From Pyrenees to Pennines

‘I don’t sing because I’m happy; I’m happy because I sing.’ *

Thursday evening. Choir. Arrive early in time for a quick chat and a gossip, and then settle down to work.

The mood’s established from the first note. Our voices chase up and down the scales in a series of jolly rounds, verses and tongue-twisters as we warm up our voices and then it’s down to work on the repertoire. Vanessa, who squeezes pretty good music out of a very mixed bunch of singers, keeps us busy, committed and enthusiastic. We love her.

It’s all so different from the choral society I belonged to in England. There, the repertoire was the attraction. Haydn’s ‘Creation’, Charpentier’s ‘Te Deum and all those stirring sacred Masses. I liked my fellow choristers too. Really though, I felt like Groucho Marx. I didn’t care to belong to any club that would have me as a member. I was never quite confident in what I was singing. I was always running from behind and rarely had the confidence to sing my heart out.

But the repertoire held me in thrall, and so when I arrived in France, I looked for more of the same. And didn’t find it. I guessed the Departmental Choir was beyond my reach. I took me ages to realise that most villages and small towns, even Laroque, do indeed have a choir, and even longer not to feel sniffy at what I then considered an irredeemably low-brow programme.

More fool me. Since I gave in and joined in I’ve had the best fun. Thursday nights when we have our rehearsals are simply unmissable. We sing a bit of everything: Henry VIII’s ‘Pastime with good company’ (en français naturallement); ‘Amezzing Gress’ (en American, off coss), some sacred stand-bys; Breton or Auvergnat folk songs: the odd sortie to Russia – but the general feel is vairy Frainch, often with songs to which everybody but me already knows the words. I soon catch up though. I have to.

We’ll have concerts in the communities nearby. And every now and then, as last week, there‘ll be a ‘Rencontre de Chorales’, when a number of choirs from a wide area gather together for the afternoon and invite the general public in for a feast of singing. Each choir sings about 6 numbers from their repertoire, catering to every possible musical taste. And we all sit together in our concert get-up, sympathising with mistakes, applauding great performances until our own turn comes. At the end, every chorister from every choir will somehow squeeze onto the stage to join in the ‘chanson en commun’. The audience enjoy it, but it’s even more fun for we singers to join together, united by our love of singing. As we all suggested last week at the tops of our voices, ‘C’est magnifique’

Far too busy getting to know each other and renew old friendships to start singing yet

There we are, members of 5 different choirs, all in our different concert gear, squeezing together to begin singing. That's me in the middle, in blue. — There we are, members of 5 different choirs, all in our different concert gear, squeezing together to begin singing. That’s me in the middle, in blue.

* William James

Gentians for a May morning

May Day here in France is the day when the French like to offer lilies of the valley. It’s been so cold and wet these last few days that ours in the garden are still tightly in bud. But the other day, we did see gentians. Turning their vivid blue faces to the sun, they were marching up the sunny sides of the slope at Roquefixade. I’d like to share some with you.

The Château at Lagarde

From a distance, the village of Lagarde, dominated by the Château.

The ruined site

The view from the siute to the distant Pyrenees.

Archway

The original medieval tower was extended and embellished during the Renaissance.

A detail from the tower

Castle lawnmowers

From this side of the castle, the gardens would have been visible.

Fabrice Chambon’s interested audience includes Sarko the donkey.

Draw a square. Now draw another one surrounding it, with a nice big border. Now do it again. Now draw a big rectangle alongside one of the sides, as wide as one of the sides of the square, and maybe 3 times as long. There. You’ve just given yourself a brief history of the Château de Lagarde.

We had a better history lesson, because we were there, in cold gusty conditions, being introduced to the site by Fabrice Chambon, as part of the series of events organised as part of this season’s Laissez-vous conter le Pays des Pyrenees Cathares.

Lagarde is a ruined castle, an imposing and dramatic addition to the skyline hereabouts. We always assumed it was medieval, destroyed in one of the many wars that characterised that stormy period of history.

And certainly it was first constructed in the 11^th century, by Ramire de Navarre, King of Navarre and Count of Barcelona. During the crusades against the Cathars, it came into the possession of Simon de Montfort, who always gets a look in round here to any story from that time. He gave it to his lieutenant, Guy de Lévis, and this is the family to whom it’s mainly belonged over the centuries. They owned châteaux everywhere in the area: Léran, Montségur, Terrefort – all within easy distance of Lagarde. It was a fortress, a castle, and occupied that inner square you drew.

By the late 15^th – 16^th centuries, defensive castles were so last year. Jean V de Lévis-Mirepoix had the money and the leisure to go travelling, and admired all those famous Châteaux of the Loire: Azay -le- Rideau, Chambord and so on. He liked what he saw and had his own château remodelled with some of the features he had so admired, and windows piercing the original solid medieval masonry. The finest feature may have been a splendid staircase with wide shallow steps curving upwards through the central tower: it was said that it was possible for horses to mount these stairs. It was a fine Renaissance palace, and extended to fill that second square, because it included space to accommodate his artillery forces and a large dry moat. Of course by the time the work was done, the style he’d copied had also become so last year.

By the time of Louis XIV, the château had become a fine palace. The site had been considerably extended (to fill that third square!), and copied aspects of Versailles. Think of Versailles, and it’s the formal gardens that come to mind, and the Hall of Mirrors. That’s what Lagarde should bring to mind too. But the vast and elegant formal gardens no longer exist: even the land on which they were constructed is no longer part of the site. It had a Hall of Mirrors too, which though inevitably on a smaller scale than that at Versailles, was said to be magnificent.

Then came the French Revolution. Lagarde escaped destruction, despite an order to knock it down in April 1794. But its glory days were over. It became an arsenal, a stables, an immense barn, a munitions factory and a bit of a ruin, until in 1805 it became once more the property of the Lévis-Mirepoix family. These days a variety of charitable and national associations are working to restore the site and make it, at the least safe to visit, and at best a place where its glorious past will be explored and celebrated.

The photos I took are all of the exterior of the site, as it’s too dangerous still to penetrate the inner courtyards, much less the interior of the building. Nor can I show you pictures of the château in its Renaissance glory days, nor of its time as a palace with formal gardens.

Sadly, because of the poor weather , the pictures I took yesterday weren’t up to much, so I’m mainly using some others I took recently. I can show you the ruins. And I can show you the castle’s lawnmowers: an inquisitive and friendly herd of donkeys with their charming foals.

UPDATE: May 2nd 2013

Thanks to local historian Martine Rouche, I can now show you some images of Lagarde as it was in its final most glorious days before the Revolution.

Look at the statues in the colour picture . One was taken to Mirepoix during the Revolution and ” turned ” into Goddess Reason. Then it disappeared. Never to return. A few years ago, a man who was vaguely in charge of the grounds and ruins, found lots of things, including a foot of one of the statues. Nobody knows where that foot is now. It is a pity because it gave a precise idea of the size of the statue and showed those statues were made of brick, covered in some sort of white enamel.

Anyway, enjoy these pictures, which certainly make it easier to imagine what the castle must once have been like than gazing at those ruins, however romantic they may be.

Les demoiselles de Caraybat, daffodils and gentians

Once upon a time long ago in Caraybat, when times were hard, the men of this small village had to look far afield for work. And they went to Spain, for the hay-making season. Hawkers came to the village, and peddlers. They found a village with no men. They took advantage. So did the women.

When the hay-making season was over, the men returned, and the women spied them returning over the distant mountains. Suddenly ashamed and frightened, they fled to the hills. God, in vengeful and Old Testament mood, was displeased. As the women reached the summit, he turned each one of them to stone. And there they are to this day, les demoiselles de Caraybat, a petrified reminder of a summer of sin.

A few of those demoiselles hide themselves behind the woodland trees

We remembered this legend yesterday when I took our Laroquais walking friends to Caraybat and the dolomies to discover those daffodils I’d been shown on Thursday. I was quite chuffed that not a single one of them had previously known this special spot, and we had a pleasant hour up on the rocks, picnicking and enjoying the last days of the daffodil season.

We followed the walk I’d learnt about on Thursday, and then we finished our day by going to the plateau above Roquefixade to see the gentians there.

Sadly, it was by then rather cold and windy, and most of the gentians had sensibly folded their indigo skirts about their faces and tucked themselves away to wait for a sunny day. We’ll wait too. And when the sun comes out properly, we’ll be back.

Unlike our walk on Thursday, early morning was bright and clear.

The distant Pyrenees, just visible betwen two of those demoiselles.

A clump of pale and delicate woodland daffodils.

Daffodils on the windswept hillside.

The view from our picnic spot.

And another view.

A bank of spring flowers.

Our daffodils were there, up on the top.

Traditional pebble paving in front of a village house.

And the cock, keeping guard at the same house.

Magnolia in the village square at Soula.

A nut tree of some kind comes to life after winter.

More spring flowers.

Château de Roquefixade: we’re looking for gentians on the plateau.

Gentians scattered across pastureland.

The end of another pretty good day.

Daffodils in the Dolomies

Yesterday, we walked in Les Dolomies, which you could confuse with the Dolomites with its craggy pillars and rocky outcrops: though actually it’s a small area between Lavelanet and Foix, just along from Roquefixade. After a few days of hot sun and blue skies, it was disappointing to have the threat of rain, but the slight mistiness brought its own beauty to the landscape, softening the distant views, and enhancing the vibrant greens of the springtime meadows. Everywhere, blossom and flowers.

We walked upwards through the woods. Anny and Maguy had a surprise for us. And quite suddenly, there they were. Daffodils. Thousands and thousands of them, extending upwards over the hillside, tumbling over rocks, leaving not an inch of path for us to walk along. The weather cleared. The sun came out. We were entirely happy.

Come and share the walk with us, along blossom-laden paths, through the daffodil woods, and then down into the valley, looking across at those still snow-covered peaks.

Craggy peaks above the blossom

Apple blossom

Our upward path

Those dolomies

First sight of the daffodils

At the edge of the woods: our view

Maguy enjoys the view

Endless daffodils

Now bluebells: Spanish variety, not our beloved English

Cherry blossom

Walking down to the valley

An early gentian

A magnolia in Soula

To view any of these photos full-size, click on the image.

Café society

A table in the sun, a moment shared with friends... French café life in the traditional style. — A table in the sun, a moment shared with friends… French café life in the traditional style.

Think of your last holiday in France, and it’ll probably include memories of a morning coffee and croissant in a cosy little bar, or of relaxing and people-watching with an evening pastis, sitting outside a café in some pretty sunlit square. Hang on to those memories.

In 1960, France had 200,000 cafés and bars. Now there are fewer than 40,000. Those characterful smoky rooms with dark wooden furnishings, and solitary men sitting at the bar nursing an early morning brandy are an endangered species. All over France, cafés are closing at the rate of about 10 a week. Blame TV, blame the smoking ban, , blame ‘la crise’, blame readily available alcohol in the supermarket. Whatever the reason, many cafés can no longer make a go of it.

Take Laroque. Our town of 2000 or so used to support more than half a dozen bars. Now there are three, and they struggle. Obé – that’s what everyone calls our Obelix look-alike – can’t make a living from half a dozen elderly men who come in most afternoons to nurse a single beer while they watch the afternoon’s horse racing. But he can cook, so he’s reinvented the bar as Table d’Angèle, a successful lunch-time restaurant serving home-cooking, mainly to tradesmen looking for a once-a-week treat to break up a day’s plumbing, building or electrical work.

There we are. That's Table d’Angèle. And there's Obé's van. He needs to offer outside catering too to bring home the bacon. — There we are. That’s Table d’Angèle. And there’s Obé’s van. He needs to offer outside catering too to bring home the bacon.

Down at Le Lounge, the owners have had to have a different strategy: food didn’t work for them. They tried a traditional menu. No good. Then they had a go at offering an eat-all-you-can buffet. When that failed, they tried Italian food. Now there’s no lunch-time menu at all. They make do with weekend trade, when sparkly lights and disco music attract the young people of the area before they head off for the Orient Express, the out-of-town nightclub at the once-upon-a-time station.

The Jingo’s still looking just about OK. It’s on the main road and seems to get a steady enough stream of customers. It may outlive the rest.

But bars can rise as well as fall. When le Rendez-Vous in Léran, the village next door, came up for sale a few years back it was a hopeless case: dingy, unpopular and seemingly beyond rescue. But an English couple who’d never run a bar in their lives bought it and made it the hub of village life. Shirley cooks with imagination and flair – she even has that unknown round here menu item, the vegetarian dish. Marek’s a cheerful and extremely hard-working host who’s always pleased to see you. Quiz nights, open mic nights, a big screen to watch the rugby, a cosy corner with books to read and exchange…. It’s a winning formula, and both French and English from the village and beyond ensure the bar’s kept busy late into the evening, especially in the summer.

Le Rendez-Vous one busy evening in mid-summer. There's an evening market in town too. — Le Rendez-Vous one busy evening in mid-summer. There’s an evening market in town too.

And over in Mirepoix, there’s another new café. The Mad Hatter isn’t just another bar. It’s hoping to cash in on the French love affair with things ‘so British’. A nice cup of tea with a scone or slice of ginger cake might not be traditional French fare. But it’s a welcome addition to café society, and yet another way in which the traditional French bar has to change, or sink without trace.

A welcome moment of calm, gazing out of the window over a cup of Earl Grey at The Mad Hatter, Mirepoix.

A man, a plan, a canal

Pierre-Paul Riquet. Pierre-Paul Riquet? Who’s he? He’s not much known in the UK, and I’m not sure how much of a household name he is in France either.

Pierre-Paul Riquet. Here he is, in the village of Bonrepos-Riquet.

But he should be. He’s the brains behind the wonderful UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Canal du Midi. This lovely and elegant canal, opened in 1681, is 240 km. long, and runs from Toulouse to the Mediterranean. It was built as a short cut from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, avoiding a long sea voyage round Spain. The idea had been discussed on and off since Roman times, but the problem was always the same. How to deal with such hilly terrain and how to supply those hilly sections with enough water.

The Canal du Midi: a typical view, courtesy of Wikipedia

Riquet thought he had the answer. Born in 1604 or 1609, he was a salt-tax collector. Tax collecting was a rich man’s job: at that time, it involved paying all the monies due to the king up-front, and worrying about collecting from the relevant subjects later. A rich man can have a fine home, so Riquet set out to buy the ideal spot, and in 1652, he found it: the ancient but run-down Château de Bonrepos, near Toulouse. It was a medieval building originally, fortified in the 16^th century. It interested him because it was a fine site, with splendid views of the Pyrenees (Not today: the weather was awful. Never saw the mountains at all through the gloom). More importantly for him, the surrounding terrain, resembling parts of the nearby Montagne Noire, enabled him to conduct hydraulic experiments round an ancient fishpond on site from which he developed reservoirs and water-filled trenches replicating sections of the future Canal du Midi. Bonrepos, then, was where he worked up his case for showing that the canal could after centuries of simply talking about it, become a reality.

The remnants of the mediaeval building interested him not at all. He had a fine classical building built – 100 rooms. Stone isn’t available locally, so it was built of Toulouse brick, and faced with stucco to hide this embarrassing fact: bricks were elsewhere the material of the poor. He had formal gardens built, orchards, an orangery. Every winter, an iceberg’s worth of ice was wrapped in hessian and floated from the Pyrenees to be stored in an excavated ice-house deep in the woodlands for use throughout the summer.

These days, the château is in a bad way. The stucco’s falling off, the windows are rotted, and the internal decorations are absent or shabby. The inhabitants of the small village where the château stands, Bonrepos-Riquet, bought the property some years ago, and while appealing for and attracting public and private funds, it also relies on monthly working parties of volunteers, who work enthusiastically in the house and grounds to stem the damage caused by wind and weather and to bring about improvements.

We visited today on one of Elyse Rivin’s informative Toulouse Guided Walks , which always focus on those corners of Toulouse and the surrounding area which you never knew about: you leave after her tour feeling an enthusiastic expert. With input from the château’s own volunteer guides, steeped in the story of the place, we formed a picture of Paul Riquet himself. He persuaded Louis XIV of his ability to master-mind the canal, and in 1661, work began, though he didn’t live to see the waterway opened as he died in 1680, leaving enormous debt and financial problems for his children who nevertheless continued the project. The labourers – men and women, up to 12,000 of them – who built the canal were among the best paid workers in Europe, to the disapproval of other less philanthropic employers. He insisted on provision being made for all aspects of their lives, from shops and refreshment to education and worship.

Those plane trees that line the canal. They offered shade, then as now, to those who travel along it. Their root systems bind the soil and offer stability to the canal, and the leaves don’t rot, so as they fall into the canal, they help make a waterproof base. Sadly, these days those trees are afflicted by a virus. One theory is that the wooden boxes which packaged American munitions in the war and were discarded along the canal, carried the infected spores and lay dormant for many years.

First view of the Château

Then we crossed over the dry moat. It was never filled with water.

A once-handsome stucco interior.

A glance through the window created to view that sweeping vista.

This isn’t Riquet’s study. But perhaps this 19th century version isn’t too unlike his own.

We’re round the back of the château now.

Stucco in sore need of repair.

This is the orangery, for winter storage of citrus trees. No windows on this side, to protect against the north wind.

And inside. Windows offer light and sun, the roof beams are splendid: soon, this space will be fit for concerts and exhibitions.

And here are some of the volunteers working to make it all happen.

Below ground, back in the château, the original medieval kitchen had its own water supply – a well – useful in times of siege

Put hot coals in the slots, and there you have your plancha for grilling.

Outside in the woods – here’s the entrance tio the ice house.

A volunteer repairs the experimental canal system.

More volunteers work by the lake.

And there’s so much else. Follow the links to get a fuller picture of the story, or better still, visit the Canal du Midi and Château Bonrepos, where this wonderful waterway was conceived and planned.

Catalonia visits southern France, bearing calçots

My daughter Emily’s just visited from her home in Barcelona, bringing her Catalan boyfriend, and an enormous bundle of calçots sent by his mother.

Eating calçots is a century-old tradition in Catalonia at this time of year. Garden onions are planted deep in the soil, and earthed up throughout their growing period, so they have long thick white stems, just like a leek’s. Harvested between Christmas and Easter, they’re a much appreciated local delicacy.

Really, they should be grilled fiercely over an open fire or barbecue. We lack a barbecue, and in any case, southern France has its own traditions: Holy week is cold, wet and miserable. Without fail.

So we settled for baking them in a fiercely hot oven. And then we got down to the cheerfully messy business of eating them. You strip the hot slippery skin off each calçot, and then dunk it in a punchy romanesco sauce before tipping your head back to ingest the lot. You need napkins, yards of kitchen roll – bibs would be good – and good bread to mop up the juices and sauce.

Serving the calçots. Another break with tradition. They should be on a terracotta roof tile.

We had fun, but probably not as much as if we’d visited one of the outdoor festivals dedicated to the eating of these alliums. Watch the video from Valls.

Eating the calçots. No red wine for us. The calçot-bearers drove back to Barcelona straight after the meal

Donkey Derby

That’s where we first spotted them: they were close to home then/

Then they came and inspected us on the hillside.

A game of chase.

Quite a long way from home now.

Can you spot them?

Time for a roll in the dust.

They’ve fallen behind us….

But they soon catch up.

It’s ‘Goodbye’ now. Unac and their home is far below us as we continue our walk.

We were walking yesterday in glorious spring weather near a little village called Unac, quite near the winter sports area of Ax-les-Thermes. Just outside the village, we spotted donkeys: eight of them. They spotted us too. They came to say ‘hello’. And then they followed us.

Every field for miles about was theirs by the looks of things, because every time we rounded a corner, or scrambled higher up the craggy path, thinking we’d at last said our ‘goodbyes’ to them, there they were again, peering over the fence and hoping for carrots, which we failed to offer.

Someone remembered that they must come from La ferme aux ânes, in which case their job is to carry the baggage of any hikers who care to hire them. But they weren’t working then. Like us, they were enjoying the first day of spring. They cheered our afternoon along no end.

A morning with Saint Pierre: two versions

Once there was a fine Roman city, Tolosa, and just outside its walls was a temple to one of their gods. Over the centuries, the city became Toulouse, and where there was once a temple, there’s now a concert hall. The building that was once outside the city walls is now quite definitely part of central Toulouse. What happened in all those years in between?

The first thing was that in the 4^th century the Romans left Tolosa, pursued by the Visigoths. And Visigoth Christians (who resembled Cathars more than they did the official Catholic variety) used the temple site to build a simple church. You can still see and visit its foundations today, and its ancient sarcophagi holding the bones of the long-dead.

This church building served its purpose for many years, until the 10^th century, when the count of Toulouse gave it over to the Benedictine order whose most important monastery in the area was at Moissac. And they built and extended the church which was and is known as Saint Pierre des Cuisines. Nothing to do with kitchens. The word is a corruption of the word ‘coquinis’ – artisans, of whom there were many in the busy streets nearby.

Over the years, the church became more important as a parish church to the local population, rather than as a centre of worship for the Benedictines, so in the 16^th century, the church became the property of the silent order of Cistercians. 18 monks had the use of the church and surrounding land and buildings. Their simple uncluttered contemplative life was in stark contrast to that of the nearby citizens of Toulouse, crammed into the narrow overcrowded streets where they lived and worked.

The church continued to be used as a religious building until the Revolution. Then, as for so many other churches, another secular use had to be found for it. And one was. The nearby arsenal was the local home of the army, and they took over the building to use it for … cannon ball manufacture. When this slightly inglorious use for the building came to an end, it remained unused until the University of Toulouse took it over during the 20^th century. Eventually the funds were found to restore it, and the building is now a concert hall with magnificent acoustics. So it’s now an established asset of the conservatoire, and part of that area of the university campus still known as the ‘arsenal’, in memory of its history.

It’s a beautiful and austerely simple building from the Romanesque and early Gothic periods, and a contrast with the other church we went to see just round the corner. This church, Saint Pierre des Chartreux was begun in 1612 to meet the needs of the Cistercians who had moved to the site. It has a very unusual feature. The high altar is right in the middle of the nave. Why? So the parishioners could worship at one end of the church without being able to see the contemplative Cistercians at the other end of the building. Much of the church is decorated in restrained grey and white stucco work, though there are stained glass windows by Louis-Victor Gesta, whose work is in several city churches, and ancient hammered ironwork.

Whilst in the area, walk round the corner and see the remains of the old Cistercian cloisters. Little is left, but there’s enough to show that a meditating monk would get a decent work-out by doing a single circuit.

And now it’s time to wander off and explore the little streets nearby: you’re never far from a lunch-spot in Toulouse.

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We discovered these monuments and learnt their story courtesy of Elyse Rivin and one of her Toulouse Guided Walks.