We spot the German influence

After leaving Vezelay and its hilltop basilica, we went still further east and a bit north to the small town of Montbard, which is not far from Dijon. We chose it as our stop-over point because it is very close to Fontenay Abbey which we were keen to visit. It is the oldest surviving Cistercian Abbey in France and we were eager to discover what the Cistercians thought were the important facts of life. In theory, they believed in poverty and solitude, although poverty is always a very relative thing and as far as we could make out, they lived extremely well. The Abbey was completely self-sufficient, with a well-run farm to supply all their food requirements, including grain for bread; an innovative water-wheel driven forge where they smelted ore mined on the property and made all their own tools and hardware; a bakery which first ground the wheat into flour using the same water power as the forge, and then baked sufficient bread to feed 200 monks every day; and a large trout pond in order to vary their diet. They did not believe in unnecessary decoration, which they saw as distraction, so the buildings are quite plain, almost austere, but the clean lines add to the beauty of the whole layout. The Abbey was built in 1118 and survived until the French Revolution, when it was sold and turned into a paper mill. Fortunately for us, it was bought by a private buyer in 1906 who restored it to its original appearance and the same family still manages it today.

The next couple of days were spent as much on our own as possible, as the few spots that Neels had noticed on his tummy and chest turned into what looked suspiciously like German measles. When we thought back a few days, it was pretty obvious that he had had all the usual symptoms, culminating in the appearance of the spots. So we stayed out of everyone’s way until he felt a bit better a couple of days later. Really! It’s just not fair! We haven’t even been to Germany!

However, once he felt well enough again, we backtracked a little to go to Beaune. Everyone had told us about the fantastic enameled roof tiles that are traditional in Burgundy, and as Beaune is supposed to have the finest examples, we had to go and see. The tiles in question are on the roof of L’Hotel Dieu, which was in fact a hospital started in the 1400’s as a hospital for the poor. Wealthy people were nursed at home, of course, but until then no provision had been made for the homeless or poverty-stricken. In the main hall or ward, the walls are lined with four-poster beds, 26 down each side, each one sporting scarlet blankets and deep red drapes. The overall impression is one of very grand elegance and not at all like a hospital for the poor!. Although the whole building is a masterpiece of art and architecture, it is the roof tiles which draw people here and they can only be seen from the inner courtyard. They are, quite literally amazing. Each tile is about half the size of a normal roof tile, and the section which is exposed once they have been laid, is enameled. Numerous colours are used and the different coloured tiles are arranged in patterns forming a style which is quite unique. Seeing the Hotel Dieu was definitely worth going out of our way for, and although we saw other examples of enameled tiles, mainly on church steeples, none were as fine as those of the buildings in Beaune.

Two quick stop-overs later found us at Masevaux which is right on the border of Alsace. We had decided to give up mediaeval villages and old churches for a while and head into the mountains again. Masevaux was perfect – it certainly gets my vote for France’s prettiest village. I know that I have gone on and on about the flowers that we have seen everywhere, but they really are stunning and it is not only private gardens, where one can imagine the odd enthusiast making a special effort, nor is only the municipal gardens where some employee has been ordered to make a good display, but just everywhere. Every bridge has flowerboxes strung along the railings simply overflowing with colourful blooms; every house has window boxes of geraniums and sometimes a garden too; lamp-posts have hanging baskets which surround the pole half way up; and balconies which jut over the pavement often have baskets suspended from the corners too. The overall effect is one of endless and brilliant colour. Geraniums and petunias seem to be the favourites, with a lot of ageratums thrown in for a bit of blue. I wonder just how long any thing like this would last in South Africa!

Just driving through Masevaux made us want to see more of it, so once we had checked in to our campsite, we walked back into town where we wandered around for an hour or more, before deciding that we would look for a meal somewhere and walk back afterwards. The following morning, though, we were back in town again to take some photographs, after which we went for a drive along one of those roads we call ‘toothpaste roads’. (On the map they look rather like the after effect of treading on a tube of toothpaste – a mass of squiggles). It wasn’t as bad as the map made it out to be and was a wonderful drive up into the mountains through pine plantations and dense forest. On the other side of the mountain was the town of Thann and although we had sworn off churches for a while this was so elaborately decorated that we couldn’t resist.

The town itself has very strong Germanic influences in the building style and even the signboards and notices are in French and German. The church roof, not content with one design in enameled tiles had a different design for each section of the roof, each section also having a different main colour. The steeple was a fretwork of stone carving that gave it a delicate and lacy effect; while every corner or projection seemed to sprout two or sometimes even four stone carved statues. The arch over the main entrance doors was remarkable for the intricacy and detail of the carvings. It was quite over-whelming! And it didn’t stop there. The interior was just as highly-decorated, but with wood rather than stone carvings. Sadly the interior was very dark and even with my flash, I could not get good photos of the myriad little creatures decorating the choir stalls. I think it was worth changing our minds to go and see it!

We came back via the same road which gave us a good chance to see the views we had missed on the way up, then had about an hour for a quick change of clothes before going off to an organ recital in the Masevaux church. For some reason, when the church was built in the 1700’s it was equipped with two organs which were the pride of the town. Unfortunately a fire destroyed the entire church in 1966, but it was rebuilt in the same style and later two organs were installed as they had been in the original. Since 1977 the town has hosted an International Organ Festival every year, and we were lucky enough to catch the final recital. It was excellent, even if Bach is not my favourite composer, but the pieces were chosen to demonstrate the virtuosity of the instrument, and that they certainly did. It was a fitting end to our stay there.

Time out to remember

After leaving the marshes of the Marais Poitevin, we went north and came to a place with the unlikely name of Airvault! It was very grey and a bit rainy, and seeing that we had to both fill the drinking water tank and empty the other one, we decided to stop at a caravan park. It happened to be run by an English family and it was nice to be able to chat to them without having to think twice about what you were going to say, and how, but it was extremely expensive and apart from being full of whingeing children, it was really rather dirty. I’m sorry, folks, but we have now had quite a few months experience of campers and their children and have decided that the French are the best behaved. The Dutch are the noisiest and don’t put their children to bed until the adults want to go to sleep; the Germans shout a lot but are silent from early evening on, and the English children whine and fight, all the time! However, in spite of all the bad things we thought and have said about the place, we did manage to get a huge load of washing done and dried which was a relief.
The next morning after checking out, we had a quick walk around Airvault which is quite quaint, and has a wonderful old Romanesque church with lots of special features. We had planned to go further East, but after picking up a pamphlet in the Tourist Office, we drove South instead, to a small campsite near a tiny village called Cognac la Foret. The weather which had been threatening all day, broke that night and the next day we awoke to pouring rain. We cancelled all plans for the day and spent it reading in our cosy home. That night, because we had thought that we would have been out all day, we had booked a meal in the camp restaurant, so at the appointed time we presented ourselves and were seated at a long table with 18 other people, most of whom were Dutch. When they discovered that we were South African, we were bombarded with all sorts of questions, and offered all sorts of advice on traveling in Europe. It ended up being a very jolly evening with lots of laughs as we tried to understand their Dutch, while they tried to understand our Afrikaans.
The next morning was still a bit grey, but we left anyway and went a few kilometers to Oradour sur Glane. This little village was the scene of an absolutely ghastly and senseless massacre on the 10th June 1944, and the entire population was wiped out. Since then, the whole village has been left as a memorial. No-one is quite sure what prompted the massacre, but at about the same time, two German officers were caught by Resistance fighters. They were taken prisoner, but one later escaped and it was possibly this officer who informed the SS that the village of Oradour sur Glane was involved. On the morning of the 10th June, German troops surrounded the village while other soldiers rounded up the villagers. They separated men from women and herded them into various locations. The men went into a large barn and a garage workshop, while the women and children were taken to the church. At a command, the soldiers began firing into the crowd until no-one was left standing, then they set fire to each and every building in the village, so that those who were wounded but not dead were burnt alive. The next day, they returned and collected up as much as they could of the charred remains and tipped everything into a mass grave. 642 people perished, all of them civilians. Today the village stands as it was after the fires went out. There are notices asking one to walk the streets in silence and effect is very eerie and very sobering. I’m glad we took the trouble to make the detour, but was quite a sad visit.
On again, and this time going eastwards, we passed through Limoges and stopped at a small village on the outskirts of the town where a warehouse advertised itself as selling Limoges porcelain direct to the public at factory prices. We spent about an hour just ooh-ing and aah-ing at the beautiful things, but even factory prices are way beyond our budget so we came away empty-handed. Anyway we were headed for Nevers, which also has a porcelain heritage, so we thought we might look there instead.
At Nevers, we had a wonderful campsite with a view across the river (Loire) to the town. In the morning, it was raining again, but the weather forecast had promised the day would clear so we walked into town anyway and even took pictures in the rain. The whole town is just filled with beautiful old buildings, some from the 13th century, beautifully decorated and, as ever, with spectacular displays of flowers. Eventually, tired of puddling around in the rainy, cobbled streets, we turned for home and were about halfway across the massive bridge over the Loire, when the clouds suddenly cleared and the sun came out! Oh, and I forgot to say that it was only late the previous evening that we discovered that the following day was a Public Holiday, so during our walk around town, all the shops were closed. But we did see some Nevers porcelain in a shop window and didn’t mind that the shop was closed. If anything, it was even more expensive than the Limoges china and not nearly as fine.
Still going eastwards and a little north, we headed for Vezelay, a hilltop town dominated by the 12th century Basilica St. Madeleine. As the countryside roundabout is relatively flat and very forested, the first sight of the town comes as quite a surprise. I’m sure that the folk of mediaeval times must have felt rather over-awed by the size of the church, but I imagine that was part of the reason for building it so enormous. It wasn’t an optical illusion either – the building is quite massive, but enhanced by the fact that the buildings around are not big at all and it is on the top of quite a steep hill. The buildings which border the narrow twisting street up to the church are almost all occupied by artists, with a few shops and restaurants in between. However, the whole commercial angle has been kept very low-key, with no obtrusive signs or advertisements and one gets the feeling of walking through a pleasant mediaeval town – with modern conveniences!
When we had climbed the cobbled street right to the top, we found that a service in the church was nearing its conclusion, so we quietly let ourselves in at the back. The priest was so far away up at the altar that we could hardly see him, but the acoustics were perfectl (Yes! Yes! I know he had a microphone) and we sat and enjoyed the music played on a real pipe-organ while the collection was taken, before the people filed out and we could wander around at will. While the organ was playing, the double main doors were opened by a young monk and we were amazed at the size of them – at least 5 metres high, but then, the nave is a soaring 18 metres high with a wonderful airiness filled with golden light. As we have so often found, these buildings may well be centuries old but the designers and builders of the time knew a great deal about making the best use of available light.

On the road again

To all of you who have been reading our blog, my apologies for the silence. After finding a very kind caravan park owner near Montguyon who allowed us to send the last episode out, we have not been able to access the Internet at all. How strange it is that, having been literally dragged into the 21st century with all it’s technological wonders, we now feel quite deprived when we are expected to do without them. However, we survived admirably and in fact, enjoyed a peaceful and mostly event-free week. Have we ever had a totally event-free week, I wonder! Some months back, while negotiating a really tight, steep turn, we gave the waste water drain a slight tap, after which it was never really the same again and developed a constant drip. This is grey water, so-called, and from washing hands, dishes etc. We didn’t worry too much about it as the drip was very slow, and as long as were parked on a suitably grassy patch, no-one was any the wiser and the grass as all the better for it! Then when we left Aignan Caravan park, while trying to manoevre the van close enough to the tap to fill our drinking water tank, we gave it another whack on the somewhat uneven ground and the drip became a little more insistant. Not wanting to lose the thing altogether, Neels then made a suitably South African plan and tied it on to the chassis with a piece of wire, and we tried not to use water too much until we got to Montguyon. Then, when he had recovered some of his strength, he took the whole contraption to pieces and then rebuilt it, sealing all the joints with the sealing paste we had bought so long ago in L’Argentieres. Perfect, we thought. Good as new! Certainly good enough to last out the next month or so. Well, it wasn’t, because four days later we discovered that we had knocked the whole thing off completely! Neels thought it was when we turned in the entrance to a field, after having taken a wrong road; I was of the opinion that we had knocked it off while bumping over the pavement into the town parking. It didn’t make much difference, the whole drain and tap was now gone and we had to start from scratch concocting another, and if we thought our French was inadequate for medical matters, try buying a ball valve, elbow and nipple! Needless to say, it took us hours of hunting through the hardware shop on our own, to save ourselves the embarrassment of having to ask. Finally it was done, and a far more efficient drain is now in place.
Also during the week, we managed to set off the smoke alarm twice which was a bit disconcerting. The first time was when we had decided to treat ourselves to a pizza, so bought a ready-to-bake one. Not being used to the oven in the house, I set it to the required temperature and popped the pizza in when that temperature was reached. Within minutes, there was this unearthly shrieking, whistling sound. I flung open windows and switched on the extractor fan while Neels grabbed a chair, stood on it and blew into the sensor. By the time we had stopped the noise, the pizza was well charred around the edges. The following evening we drove out to a pizza parlour and had a real one!
When Neels left hospital, he had been given a letter to say that he should have a final test done within the following two weeks, so we took advantage of the fact that we had semi-permanent accommodation and had his test done, the results of which gave him an ‘All clear’. I think we are both very relieved.
Once that was over, we could think about leaving Montguyon and continuing with our trip so as soon as possible, we got ourselves organized and took off for Saintes. What a charming city! It is very old, having started as the Roman city of Mediolanum Santonum. Then, during the Middle Ages, it became a stopover point for pilgrims on the Compostela route and several large monasteries and convents were built. Later still, it was a frontier town during the 100 years war before enjoying a more prosperous period during the 17th and 18th centuries. It is a lovely city to walk around in as the buildings have been wonderfully restored and the gardens are simply superb. An almost white stone is the main building material and this together with the brilliant gardens leave one with the impression of light and colour.
From Saintes we took a bit of a detour to Brouage, a fortified town in the Poitevin Marshes, but we were very disappointed in it. It has been over-restored to the point that everything appears to be brand new, and every available useful space has been put to commercial use. I’m almost surprised that we didn’t find an ice-cream vendor in each of the little guard house/ lookout points along the ramparts!
The Marais Poitevin, or Poitevin Marshes, cover an enormous area with the part north and south of the Sevre River estuary having been drained, for agricultural use, for the past thousand years. Further upstream, in the area known as the Venice Vert, or Green Venice, a maze of canals criss-crosses the land, and although there are small villages here and there, built on higher ground, most of this area is a national park. One can hire flat-bottomed boats and paddle along for miles, or be taken on a guided tour in one by a batelier who will do the paddling for you. As it is similar to Les Hortillonages in Amiens, but on a vast scale, we walked around some of the villages instead.
After Brouage, we visited Rochefort specifically to visit the dockyard where a replica of the 18th century frigate, the ‘Hermione’ is being built. At 65 metres long and 12 metres high she is not really very big at all, especially when one considers that she accommodated 300 men. She is being built in the style of the period as far as possible, but using modern tools and equipment, and they hope to launch her in the not too distant future. As well as seeing the progress made in building the hull, one can also vist the workshops of all the alied crafts such as the carpenters shop, the blacksmiths shop and so on. It it quite fascinating to see chain links being made by hand in a forge. The nearly three hours we spent there flew past, and there was still so much to see.
After a quick lunch we moved on to the Corderie Royale, the Royal Rope Works where all the ropes were made for Louis XV’s Navy. To achieve the lengths of rope that were needed, using the methods of the time, a building was needed that could accommodate a 300 metre length. This amazing building, battered, bruised and finally burnt by the Germans in the Second World War, is still standing albeit largely restored. And what makes it even more amazing is that the whole enormous construction is standing on a wooden raft sunk into the marshland. Not bad for something built in 1670! Another fascinating few hours flew past as we learnt about ropes and rope-making, and all to soon it was time to move on.
This time we had booked into a park in the Venice Vert and on our one full day in the area we had a drive around to see what we could see. What we saw was that fences are to stop people falling in to the canals, while cattle are surrounded by water with gates at the bridges off each little island. Not much is inhabited but the overall effect is of one vast parkland with huge shady trees and lush grass beneath. Here and there, Blond Aquitaine cattle pose sleepily having eaten their fill of the juicy grasses. In Coulon, a main visitor centre, the water is alive with boats some being rather more professionally paddled than others. We didn’t go to see it but I believe the ugliest fish in the world can be seen in Coulon Aquarium. Something called a sheat-fish. I intend to look it up when I have a chance.