Lights, Flamingoes and a Fortified Town.

 So what happened there?? I had half a dozen photos and a half written post about some interesting things in London, but we were just off to France, so I saved it and went off to catch the Eurostar.  My plan was to publish the London post on my return, and take my time writing about France.

BUT, on my return from France, both pictures and text about the London stuff had gone! I don't understand it... but anyway here I am -  and I'm going to write about France right now.  

We went by train, something we're aiming to do more of, partly for eco reasons, partly because it's so relaxing but also because when travelling on the Continent, stopovers can be such fun.   So, three hours after boarding in London, we were in Paris, where we would spend our first night.    

To be honest, I'd fallen a bit out of love with Paris the last time we went, which must be ten years ago now.  It had seemed dirty and traffick-y, and first impressions of the bear-garden that was the Gare du Nord didn't suggest anything had changed.  

But it had!  

 We took the metro across town to an inexpensive little hotel very near the Gare de Lyon train station. I was sure the area had been a bit of a dump, ten years ago. But now, the Gare de Lyon was in the throes of a massive renovation.  Wow!  Below is a picture of some splendid murals showing some of the enticing places you can reach from it by train, (or could reach around 100 years ago when they were painted.) They're doing a beautiful job of the renovation, and it all looked wonderful. I wished I could be standing under the tree in the far right panel and look out across that azure sea.

This area is also near the Coulée verte, a railway line now made into a linear garden and chasing away the faint aura of dirt and drabness that I had recalled.  And all the street-clogging traffic that had bothered me so much before had been replaced with - well, the sight and sound of people.  Some on bikes, but mainly just strolling around. There is no doubt that Paris has made real progress towards its aim of becoming a green city.  

It was pleasant how the old streets reflected sounds of voices and laughter, not traffic,  and I almost fancied that the atmosphere might have been similar when all those famous and soon-to-be-famous painters were hanging out in Paris at the turn of the last century.  It really felt like a nice, lively, creative place to be.

My friend and fellow blogger Jeanie had impressed on me that we must see Atelier des Lumières, a sound-and-light show in an old foundry. Its programmes usually centre on painters with a connection with Paris - and there certainly were a lot of those. The present main programme features Cezanne, the shorter one is about Kandinsky, and the theatre's about half an hour's walk from our hotel. It had a late opening, so we arrived around 9 PM to find it quite busy with people coming and going. 

Jeanie has described her own impressions of the place here, and I hope you'll enjoy reading it.  As she says, it's an immersive all-round experience.  You are free to wander around in a large space with pillars and huge walls, a long gallery above the main concourse, and even a sort of railed water pond in one corner (something to do with it being an old foundry, I guess.)   The imagery is projected everywhere, and at times the whole place seems to move around you or sweep you away with it.

I thought the musical accompaniment was terrific - every piece well chosen and all of it well performed.  Even though you do have to be there to get the full effect, here's a clip of one of my favourite parts.   It is a couple of minutes of the Cezanne programme, performed to the music of the Savages'  Dance in Rameau's opera-ballet "Les Indes Galantes".  

It was worth missing an evening meal for - in fact we stayed to see some of it twice - but I wished we'd arranged to stay longer in Paris, because there were also some really nice, friendly, interesting and inexpensive restaurants on the way to it.   Still, next day we were due to take the train to what is normally one of the sunniest cities in France - Montpellier.  

As we rushed through the countryside at 200 km an hour, though,  I couldn't help noticing that the beautifully sunny Paris weather was gradually giving way to greyer and greyer skies ... and as we drew into Montpellier, the windows actually began to streak with rain. By the time we were out of the station, cold rain was falling steadily. How had I managed to choose one of the few times in the year when Montpellier's weather was as dismal as London at its glummest? AND I'd made the fundamental mistake of arriving all ready to sightsee on Monday, the day in France where almost everything is closed!  I put it down to the fact that I am simply out of practice in booking trips abroad after two  years of Covid.  

There was little point in trying to look round Montpellier in freezing drizzle with nobody around and nowhere to go indoors.   So we drove to our Airbnb, which was nice enough, an apartment in a modern villa about 15 km out of town, & we hoped the weather would improve next day...

Oh, dear.  It seemed that in the whole of Europe, only Spain had worse weather than us.  Still, it had stopped raining even though the gale force winds were still arctic, not that the flamingoes feeding in the salt marshes in the coastal area Mageleone seemed too bothered.   It was all a bit like November on the Essex coast, where the winds rush over the ocean from Russia.  Quite nice, really, if you imagined it as that, and there were also white peacocks, which I don't think you get on the Essex coast.  

 But I was feeling tired - a legacy I think of my Covid infection, which had cleared up but still returns now and then for a few hours.  I wasn't in the mood for Maguelone's big attraction,  a gigantic medieval abbey, built on a spit of land in the sea.  It is a place of high dark ceilings, long flights of ancient stone steps, and intense spirituality. Although it's partly restored, and does at least have electric light, its atmosphere is still very austere.  The Friends of the Cathederal were operating a cafe nearby, and it was packed, but they seemed to rather enjoy telling us we were too late when we turned up desperate. 

I'm glad to say that I felt better the next day and the weather reverted to its usual sunny self. It stayed bright (though not that warm) for the rest of our trip.  On our first day, we took a six or seven mile walk to a neighbouring village, Murviel-lès-Montpellier, which has Roman ruins, a friendly village shop, nice woodland, several quaint old corners and interesting old buildings ....

and a few curious characters.  

 It was a good way of getting a feel for the area at this particular time of year, and even though we got lost in the woods on the way back, it was still a good day.    Next day we visited what turned out to be one of my favourite places on the trip.   Sète is one of the Occitanie region's main ports. It has a small network of canals, lots of interesting boats, fishermen ancient.... 

 

and modern....

It is a relaxed, laid back place, where you feel people come to enjoy themselves. The weather was not yet right for being on the beach, but there is a great sweep of blue flag beach which is a big attraction in the season. We were happy just exploring.  The highlight might have been a delicious lunch in the nice little restaurant you can see in the picture below: LA MAISON VERTE - belly of pork casserole for me and asparagus for T.   It was a good meal but the main thing for me was simply sitting out in the sun in a tranquil French square, with a magnificent sculpture of an octopus to look at. 

 I don't think I've ever seen a sculptured octopus before. It was part of a large fountain,  with two water-spouting dolphins, a clear reference to Sète's fishing industry.

T and I spent a long time taking pictures of this octopus. The sculptor, Pierre Nocca, did a fine job  considering octopi are so wriggly, aquatic and boneless, and it is genuinely imposing. Which makes it seem sad that one of the local delicacies is octopus pie.    The pies look nice, but I didn't try eating one.   Octopuses are very intelligent and I am told that if you get to know them you find they are real characters, as much as a cat or dog would be. Still, I was fighting a lonely battle in Sète about this.

 the town also had one of the nicest icecream shops I have seen. Wouldn't anyone like to have one of these? 

There were also adverts around for a local biscuit made in the shape of one of the shields used by competitors in the remarkable sport of water jousting, popular in the region.

I didn't see it as the big tournament is on 25 August, but I found this on Youtube.   It looks a bit slow and a bit rough but I'd love to see those beautiful boats shooting along the canals in real life. 

  Sète was in striking contrast with Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, which we visited on another day.  This ancient place is in the gorges of Hérault, away from the flat coastal region, and in an area of big craggy wooded hills and cliffs.    Its name means "St Guilhem the Deserted" and its huge abbey, a site of pilgrimage, was established there in the Middle Ages because it was so remote and inaccessible.  

It's no longer deserted, and in fact I think it could become uncomfortably crowded in the height of the tourist season, but it was quite delightful when we went.  Below is a picture taken in the main square, showing part of the abbey on the right hand side. 

 

If you look very closely indeed at the top of the tallest crag in the picture, you may spot ruins - the locals have named them the "Giants Castle"  and created a fanciful legend about them, but in reality they are very old fortifications overlooking the whole area. We walked up one of the narrow, stony donkey paths in the hills and got a fine view of the village (below).  You can see more of the Giant's Castle on the left, but you're warned not to climb up to it because it is now unstable.

 On another day we went southeast of Montpellier to Agues-Mortes, where the Camargue region begins. The Camargue has miles of salt marsh designated as a Ramsar Wetland Site and we would have liked to explore it more.  We had glimpsed some of its characteristic salt marsh and flamingoes at Maguelone, but it and Aigues-Mortes are too near Montpellier and are too built up to offer glimpses of the wild horses or bull ranches for which the area is also famous.  We only caught a few glimpses down forgotten side roads of a different and older landscape of reeds and water, which I found very attractive.  Here's a spot outside a farm near Aigues-Mortes. 

So, Aigues-Mortes (thought to mean "Dead Water" in the Latin of the Romans who lived there first) is a  well-and-truly fortified town.  

It has four gates, which are open to motor traffic since people actually live inside - because it is a proper town in there, or at least a large village.  And the local people need their cars and shops and church.   The visitors, of course, have to walk.

And here's a map of the place - it is a decent size but you can see how contained it is.  It must seem very strange to be there if they ever put the portcullises down. 

I liked this lighthouse, which was added onto one of the enormous towers a few centuries ago and must have offered a welcome but dim and flickering light in a storm. 

And then, we found we had run out of days.    I wished we'd stayed longer and explored more. I really do think Covid has narrowed my horizons more than I realised.  I had, in some strange way, almost forgotten that you could get on the train and go somewhere else, and I'd booked our tickets back to London far too soon for my taste.

Now I'm keen to look at the idea of another train trip to France, perhaps in autumn, and perhaps even getting as far as Italy or Spain.  It still blows my mind to think I can cycle to the train station in London, catch a train, step out into the middle of Paris a few hours later and be all ready to catch a train to the centre of Biarritz or Barcelona.   

Vive l'Eurostar!