A random sight in Strasbourg. For Debbie’s One Word Sunday. Pointed.
Not one, but four words… I’m not one for obeying the rules behind challenges if they don’t suit me. And not ‘pointed’, but explaining, I think, as in ‘ I have just pointed out….’
It’s a bit of a stretch, but … I wanted to give this image its One Minute of Fame.
This is one of an occasional series from our days living in the Ariège-Pyrenees. We returned to the UK pretty much exactly 12 years ago. As we’re feeling nostalgic, please indulge me if I spend a few posts over the next few weeks revisiting the Good Old Days. Even though this post is Old News, I hope Jo will consider it could qualify as a Monday Walk.
March 17th 2012
Down here in the foothills of the Pyrénées, nobody’s interested in how far you walk as you stride up the mountainside. It’s all about the DNV (dénivelé, or number of metres you’ve climbed – and remember a hillside can go down as well as up: coming up again after a descent starts the DNV counter all over again). On Thursday, we did 791 metres. That’s 2959 feet in real money. Our mileage was less impressive: 19 km. or 11.8 miles – in the circumstances pretty damn’ good.
But we didn’t know the statistics till we’d finished. We were far too busy having a very special walk.
A signpost and waymarks
To reach our departure point, you leave Belésta via a switchback forested road, over the Col de la Croix des Morts, and emerge onto a high and slightly bleak plateau. This is the Plateau de Sault, home of the region’s potato growers. We stopped at an insignificant track signposted Langrail and parked the cars. As we got our boots on, we met another walker on a brief holiday from his home in Durban for a good long solitary hike (‘Durban? Where do you suppose he meant? Durban-sur-Arize in the Ariège? The one in the Aude? South Africa even?’). He was the last person we met all day.
It was the 14th March. There were large patches of snow all along our route. Yet we wore tee shirts all day and became lightly bronzed in the hot sun as we crunched through that still hard-crusted snow.
Through the forests we could see the peaks of our more local mountains: Maguy, born and bred round here taught us how to recognise each one.
Then, quite unexpectedly, we emerged into a splendid expanse of pasture interspersed with areas of snow. In every direction, there was a distant fringe of mountains: our day-to day familiar slopes, the more distant and higher peaks of the Hautes Pyrénées,and behind us, bereft of snow, those of the Aude and Pyrénées Orientales.
It was a really special pleasure to tramp across this apparently unending pasture, enjoying views of our constant neighbour Montségur, as well as the small towns and villages where we all live, and much further away, the Montagne Noir, with the sky clear and blue above us.
A bit of snow to tramp through – then a lunch spot by a mountain refuge.
It kept us happy till lunchtime. We’d arrived at a refuge by then, thoughtfully provided with a table and benches in the sunshine. After the picnic, we left our rucksacks with Gilbert, the honorary man in the group and went off to investigate the Belvédère, the local viewpoint. Craggily folded rocks plunged down deep towards the Gorges de la Frau and still we had our views of Montségur. We were impressed.
Views from the Belvédère
Our route for the day was a simple there-and-back. But the views were quite different, looking towards more eastern slopes so we didn’t feel at all short changed that we were retreading our path. And most of the return was downwards too. Which was helpful. When you’ve climbed 2000 feet or more, it can get quite tiring as the day nears its end. Lucky that there was cake and coffee to look forward to, provided this week by Gilbert..
These last three weeks, when we go to Spain – as we do every January – to catch up with the Catalan family and dodge the English winter, have not gone according to plan. The weather was just as awful in Spain as it apparently was in England, and all those named storms spread themselves liberally about, making sure nobody was spared. So our plan to have a final week driving home in a leisurely fashion, exploring Spanish towns we haven’t so far visited just got junked. We stayed on with the family and cleared out cupboards for them.
You’ve seen what the drive home was like. Here are a few shots from our very last stop-over, in Amboise, a charming historic town on the River Loire with a glorious Royal Château. It managed not to rain, but goodness, it was cold! We’ve promised ourselves we’ll go back, when the weather’s kinder, and when we haven’t got a ferry to catch later in the day. Here’s a taster:
Here are three shots of the Château: well, one’s of a perching pigeon really, and one of the town gates. The featured photo is of the Château too, dominating the riverscape as night fell and the full moon pierced the misty night sky.
In my shallow way though, I’m also going to show you a window display that caught our eye. It’s just the kind of shop you need if you require a suit of armour, a sword or two, or some sexy underwear for a half-sized doll.
For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.
We’re back in England after our three weeks with the Spanish branch of the family. Identikit weather, in Spain, travelling back through France and here in the UK. Wet. Rather cold.
As my last two photos of the month show. Here we are driving through France …
That’s a shot from my phone. My camera tells a similar story. Our last afternoon in France was in Caen, where it was largely … raining. As the sun set, the rain went briefly away, so here’s sundown over a street busy with its late-in-the-day market.
For Brian’s Last on the Card.
From dawn to dusk in France, then below-freezing dawn in France to sunny noon in Catalonia.
All taken from a moving car, so no prize-winning shots here. The featured photo is of the Pic du Canigou, the Pyrennean mountain which divides France from Spain.
All through 2025, Jude of Travel Words fame has invited us to give our Sunday posts over to benches. Benches that are worth sitting on for the rest and comfort they offer, or for the views they preside over. Even though I’ve been an inconsistent post-provider, it would be rude to ignore this final Sunday. And just to be contrary, I’m offering not an actual bench, but a piece of street art in Angers, France, showing a bench – in honour of this song composed for Jeanne Moreau, who sang it in the film Jules et Jim.
This week, it’s my turn to host Leanne’s Monochrome Madness. I decided on Clocks and Timepieces. Easy, I thought. Well, up to a point. There are plenty of clocks in towns, in stations, on churches and on public buildings. But too often they’re bit samey-samey. So I’m starting with one that we came upon by chance on our last day in Alsace, in Munster’s Catholic Church. It’s a modern Horloge de la Création, installed at the behest of André Voegele from Strasbourg, who has made it his ambition to install unusual timepieces. This one is interesting alright. It tells the time: hour by hour, minute by minute. But it also counts the years down, month by month; the days of the week; and the phases of the moon. It’s topped by a splendid cockerel, whom I chopped off a bit in my header photo. So here he is. I’m sure he’s a reliable alarm clock. Cocks usually are.
As to the rest. I have an indifferent photo of a clock that hasn’t functioned since 2007 – the Swiss Glockenspiel Clock in London; a clock outside St. Pancras Station; one from a station waiting room in Keighley; an intriguing one spotted outside an apartment block in Barcelona; the centrepiece of Thirsk’s Market Square; and a clock which is not a clock, but helps to govern the workings of the one high up outside Masham’s Parish Church. Now. Can you tell which is which?
And finally. A clock which is a shadow of its former self. This alarm clock sat in a hedge on a country road which I often passed during Daily Exercise in Lockdown. It stayed there for months after Normal Sevice had been resumed. It was always 8 o’clock. Then one day it disappeared. Life has not been the same since. I offer it to Becky for NovemberShadows.
On our recent trip, mainly to Alsace, but with sorties to Germany and the Netherlands, we came across several stories from the past which we’d known nothing about, but found engrossing. For the next few Fridays, I’ll share these stories with you.
Maybe this post will be a bit History-lite, but it’s still a story worth telling. Back in 13th century Alsace, the Dominican order founded a convent, Unterlinden, in the then outskirts of Colmar. The nuns from this contemplative order were woven into the life of the city until the French Revolution, when in 1793 the convent was confiscated. First abandoned, it then became a military barracks.
In 1846, something rather extraordinary happened. Louis Hugot, the archivist-librarian of the City of Colmar set about bringing together fellow intellectuals and enthusiasts with the aim of setting up a print collection and drawing school. They called themselves Societé Schongauer afer an Alsatian engraver and painter, an important influence on Albrecht Dürer. The following year, they bought the now-abandoned convent and bequeathed it to the city.
Its earliest display is still here: a locally-discovered Roman mosaic. Here it is.
Then, the museum made do with plaster casts loaned from the Louvre. Now, it has an impressive collection of sculpture and altarpieces from a variety of churches in the area.
I was quietly impressed by these displays. Simply presented against white-painted walls, these pieces spoke of their spiritual intent, and I spent a long time in their presence, for the most part alone.
These pieces were all acquired in the early 1850s. But the star of the show, then and now, and the reason why most people visit this gallery is to spend time with Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim altarpiece. As I did. But partly because I have no good images of it, and partly because it deserves a long appreciation, I won’t discuss it here. This is a good article from the Guardian –here.
Then there are the cloisters: just the place for more religious statuary.
By the early 21st century the museum was running out of space. It was making contemporary acquisitions. It needed a refreshment area. Basel architects Herzog & de Meuron thought outside the box. The 1912 Public Baths on the other side of the road were no longer in use.
Why not connect the two buldings with an underpass which could also be a display area?
This is the result.
The result is a gallery where the works on display can breathe. Where the newer parts complement the old and reflect its religious past. It’s an exciting as well as a contemplatve space, and I put this gallery down as possibly among the best viewing spaces that I have ever visited.
I’ll finish by showcasing two or three of the works which appealed to me.
Just a postscript. Malcolm didn’t come with me. He thought he was too tired to be able to spend a few hours standing before a succession of art works. If only we’d realised. He could have made use, for free, of one of these flâneuses, or leisurely strollers. What a brilliant idea!
Becky, can you find the image + shadow for NovemberShadows? I hope so.
On our recent trip, mainly to Alsace, but with sorties to Germany and the Netherlands, we came across several stories from the past which we’d known nothing about, but found engrossing. For the next few Fridays, I’ll share these stories with you.
We happened upon Ammerschwihr on our way back from Le Linge and decided to stop, attracted by its mediaeval town gates.
It’s a prosperous little town. This commune is home to the highest number of winegrowers in relation to the number of inhabitants anywhere in Alsace. And that’s saying something.
As we mooched round, it gave the air of being yet another pretty town of half-timbered houses. Until we reached the old town hall, which these days doesn’t even justify being called a facade.
Then a small plaque. Oh! So it was destroyed during the war?
Buildings nearby were clearly more modern, though sympathetically built to fit in with the ancient centre (which we later realised were also reconstructions). We found another notice, attached to the wall of one of the many wine producers in town.
We needed to know more.
During the later stages of WWII, The Battle of the Bulge was the Germans’ last attempt to break through Allied lines. They gained a dangerous amount of French territory in a campaign which though apparently well known, I hadn’t heard of. The Allies promptly regained much of this territory, except in an area near Colmar, which became known as The Colmar Pocket. Ammerschwihr was in this zone, and like so many other nearby communities, it lost 85% of its buildings to bombing raids in December 1944.
But the ins and outs of military campaigns are above my paygrade, and if they interest you, you can read about them here and here. I prefer to know what life was like for the women and men on the street. Although I read that the conditions for the serving soldiers during this part of the war were truly horrendous. A particularly harsh winter in 1944 – 45 meant that both sides endured the sheer misery of fighting in deep snow and mud in totally inadequate clothing. Getting supplies to them was a sometimes unachievable struggle. Casualties were extremely high.
For the civilians, life was no better. Ammerschwihr wasn’t evacuated, but many villages were, and unending columns of the dispossessed trailed to what they hoped was safety, having lost everything but the little they could carry. Those who remained faced street barrages, hand-to-hand fighting. Food and often water were hard to come by, and the population hid in cellars, sharing what little they had. For those of us whose territory wasn’t invaded during WWII, this suffering is almost unimaginable. And afterwards – the long hard road to reconstruction, and trying to re-establish some kind of normal life.
Here’s what it says in WWII History Tour: Colmar Pocket
Once under German control, Alsace was subject to forced Germanization policies. The use of the French language was banned in schools, public spaces, and even private conversations in many cases. Street names were changed, French cultural symbols were removed, and local populations were pressured to embrace a German identity, often against their will. Families with French allegiances were treated as enemies, and suspicion ran high among neighbours, with the region caught between two nations. The sense of belonging for Alsatians became deeply conflicted as they struggled to retain their unique Franco-German culture under oppressive occupation.
Perhaps the most devastating aspect of Nazi control was the forced conscription of Alsatian men, known as the “Malgré-nous” (meaning “against our will”). Thousands of young men were drafted into the German army, the Wehrmacht, and even the feared SS, despite many feeling a strong allegiance to France. Some were sent to fight on the Eastern Front, where casualties were extremely high. Families were torn apart, and many Alsatians who tried to resist conscription faced imprisonment, deportation, or execution. After the war, the return of Alsace to France did not immediately heal the scars. The region carried the burden of divided loyalties, lingering mistrust, and the painful memories of occupation and forced service, which shaped its identity for decades to come.
It was hard to reconcile all this with the charming, civilised, peaceful little town we wandered around. The nearest we got to the unpleasant realities was this building, once a town gate, once in fact a prison, and known as Le Tour des Fripons – the Tower of Knaves. It all seemed much less immediate than the town’s more recent disturbing history.
Since we left our home in France, eleven years ago, I’d forgotten the exhilaration of walking in the mountains. The Vosges are not the Pyreneees, far from it. But they offer the same reward of yomping, puffing and panting ever the harder, up the steepest of slopes before finally offering you views- across to distant slopes, and to valleys below: pastures, forests, settlements.
So in Alsace, Malcolm and I picked our chosen pastimes – walking for me, cycling for him. And on this day, we’d driven about 15 km. from ‘home’ to only a couple of hundred metres below the summit of Le Petit Ballon, so he could enjoy the exhilaration of zooming downhill, then along the valley bottom on a series of cycle ways to our holiday premises. I was to enjoy the different exhilaration of climbing to the top of the mountain before walking down and up and down and up the circular route I’d chosen to get me back to the car.
I passed cows first, the sound of their bells reverberating mellifluously far across the valleys.
It was a hard slog to the top, but I got there, and was disappointed by the presence of a bulky and rather ugly phone mast. And then immediately went wrong. I was relying on a walk description in a booklet I’d bought, and on the French equivalent of our OS maps. Which we’d long ago discovered do not do anything like as good a job. I was to follow several different series of balises (waymarks), which are also inconsistent in their usefulness (they tend to be there when you don’t need them, absent when you do).
My booklet said to walk to the statue of the Madonna and turn right. I did. I walked downwards, and found a path which didn’t seem right. Coming across some walkers from a French rambling group, they greeted me cheerily. ‘Are you alone? Come with us!’ I was tempted, but they were going the other way. But they pored over my map with me and set me right before going on their way. Anyway, it turned out I had followed the Wrong Madonna. Who knew there would be two in more or less the same area? I adjusted my walk plan and carried on.
I passed through woodland, a rich loamy path, with weightless grey lichens clinging to every twig and branch. Then open pastureland with distant mountain and forest views.
Onwards and upwards, till I came to an open summit with boulders scattered randomly around, making a perfect choice of picnic venue for me, offering me views in every direction. It was just warm enough, just sunny enough. Perfect.
After lunch, the views became more open, the colours more autumnnal, the path, though inexorably upwards, was a gentler slope. I passed the peak with the bench I showed you yesterday, and meandered slowly down to the wooded valley. On my way down, I found a piece of history from 1915: the remains of a German téléphérique, used to transport goods and all the chattels of war: a reminder of all we’d learnt up at le Linge.
My final couple of kilometres were disappointing, along a road – the one we’d travelled ourselves en route that morning. But I’ve forgotten that now, and kept instead the memories of a fresh, bright day in early autumn: an energetic and satisfying walk.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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