500km SW toward the junction between the French and Spanish borders on the Atlantic Ocean.

But first a little about our last two days in Figeac. Rain continued to dribble out of the leaden sky but on the second last day we girded our loins to visit a market at Villefranche something-or-other (de Rouergue), just 40km south of Figeac. Yep, it was raining there too. Here we began to hear some English spoken, by Brits, who appear to have moved into this area in droves to get away from foul British weather. There were enough French people remaining to run the market stalls, but it can only be a matter of time before a stall run by Brits selling shepherd’s pie or the like appears.

No blog about travelling in France would be complete without a French market shot. Here’s ours, and you won’t see any more.

What did catch my eye was this real estate agent’s window display. The prices seem very reasonable so perhaps they reflect the state of the economy.

As the rain showed no sign of letting up we returned to our Figeac base without significant damage to the family economy. Friday was our last full day there and we happily spent most of the daylight hours indoors reading and generally being idle, as it was gloomy outside again and besides we’d seen all we wanted to see. Around five pm we paid a farewell visit to the Champollion Hotel bar, where we were becoming quite well known. By now all we had to do was sit down at one of the outdoor or indoor tables and the waitress would catch my eye from afar and deduce whether she should deliver the usual order or wander over and find what changes were required. This, our last visit, Mary switched to “vin rouge” instead of the usual large dark, sweet and powerful beer she usually had. On departure we bade the waitress a fond “Au Revoir” and hoped, probably naively, that she’d miss us. Seven nights, seven different Figeac restaurants for dinner and six of them, including the last, good, was our score at the end of the evening, wending our way on foot though narrow, damp cobbled streets again back to our cosy base.

Saturday, a day of a long drive, broke clear and sunny! We shared the driving as we usually do.

Mary at the wheel, doing 120kph on the motorway in our little Renault Clio, ten kph below the limit.

Basque country was our next port of call, at the town of Saint Jean Pied de Port, in France, very close to the Spanish border.

Here’s where we are based for the next week. On the map the blue you can see at top left represents the SE corner of the Bay of Biscay; Biarritz and San Sebastian are not far away.

Our first impressions are favourable, even if the weather is still marginal. We’re staying in a comfortable separate self contained apartment in the grounds of a private house in SJPdP. Numerous restaurants and brasseries and, to Mary’s delight, a great shopping precinct, are within a short stroll. The people are friendly and there are strong prospects of some interesting experiences. All we need now is some fine weather and even that looks like arriving by Monday.

Thanks for reading

Kev

Horses spotted underground

Written 29May13

Even though rain was still tumbling down today, we ventured from our warm accommodation, intent on driving west downstream along the valley of the Cele, which runs through Figeac, to its confluence with its larger neighbour the Lot, and then follow the Lot valley upstream back to just south of Figeac. In this area these streams are bounded by limestone hills, in many places worn away into spectacular cliffs to which homes and villages cling.

Cele valley. Examine the pics carefully and you’ll see the buildings use the cliff as their back walls.

In many places the road runs very close to the cliffs, with the river on the road’s southern flank. Here the roadmakers have resorted to tunnelling into the cliff.

Note the scallop shell motif on the backpack. Pilgrims headed for Santiago de Compostella, in Spain, in the rain, Cele valley.

We were headed for Pech Merle…

In the millenia before the latest Ice Age began to thaw (around 15,000 years ago) to today’s “normal” temperatures, much of the animal population, including humans, of what is now western Europe, had found some refuge from the cold in the fertile valleys of the Cele and Lot rivers not far from Figeac. Britain and Ireland and much of the continent were covered by a sheet of ice and were one land mass with few if any land animals surviving on the ice sheet. The humans in the valleys south of the ice sheet were hunter gatherers but were thoroughly modern in that their brains were as large and as well developed as ours are now. Evidence? Among other, the wonderful cave paintings which they left behind.

Spotted horses gallery, Pech Merle caves, France. This is not my image, but has been borrowed from a very few images on this subject publicly available on the Internet.

Back in 1922 a couple of youngsters with a keen interest in such things discovered a small cave near where they lived, just near the junction of the Cele with the Lot. In the process of exploring this find, they hit the explorer jackpot. Their small cave led downward into a much larger series of natural galleries and in these galleries were unmistakeable signs of use by earlier humans. This site, Pech Merle, is one of the very few such sites which are open to the public. Visitor numbers are restricted to 700 per day and all must visit as part of a guided tour.

The natural galleries are spectacular enough in their own right, but the early human artworks and evidence of human presence, all exceeding 20,000 years in age (using credible dating technology) put the natural stuff in the shade. Bare footprints left by a youth or child in what was then mud on the floor of the cave were for me the most interesting. If I’d stumbled across such prints in mud today I’d assess them as recent and attribute them to a barefooted child. Sprayed prints of human hands, much like those at ancient Australian aboriginal art sites were also present.

The galleries were entombed at least 10,000 years ago when land slippage closed the entrance which had been used by early humans and animals such as cave bears, which hibernated in the cave. This left the interiors frozen in time until the young twentieth century explorers found their way in.

After our underground stint at Pech Merle, the rain still dribbling down, we ate our picnic lunch while huddled in the car and then headed back east, this time along the Lot valley, stopping off at Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, a very steep-streeted village huddled on high ground on the left bank of the Lot.

Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. Picturesque but cold and wet and a hell of a climb from the carpark.

By this time our cosy apartment was working on us like home port does for a sailor so we commanded our navigator to point the way and were home within the hour, just as another heavy rain shower struck.

We’re gradually working our way through the local restuarants, aiming for a different one each night, all within a short walk from home. Tonight we tried number five, and just like the others, it was excellent and very reasonably priced. We find we can get a very good meal for the two of us, with drinks, for under €50, and sometimes much lower. Two nights and two restaurants to go before we move on, down toward the Spanish border.

Thanks for reading

Kev

Figeac, Conques, Champollion.

Written 27May13

Figeac (pronounced Fijak) has been a real “find”. We’d never heard of anyone who’d been here and didn’t even know it existed before about four months ago. But when we discovered that there was a suitable self-catering apartment available here we did some quick research and found many positive aspects so booked it.

On arrival on Saturday, after a 500km drive, we settled in quickly and strolled all of 300m to the central pedestrianised square where we discovered a vibrant impromptu jazz session by young people using only wind instruments was underway. This set the mood and the more we saw of Figeac as we wandered around its narrow picturesque streets the more we liked it, even though the weather was gloomy that first day.

Jazz concert. Pic by Mary

The apartment is essentially what was a single large high-ceilinged room in a very old mansion. A bedroom has been created by adding a mezzanine floor and dual-direction staircase; a modern bathroom has been built in to the ground floor space under the bedroom. The remaining space has been devoted to a kitchen, sitting and dining area. Best of all, the room opens directly via French windows (what else?) onto a substantial garden shared by the whole household. This is where, at 6:00 pm tonight, I’m writing this under a brilliant blue sky.

Our apartment is in this building.

Apartment viewed from the garden, afternoon of arrival. Mary in the doorway, flanked by the French windows.

Sunday was sunny. Somehow we used up this beautiful sunny day in doing the laundry at a laundromat, wandering around fascinating Figeac and spending the last couple of daylight hours in glorious sunshine in the main square, Place Champollion, enjoying beers with many locals and a few visitors. Not once did we hear English spoken.

This being France, the Tourist Office was not open on Sunday, so that was our first port of call on Monday, also a beautiful sunny morning. Here we got the answers to the several questions we'd saved up because the online info wasn’t quite up to the mark. Always worth visiting the Tourist Office and usually there's an English speaker present!

The information gleaned there led us to first visit the Champollion museum then to take a drive to Conques, about one hour east. Based on the info provided we also reserved a couple of days later in the week for a visit to the Pech Merl caves and a visit to a market in a town further south (Figeac market is on Saturday, so was impossible to fit into our schedule).

Champollion

Jean-Francois Champollion is Figeac's greatest son, so far. Anyone who has been to Egypt may recall that he was the guy who finally cracked the code of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, using the Rosetta Stone inscriptions. His was a fine mind which was reduced to rubble by a fatal stroke at age 42. The museum is housed in his birthplace.

Conques

Conques, which I'd never heard of before today, is a World Heritage listed village whose main claim to fame is that its abbey houses a priceless medieval collection of reliquary and other religious artifacts. The homes and other buildings there are tastefully preserved in an ancient construction style so it inevitably draws quite a few tourists, including us. Among the people who pass through are many who are walking to Santiago de Compostella, as they have done for at least a thousand years.

Interestingly, the story goes that the monks in the abbey at Conques, being peeved at the lack of visitors to their part of the world, undertook to do something about it by acquiring the remains of one or more saints. Their chosen means of acquisition were decidely un-Christian: theft. Nor were they much good at that until one of their number had spent ten years inveigling himself with the monks who were the custodians of the remains of Saint Foy at a distant monkery. Once he’d gained their trust he shot through with the bones, getting them to Conques where they allegedly still remain. The pilgrims trekking toward Santiago de Compostella having heard that Saint Foy’s bits and pieces were at Conques, made a beeline for that fair town and the rest, as they say, is history. Conques made a bomb out of it and continues to thrive on it to this day. Even we spent money there.

Around Conques

Mary in Conques

Reliquary of Saint Foy, one of the main reasons that the trail to Santiago de Compostella passes through Conques. The reliquary has been added to over the years, the latest being the bronze boots, added a couple of hundred years ago. Bizarre!

The weather was perfect today. As Mary drove back from Conques toward Figeac along the winding road running alongside rivers most of the way, we decided we'd go back to the sunlit outdoor spot we’d spent beer time in the day before. And so we did. We soaked up the sun and just watched life in Figeac’s main square happen.

Mary with her preferred dark sweet beer.

The venue, pic taken just as we walked away.

Thanks for reading

Kev