Category: Patrimoine

The concentration camp at le Vernet

Yesterday, we visited one of the Ariège’s best kept – and most shameful – secrets, the museum commemorating the concentration camp at Le Vernet.

ID shots of some internees

Starting in 1939, after the defeat of the Spanish Republic, the concentration camp at Le Vernet, near Pamiers, was used to detain the 12,000 Spanish combatants from the Durruti Division. At the declaration of war, ‘undesirable’ foreigners, anti-fascist intellectuals and members of the International Brigades were interned at Le Vernet under terrible conditions, described by the writer Arthur Koestler (himself interned there) in ‘Scum of the Earth’. In 1940 it became a repressive camp for interning all foreigners considered suspect or dangerous to the public order.  At the time, it was known as ‘The French Dachau’.

Model showing part of the camp

From 1942 it served also as a transit camp for Jews arrested in the region. In June 1944, the last internees were evacuated and deported to Dachau in the ‘Ghost Train.’ In total about 40,000 people of 58 nationalities were interned in the camp.

We were shown round by the Mayor of  le Vernet.  He has a passion for sharing this dreadful part of French history which only someone whose family has suffered its consequences could have.  He showed us the models of a vast camp, now totally obliterated, and the cramped dormitories.

Model of a camp dormitory

He described the harsh conditions, when inadequately clothed and severely underfed men would have to stand outside, immobile, 4 times a day, during the extremely hard winters, for roll-call.

As a tiny baby, he was interned with his mother, a Spanish refugee, at a women’s and children’s camp, flimsily built and harshly managed, on the coast (Le Vernet was for men only).  The women begged for clothing – their own was so flea-ridden it had to be burnt – and more food.  The response was that they could return to Spain if they wanted.  Some did, but many stayed.

As an adult, with a French wife and children, he wanted to take French nationality himself.  ‘How did you arrive in France?’  ‘Via the concentration camp in Argelès.’  ‘There were no concentration camps in France, only accommodation centres.’  Such denial existed till quite recently – hence the total destruction of the site of this camp, the most repressive in France.  Now however, largely because of people such as this mayor, the history of these camps, run and organized not by the Nazis, but by the French themselves, is at last being told.

From the display about health

‘Except ye Lord keep ye cittie ye wakeman waketh in vain’

Ripon Town Hall

That’s the  verse from the Psalms, inscribed above the town hall in Ripon, where we’re spending the next few weeks to avoid the cold and rain of the south of France (no, really, they’ve got the heating on over there).  It reminds us that every evening – EVERY evening – for well over a thousand years, the Ripon Wakeman has sounded his horn to the 4 corners of the city to announce that all is well.

I had to go and check it out yesterday evening.

George Pickles, Wakeman, on duty

Promptly at 9, a smartly dressed individual in buff coloured hunting coat, tricorn hat and white gloves took his place before the obelisk on the Market Square and sounded his horn 4 times, once at each corner of the obelisk – one long mournful note each time.

Then he grinned at us, a small crowd of 20.  ”Want to hear a bit of history?’  Well, of course we did.  He made us introduce ourselves, and we found we too came from, well, about 3 corners of the world: Catalonia, Italy, Australia, even South Shields and Merton.  And here’s some of what he told us:

In 886, Alfred the Great, 37 year-old warrior king, was travelling his kingdom to defeat the Vikings, and to drum up support .  Arriving at the small settlement of Ripon, he liked what he saw and granted a Royal Charter.  He lacked the wherewithal to produce an appropriate document, and so gave a horn which is still safely locked in the town hall.

‘You need to be more vigilant, there are Vikings about’. Alfred warned.  So the people appointed a wakeman to guard the settlement through hours of darkness, and he put that horn to use by sounding it at the 4 corners of the Market Cross to announce that all was well as he began his watch.  The town’s now on its 4th horn.

If you want to know more, our current Wakeman, George Pickles,  has written the whole tale for the BBC website.  It’s a good yarn.  Read it when you have a moment

This is the obelisk the Wakeman visits each evening. It was erected by the then MP, William Aislabie in the 19th century, to commemorate his ….60 years as an MP

A day of solar energy and soldiers

We intrepid randonneurs from the Rando del’Aubo had our physical workout last Sunday- read all about it in my last post. But travelling to the Cerdagne last Saturday we were tourists, and slightly lazy ones at that.

Building? Solar panel? Research centre?…
….or just an interesting view

I’m so used to Patrimoine (Heritage) and the-great-outdoors being the reason to get out of bed on holiday here that I was quite unprepared for Héliodyssée. Built in 1968, it’s a series of gigantic solar panels whose purpose is to enable study of the possible applications of solar power, generating temperatures of up to…..3, 500 degrees. At this stage, it’s the space industry rather than you and me who are likely to benefit from the research, but one day, who knows? We admired the upside-down landscape views reflected in the solar panels, but decided against a scholarly visit.

The ramparts at Mont Louis

Off to Mont Louis then, and back to a real dose of Patrimoine. This town was built from scratch for Louis XIV as a military settlement in 1679. Vauban was the man in charge: marquis, engineer, town planner, philosopher, man of letters…and also military architect. 12 of his fortifications, Mont Louis included, were listed as World Heritage sites by UNESCO in 1998, so his significance and importance is in no doubt. This fortress, the highest in France, was needed as a result of the Treaty of the Pyrénées of 1659, establishing the border between France and Spain, although the walls which surround it seem rather low to protect against possible invasion.

It seems as if these ramparts still have their uses

But it was these walls we circuited, enabling us to see from afar the world’s first Solar Oven (this area seems to be Solar Power Central). We watched children abseiling down from the ramparts, instructed by the soldiers who are still a real presence in the town, and enjoyed the contrast between the somewhat severe presence of the barracks, and the lush and mountainous countryside beyond. Many of the town and garrison’s historic buildings can only be visited by pre-booked visits, so we made do with a look in at the simple, rather dour little church which Vauban built for the townsfolk – there were other chapels up at the garrison. Then we retired to a bar for a drink.

The view from Mont Louis
A Catalan take on meatballs, with tomatoes, olives and haricot beans

So then it was off to our lodgings for the night, les Ramiers in Bolquère. This area is popular all the year round – walkers in summer, skiers in winter. Les Ramiers supplies simple but comfortable accommodation to both. Our rooms were often quaint: Mal and I went direct into an en-suite shower room-come-study, and then climbed what amounted to a ladder to our attic bedroom. The welcome was cheerful, the views wonderful, and the food copious and tasty. We relaxed by taking a woodland walk most of the way to Font Romeu, enjoying that meal, and having a very early night. We knew we’d need all our energy at the Gorges next day.

Lupins: these were growing wild everywhere

Summer solstice, Montségur

All this time we’ve been here, we’ve not seen the sunrise over Montsegur.  Today, midsummer day, I decided to change all that.  Me and 99 others……

I arrived at the car park just after 5 o’clock,  at the same moment as a hare which had for at least two frantic minutes been trying to out-run me.  And realised I was not alone.  It was still dark, and quite a difficult business to trek up a steep, slippery rocky path.  Other more provident people had torches, and everybody helped one another.

The route to the top. Still pretty dark

Towards the top, the night sky was slowly washed from inky blue to delicate blues, pinks and greens by the sun which was still well below the horizon.

The sun first appears. It’s just after 6 o’clock

I found a couple of friends there, and a vantage point relatively distant from the crowd crammed into the castle ruins.  They had come to see something special- the rays of the sun as they poured through the ruined windows.  I decided it was too packed with people to feel special in there.  I’ll come back another day soon, to see for myself.

And again, a very few minutes later

What I saw was quite wonderful enough: a rich copper disk slowly mounted above the line of mountains in the distance,  tinting the sky ochre, rusty-red, sugar-pink, finally emerging so fiery bright I could no longer look at it.  Some locals burst – quite beautifully – into song.   Occitan/Ariègeois stalwarts, ‘Quand lo Boièr ven de laurar…’ and,inevitably, ‘Se Canto’.

The rising sun, shining through a ruined window, casts an image on the castle wall

Gradually the whole sky lightened and brightened, turning the entire landscape crisply clear.  I strolled round the summit – it was surprisingly easy to get-away-from-it-all, before skidding and climbing my way down to the car park again….

Montségur casts a shadow on the hillsides beyond. The car park’s still full.

….and there were my companions who’d provided torchlight.  They were hitching, because their car had failed to start.  We journeyed back to civilisation together, ready to resume normal service.  It was 7.30 a.m.

Almost deserted again, Montségur in the early morning light

Transhumance in the Haut Salat

Transhumance.  It’s that time of year where here near the Pyrénées, the cattle and sheep are moved from their winter quarters down on their lowland(ish) farms up to the lush summer pastures in the mountains.  They’ll stay there till Autumn, and then be brought down again.  And each time, it’s the excuse for a party.

On Saturday, we joined in, and went over to Seix to meet friends who live there.  The Transhumance celebrations in Haut Salat last three days, but we made do with Saturday morning.  We nearly arrived late – very late – because we found ourselves behind a herd of cattle making their steady way along the road.  Overtaking’s not an option: the cows commandeered this route hundreds of years ago.  But we managed to zip down a side road and make a detour.  A whole hour later, after coffee with our friends, the herd reached the edge of Seix and passed their door….

…and finished their long walk into town.  We went too, and arrived just as the last flocks of sheep were arriving, to be corralled like the cattle, at the edge of the town square.  For a while, and probably much to their relief, they were no longer centre stage.

Instead it was jollity of the traditional kind. There were processions of large solemn plaster effigies, local bands.  Dancers from Gascony, the Basque country, the Landes made sure we all had fun, and Malcolm and I even joined in some Basque dancing.  Stars of the show for us were the shepherds from the Landes.  Theirs is flat, marshy country, and they used to keep their eyes on their roving flocks by ranging round on stilts.  But this was a day for dancing, and that’s just what they did, up high on those stilts.  Have a look at the photos.

We went off for lunch at the end of the morning.  But there was more celebrating, more meals to be shared, particularly by those farmers and country people who over the centuries have welcomed the fellowship of Transhumance as a break from the routines of an often lonely life.

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Euskal Herria meets the Yorkshire Dales

This week was a first for us, when we made a quick visit to the Basque country (Euskal Herria), way over to the west .  When we got there, there were no frontier posts, but we knew immediately that we’d arrived.  Suddenly, houses, instead of being colour-washed in creams and beiges and ochres, or not at all, were  all tidily painted white, every single one, with ox-blood coloured shutters and paintwork.  Place names were in French and Basque, and quite a lot of other signage too.

But the thing is, despite all that, we thought we’d arrived in Yorkshire, or Lancashire, or somewhere in England at any rate.  Softly rambling ranges of hills, so very green, and studded with sheep.  Roads which preferred to ramble gently round the contours instead of going straight in the French style.  Take away the Pyrénées in the background, their jagged peaks still white with fresh snow, add in a few drystone walls, and – voilà! – the Yorkshire Dales.

After all the hard work back at the house, we needed the peace of the countryside, so we’d chosen to stay at an Accueil Paysan farm. We knew that  meant that we’d be welcomed into simple comfortable accommodation at the farmer’s house, and share a family meal with them in the evening.  Always good value in all sorts of ways.

The welcoming committee in this case turned out to be six cheerily noisy pigs, a gang of chickens, and a sheep dog.  The humans were no less friendly, and we settled in by exploring the small farm with its 30 or so cattle, and about 300 sheep.  Sheep’s cheese is the big thing round here, and throughout the autumn and spring, when there’s plenty of milk, this family makes cheese every morning (far too early for us to be there, it turned out: all over by 7 o’clock) in their fine new cheese-production shed.

Our hosts are Basque speakers.  Their children only learnt French when they went to school.  Now that one of these children has a son of his own, he and his wife (who’s not a Basque speaker) have chosen to have the boy educated at one of the many Basque-medium schools, so that he will be among the 30% of Basques who are comfortable using their language.  It’s an impenetrable and complex one.  Its roots are a bit of a mystery, and certainly it’s not Indo-European.  With French, Italian and Latin at out disposal, we can make a good stab at understanding Occitan, the language of our region, but Basque remains impenetrable to anyone who hasn’t been immersed in it.

The next day, we explored St. Jean Pied de Port. From before the time of the Romans, it’s been a market town, an important jumping off point for Spain.  It’s been a garrison too, and an important stop-over for pilgrims on their way to Compostella.  Now it’s a tourist centre too, for walkers in the region.  It’s an attractive town, surrounded by ramparts.  We pottered around, enjoying views from the ramparts, pilgrim-spotting, ancient doorways, and watching the river, before setting off for a leisurely journey home.

And next time we stay, we’ll make it much longer than 36 hours.

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“No sky in all France is more blue than that of Collioure”: Henri Matisse. Not this week……

Because of our 6 weeks’ hard labour, because the weather here is so unseasonably gorgeous, and most of all, because it was Mal’s birthday yesterday, we decided on a Mid-Week Break.  A friend had just posted some photos of the sea at Collioure, radiant in the early spring sunshine, and we thought we’d like an off-season visit too.  The Pyrénées Orientales are nearly always sunny, with high temperatures and blue skies, even if we’re shivering over here, so we never bothered to check the forecast.  Big mistake.

Half way through our journey to the coast, the mist descended.  The sky turned pale, then grey.  The temperature fell.  Sea mist, we thought.  It’ll burn off.  It didn’t.

So our afternoon consisted in making the best of a bad job.  Which worked.  Rather than stop for lunch first at Collioure, which we feared might be closed for business, winter, mid-week, we went on to Port-Vendre.  This is still a busy fishing port, with tuna and sardine canning factories, so we had the idea that we’d be lunching with fishermen in oilskins.  Well, not at all actually, but fishy menus are centre stage, and we ate well – very well.

Then we came back to Collioure.  As we’d thought, nearly everything was closed, and without the sun to add sparkle and joie de vivre, we contented ourselves with an invigorating walk along the front before moving on: this is a region with plenty to offer.

This is Catalan France. It’s been ruled by Spain, by France, back and forth over the centuries, and many of its current inhabitants fled from Spain during the Franco regime, so it does have a very Spanish feel.  The frequent change of rule means that many bloody battles have taken place here too, and back in the 13th century, the fortified town of Elne suffered cruelly.  Under Catalan rule at the time, the troops of French king Philip the Hardy laid waste the town.  The townspeople fled to the traditional sanctuary of the church.  There the soldiers killed the menfolk, raped the women before the altar, and flung small children against the walls before burning the church, which still bears scorch marks on the main doorway.  It was this church, Sainte-Eulalie and its cloister we’d come to see. The church itself is a strikingly simple Romanesque building, beautifully lit and inviting quiet contemplation. It’s a little reminiscent of Durham Cathedral, but on a more domestic scale.  The cloisters are really special.  Partly Romanesque, partly Gothic, the capitals and pillars have been immaculately carved with foliage, animals and biblical scenes still in crisp and fresh condition.  It’s a lovely, quiet place.

We stayed the night at a traditional Catalan 19th century farmhouse, Mas Bazan.  After a night in our elegantly simple room, we enjoyed a ‘bio’ breakfast of home made cake and jams, newly baked bread, and the company of our stimulating and cheery hostess.  It was she who planned our day for us, suggesting things we might enjoy.

The misty weather limited our choices to some degree, but we had two highlights.  As we left the coast, we climbed upwards into the scrubby, shrubby Mediterranean hillside which we now know is called ‘maquis’, rather than ‘garrigue’, because the soils are different in each.  And we spotted in the distance our first destination, Castelnou,  not destined to be twinned with Newcastle.  A mediaeval castle and village appeared through the mist, with beyond, tantalizing glimpses of the massif of the Canigou.  As we wandered round the village, a few minutes later, we wondered who would choose to live in such a picturesque museum, overrun with tourists in summer, its several restaurants and craft showrooms overflowing, while in winter nothing, apparently, happens.

We had lunch in Ille-sur-Têt, which also has medieval streets, but ordinary small town life goes on there: it’s no tourist showpiece.  We’d come to see Les Orgues, north of the town.  These take the form of an amphitheatre of cliffs which the elements have eroded, and continue to erode, into extraordinary columns and pillars.  It’s arid, quite desert like, and quite ephemeral in that it’s constantly changing as the sand from which these structures are formed wears away and is re-deposited.  The photos I took record them as they are at the moment.  In a few years they’ll be different again.

And then we wound our way home, on a series of snaking backroads through the maquis.  The nearer to the Ariège we got, the hotter the sun became, the bluer the sky.  It’s not supposed to work like that.

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No snow yesterday: mountain views and a Benedictine abbey

Distant Pyrénées. Not my photo, not the view we saw. But you get the idea
Distant Pyrénées. Not my photo, not the view we saw. But you get the idea

I gather that the last thing anyone in England needs right now is someone chirruping about how beautiful the snow is.  Well, here in the foothills of the Pyrénées, we’ve been almost alone in France in being a snow-free zone.  But please note: ‘the foothills’. The mountain tops have been covered for some weeks, and over the last week, the snow levels have crept down..and down…and ever nearer. And it’s quite simply beautiful.

Distant Pyrénées

Yesterday we went walking in the Lauragais.  That’s a gentle, verdant region north of here on the edge of la Montagne Noir.  Perhaps the most wonderful thing about the walk we had here, through sandy woodland paths, crunchy with fallen leaves, were the views across to the Pyrénées: mile after mile of distant peaks blanketed in blue-white snow beneath a bluer sky.  If only my camera began to do justice to this impressive sight.

A misericord to support a monkish bottom
Abbaye de Saint Papoul
Abbaye de Saint Papoul

Healthily exercised, we came down to the village of Saint Papoul, and looked round the Benedictine Abbey of the same name.  I found myself lingering in the 14th century cloisters and in the abbey itself, inspecting the misericords, the small decorated wooden shelves hidden under the seats to provide a bit of support for the poor monks as they stood for long hours during their religious devotions.

The Flight into Egypt

Perhaps the most enjoyable bit of our visit was a chance to look at the special exhibition devoted to le Maître de Cabestany, a Romanesque sculptor who seems to have left his mark on many of the pilgrimage churches on the route from Rome to Compostella.

The infant Jesus takes a bath

His figures, despite their realism, their chunky hands and elongated eyes, seem to have a slightly supernatural feel to them and they were fun to explore and enjoy.

It was cold though.  Snow threatened, but didn’t fall in the end.  We decided against a mooch round the village: probably something to do in the future, and scurried back home to toast our toes and fingers

The weathered pillars of the cloisters, and their equally weathered capitals

Espezel, Potatoes and the Plateau de Sault

Waiting for horses to enter the ring. The fair at Espezel gets under way

If you live round here, you’ll know about the Plateau de Sault.  It’s where the potatoes come from.

Plateau de Sault potatoes. Plenty more where they came from.

They’re very proud of their potatoes.  They’re also proud of their country fair, la Foire Départementale de l’Elevage, held at Espezel.  Though this fair, held in October each year, is less about potatoes, and more about animals, as the name suggests.

A show tail for a show horse

Working horses, bulls with a reputation, Jack-of-all-trades Tarascon sheep, sheepdogs, pigs, rabbits and chickens were all there, together with state of the art tractors and farm machinery.

We could have bought this fellow: but we couldn’t raise the money

There were food stalls, clothing stalls, catch-penny stalls: plenty to keep us busy. Gill and David, our guests from England, who are County Fair Connoisseurs and stalwarts of shows all over Yorkshire, spent their time eyeing up horses – particularly the heavy, working Castillon horses, while we enjoyed the working sheepdogs.

The Australian sheep dog rounds up his sheep

As in England, most sheepdogs are border collies, but some are Australian sheepdogs, crossed with dingos.  They might look fierce – the sheep certainly think so – but they’re gentle and tractable, and do the business.

Oh, and on the way there, we had a piece of luck.  We got held up, and it was a traffic jam we really didn’t mind.  On the road to L’Aiguillon, a slow moving car with a sign reading ‘Transhumance’ flagged us down. Dozens of cows were being brought down to their lowland home from their summer pasture, and a score of cowherds and hangers on accompanied them on their long walk from Comus on the Plateau de Sault, to Mirepoix.  That’s a 50 km. journey, but they probably didn’t walk it all.  They’d have hitched a lift in a cattle transporter for at least part of the way, more than likely.  We however, saw the picturesque procession, and it began our day on a suitably bucolic note.

Cows plodding off to their winter quarters

A Miller’s Tale

M. Moulin demonstrates his mill in action. The stream and water wheeel are beneath the floor

Readers in Europe probably noticed that European Heritage Days were held about three weeks ago. These usually give the chance for Buildings-With-A-Past which aren’t normally open to the public to dust themselves down, smarten themselves up, and take a bow.

Round here there was the labyrinth at Mirepoix Cathedral, three local Romanesque churches, a château at Belesta which is being restored, as a labour of love by the two who bought it.  And, and and….so much to see, so little publicity for some of them.

A chance conversation led us to a hamlet called Éspine, to see the ancient mill there.  It had been in the family of the current owner for generations – until current owner’s dad sold it.  This did not go down well.  Son managed eventually to buy it back again, and has restored it with love and real enthusiasm.

A flour sack from his collection

If he ever thought about having such a thing as a mission statement, it would without a doubt be ‘Passionate about Flour Mills’.  Monsieur – I don’t know his name – let’s call him M. Moulin, danced between mill race and flour sacks and ancient machinery and quirky collections of flour canisters, generating a hitherto unrealised ardour for milling among his many visitors.

3 grindstones. When they wear down, they have to be turned over and re-etched

You wouldn’t know it was a mill.  It looks like a stone house built over a stream.  The mill-wheel’s underneath, using the stream’s fast-flowing energy. M. Moulin showed us a map of all the mills existing at the time that Napoleon had a sort of mill-census taken.  There were thousands. One mill served the needs of about 300 people.  Villagers would come in several times a week to have small quantities of grain milled, so it was the hub of the community, the place to gossip and catch up while waiting for your flour.

His collection of flour canisters

Something odd though, something no scholar has been able to provide an explanation for.  South of a line drawn through France from Bordeaux to Lyon, the mills were the wheel-under-the-mill type.  North of this notional line, it was the mill-with-vertical-wheel-in-the-water, or the windmill-with-sail that we’re familiar with.  M. Moulin reckoned that this was because the southerners were superior engineers: their type is harder to make.  The twinkle in his eye told us he knew this might not always be true.

Early last century, 3 principal flour firms started to dominate the market.  They bought up the small mills and closed them, concentrating milling in large industrial settings.  Another strand of village life disappeared.  At least at Éspine, the building remains for us all to enjoy