The End of the Odyssey

December 2008

The last few days in Seix were a flurry of packing, cleaning, throwing out unwanted stuff and saying goodbye. It’s not often in life that one leaves a place for good, that one gathers up everything one has and moves on. It’s unlikely that we’ll ever live in this small corner of the world again, a fact that made our departure all the more poignant. Many of our friends, and even some people we only knew by association, made the effort to come to us and say goodbye, to say that they and their children would really miss our family. It was touching to feel their regard.

On our last day in the village, Thursday, there were many tears flowing into the Salat. Mahalia and Maylis were distraught, Agnes and Orissia found the parting very hard, and Myriam and I had moist eyes. Mireille regretted the things we didn’t do together, and Bitte spoke aloud the words that had been waltzing around in my mind, that it was awful for us to be leaving when we felt so happy in each other’s company: her and Olivier and Ludo and me. We had passed a wonderful evening in their company only a week before, in their stone grange on the mountain above Aleu, a house that could only be theirs, done up by them alone with beautiful wood, white plaster, lace, and not a straight line anywhere. It was the first time we had been invited to dinner by local people. Ludo and I have learned over the years, from living in different countries, that it takes a year to form firm friendships and two years to start to feel at home. We are blessed to have formed a few special friendships here, each one of us.

To leave the house in Seix is not an easy thing. Because of the extreme cold the water needs to be bled from all the pipes, removed from all the toilets and emptied from the hot water tanks. The sheets and towels also needed to be washed and well dried before being put away so they wouldn’t become mouldy in the long period of the house’s dormancy. The linen sheets take an age to dry so this was no easy task. We slept without sheets and pillowcases on our last night in the house, and left in the dark early on Friday morning, packing the Renault Espace with 5 suitcases, two large backpacks, 6 small backpacks and 2 bags full of shoes. It sounds as impossible as it seemed to be, but the car had elastic sides. Au revoir, Seix!

La Fete de la Lumiere, Lyon

Felix with Mael; Mahalia and Agnes with Johanna

Our exodus from the Pyrenees took us along the Mediterranean and up the Rhone Valley to Lyon, where we stopped for the night. We were there to visit a friend I made in New York 20 years ago, Pierre, his wife Sylvie and their two children. We’ve seen them on and off over the years and it’s one of those friendships that doesn’t drift with time; they are constants in our address book. We were very lucky to be in Lyon on the night of its famous Fete de la Lumiere, and event that draws visitors from all over Europe (which presented serious accommodation problems). This celebration started as a religious festival where lights were lit for Mary and carried through the streets. It has transformed into a full on spectacle of light, with buildings lit up, lamps hung in the streets and an artist’s competition (along the lines of ‘Sculpture by the Sea’) for works based on light. It was beautiful, especially a video work for children that was projected onto the huge old buildings along two sides of the town hall square.

Sylvie and Pierre

We had dinner with Pierre and Sylvie at their flat, and pored over photos of our children taken nine years ago, and marvelled at how much of their childhood we forget. It made me realise anew how fortunate we’ve been to slow down this year and watch the four of them grow without our own busy-ness clouding our eyes.

On Saturday we squashed into the car again and climbed up into the Alps, to Switzerland. It was very strange to be back in this country again, a place that I found beautiful, but in which I didn’t ever feel comfortable. It is also the place where I met Ludo, where our story started. We saved each other from the alienation that foreigners can feel here.

Our Chalet; the Festive Streets

It was a long drive along the northern edge of Lac Leman, and a treacherous drive up the valley to the village below Zermatt with no snow tyres or chains. We parked the car there and took the train the rest of the way. Cars are not allowed in Zermatt, and this makes it more beautiful than it already is. Nestling below the Matterhorn, it’s a fairy village covered in snow and tasteful Christmas decorations. In fact, they don’t need Christmas decorations here. There’s no need to evoke festive feelings with artificial Christmas trees and baubles. Every tree is a Christmas tree and every shaft of light illuminates a shower of falling snowflakes. Finally, a white Christmas! All my life I’ve wanted to experience Christmas in the snow, and here we are (at least for the pre Christmas festivities).


Sunday dawned clear and blue with a clarity to the air that took our breath away. After spending more in the hire shop than we did on accommodation (and more on lift tickets than we did on accommodation too) we were ready to ski. The ski equipment logistics for a family of six are cumbersome and not funny, especially when two of the six can’t manage their own gear. The walk from the apartment to the ski lifts was challenging, but reaching the top made it all worthwhile. We set out together on our first run and it was beautiful. The snow was soft, the slopes well groomed, no ice and hardly any skiers. Paradise. We headed further up the mountain, keeping the mighty Matterhorn in our sights all the time, and started down the next slope. Then, oh no, I felt something really not right happen in my knee. Torn ligaments. Not great timing. The only good thing about the whole experience was the fun ride down in the first aid sled. It was such a weird way to see the mountain (upside down) that I laughed all the way. $1,500 and a few torn ligaments later I’m back at the apartment, and here I will stay for most of the week I imagine, and I’m not laughing any more!

Skiing in Zermatt

Wednesday
Today it’s snowing. The emaciated winter trees become fleshed out with snow, and the firs become Christmas tree clichés. The snow accumulates on the fences, the garbage tins, the bicycles, rising like dough, a gentle and inevitable growth, the soft contours becoming softer and less contoured and eventually disappearing altogether like limbs under a thick quilt. Snow is so far from my ordinary life that every aspect of snow seems like a miracle. Seeing it in such quantities is like a gift. It’s the gift of being able to look with new eyes. We were so excited when it snowed in Seix, but now that seems like amateur excitement compared to the euphoria we feel here, where the snow is a metre deep and powdery fluffy.

Our chalet is fantastic. Central to everything, not too expensive, well equipped and tastefully decorated with carving everywhere done by the owners’ grandfather.

Friday
Stupendous weather. I had to go out and enjoy it, so I hobbled out with the troops and we took the train up and up and up to over 3000m. The views of the Alps and the Matterhorn from the top were panoramic, the sky blue, the snow deep and white and icing-like. Below us, a long cloud lay like froth, extending from the foot of the Matterhorn right to the end of the valley at Visp. There was one lonely cloud, and I could actually see its shadow slanting through the atmosphere and onto one of the distant slopes. I have never seen a shadow on the sky before. There was also a tiny fragment of rainbow hovering above the ski slope in front of the station that was like the special effect in a movie. Strange meteorological events abounding.
I took a video of the kids and Ludo skiing away from me down their first slope of the day and felt like crying as they slid away, very sad that I couldn’t be with them in such a beautiful place on such a beautiful day. All that was left to do was walk around and take in the scenery, take a few photos, and buy several Swiss army knives for Christmas gifts in the highest shopping area in Europe.

As I limped home I passed a restaurant that had a menu translated into English next to the Swiss German and French ones. One yummy dish had ‘chicken fillets with mushroom scum’ (not a good translation from filet de poulet a la mousse aux champignons).

Sunday
We left Zermatt, really happy with our week there. The kids made enormous progress with their skiing, to the point where Ludo was able to ditch his skis for the snowboard and enjoy some more challenging runs. He and Emile had a few board runs by themselves when the others had had enough.


Nicholas and Christophe; Justine and Veronique

Now we’re in the country-side near Sancerre, staying with Ludo’s cousins and it’s a weekend of feasting and family. They’re very good at feasting here. We had 26 last night at the table and 24 today for lunch. Crazy!

Cave a Vins; Le Cirque d'Hiver

Paris by Night

Paris. A reprise of our visit here last year. Francois was once again incredibly generous in hosting the six of us in his 30 square metre studio on the 5th floor (with no lift, which was challenging for this hobbler). Christmas Eve dinner at Ludo’s Mum’s and Christmas day in Versailles, though this year we chose to go to a restaurant in the gardens of the chateau, which was easier organization for 17 people.

Au Bord de la Seine

Ludo and the children spent a day at Eurodisney (which Mahalia says was awesome) and I went to the Musee Picasso. We went back to the Cirque d’Hiver, once again on the Bateaubus, to a wonderful Dufy exhibition (with 7 children – not recommended) and to the Comedie Francaise to see Cyrano de Bergerac. We caught up with friends for lunch and dinner and saw old movies in the old cinemas of the 5th arrondisement. We burned the candle at both ends and were rather weary when the time came to leave. On our last afternoon we ate the best crepe of the whole year under the Eiffel Tower, with our Paris cousins and Francoise. It was very hard to say farewell, especially for Ludo. Goodbye to his Mum and his sisters and his language and his culture, and not least important, his food and wine.

Virginie and Lucas; Emile and Jane

Our Last Day

We arrived at the airport with 160 kg of luggage (we were allowed 120kg) and managed to avoid the excess baggage charge of $60 per kilogram. And then we flew home.


And that was our year in France. The children are returning fluent in French, they’ve learned to cope with the frustration of a foreign environment and to persist in the face of adversity. They have made fast friends in the village, whose lives are far removed from their normal pampered existence in Sydney, and with their new lingual skills they have become closer to their French family, which was the primary motivation for this year away. We are all six of us closer to each other, as we’ve had to support each other through periods of homesickness, sickness and challenges. We spent more time together than we ever have before – walking in the mountains, travelling in the car, sitting around the fire at night.

This is the end of an amazing adventure that led us to many wonderful places in Europe, in France, in the Pyrenees, within our family, and in our hearts.

Our Last Month in Seix

NOVEMBER

One child can make a big difference in a small village. Agnes, as always, has made oodles of friends and her departure will create a little vacuum in their lives, according to their mothers. The same is true of Emile and his friend Bruno, Felix and Jolan, and Mahalia has spent almost every hour that she’s not with us, with her friend Mayliss. They will miss each other a lot. Our house is in the centre of the village, a village that is quickly aging, and it is always full of children, our children and everyone else’s. Mireille, our old friend and neighbour, has said “when you go there will be a big hole in the life of the village.” We don’t know everyone in the village but everyone knows us, whether because we’re ‘the Australians’ or because they know one or more of the four children. It’s a small pond and we provide quite a few fish.

The Kids Friends; Jolan and Lucas

Emile, Agnes and Felix all spend a lot of time at Jean-Claude’s house. Jean Claude is a small, old man with few teeth and hands that have become claw-like with arthritis. He loves to have all the village children around playing in his steep, huge yard, and he also houses every stray cat in the village, and their myriad kittens. They make bows and arrows there (the children, not the cats) and swing on a 5 metre high rope swing on the tree at the top of the hill into the void over the village and then back again to the precipitous slope. Emile fell of last week at full swing and hurt his back. Emile has spent hours at Jean Claude’s recently with all his tools, carving wooden knives and arrows.

It's Really Cold

N is 9 years old and has brought himself up. He has a brother who will end up gaol, a mother who is a drug addict and is now pregnant with her fourth child. N has been known to sleep on the street because his Mum hasn’t answered the door. At Halloween, he came to the front door at 10pm, by himself, to collect lollies. A week before that he and his brother and some friends went around the village spraying graffiti on walls and cars. He has already been up at the police station. Life here is certainly beautiful, but there is a dark side too.

A Medieval Toilet; A Medieval Mahalia

Mum arrived today. We picked her up at the dinky little airport in Carcassonne and brought her back to ‘the fridge’. We’ve made the lounge/dining area really cosy with a fire and a warm red rug, but to leave this sanctuary of warmth we risk frostbite.

The stone of the buildings in Perigord is the colour of butter and not-too-cooked caramel, so different from the rough grey we have in Ariege. We’ve come here to show Mum the beauty of the Dordogne and the Perigord cuisine (don’t come here if you don’t like duck and goose products). We’re staying in a little golden hotel in Coux, where we have been given a warm welcome by the couple who run it. They have even provided 11 and 7 year old boys and a 9 year old girl to play with our children! How thoughtful!

The Golden Stone of Sarlat

Our first stop was Lascaux, where a complete and exact replica of the most celebrated cavern has been made for tourists. The caves were discovered by 4 teenagers and their dog, Robot, in the 1940’s and they were very soon overrun with thousands of tourists each day. The opening to the cave was enlarged, stairs and ventilation were installed, and soon enough the 16,000 year old paintings were being destroyed by bacteria, mould and carbon dioxide, so they were closed in 1963. The paintings are amazing for their sophistication and for the incorporation of the relief of the cave wall in the shapes of the animals.






The valley of the Dordogne is littered with fabulous castles so we saw a few of these: Castelnaud, Beynac (where the film Chocolat was made), Marqueyssac, and a spooky chateau fort that was built into the side of a cliff.

Felix Falls in Blackberry Bush; The Dordogne

It’s amazing how your body changes in one year (read: ages). I’m sure that when we left Australia I could do without my glasses. Close work was easier with them but I could still get by without them. Now I’m in a panic if I leave them on the second floor and I have to look up a telephone number, or even dial the telephone number. Forget about reading without them: I’d have to hold the book with my feet to decipher anything. I even need them to eat my dinner for goodness sake. I can’t see what I’m eating otherwise. I understand so very clearly now why old people (a term which theoretically could also apply to me???) wear their glasses on a string around their neck. They may as well walk around without eyes as without their glasses.

Yesterday we took Mum to the Col de la Crouzette. It seems to be a place we take our parents, having already been there with Dad and Cheryl, and with Francoise. It’s on top of a ridge that lines up to the south of the steepest mountains that form the frontier with Spain, and it’s so high (1,400m) that that the view is uninterrupted and extraordinary. Yesterday was so very beautiful because the air was crystal clear and there was a 20cm quilt of fresh snow all around us. Mum was transported, and it was a real joy to see her joy at being in such a special place. Although she’s seen snow several times before, and even started her limited skiing career at the ripe age of 61, she’d never seen it so fresh and thick and luscious and people free. There was nobody around for miles.

Mum on Top of the World

November 25, 2008
It’s snowing in the village! Today we’ll go tobogganing. Last night was absolutely freezing, but it’s OK because it’s all so beautiful today. Snowflakes fall so delicately, it’s a miracle something so airy and pure can make the journey from a heavy grey cloud to earth without being obliterated. Instead, those trillions of tiny white water sculptures congregate together clearly believing strongly that there is strength in numbers, and indeed there is: massed together, these subtle forms subdue all noise and cow all bad behaviour so that a village like ours is transformed, and everyone is smiling and contours are soft and the world is transformed into something completely different, clothed in the pureness of white.

The kids were eager to leave for school, scooping up the snow from the tops of the cars and battling each other all the way to school. They sat in their classrooms transfixed by another snowfall with huge flakes flurrying outside. And this afternoon they came in, grabbed the toboggans and plastic bags and raced out to find a steep snow covered slope. We went to Toulouse today to buy Christmas presents for the children, and what has become a ho hum drive was today so beautiful, it seemed like a completely different route. It’s really cold though.

Tunisian Patisserie in Toulouse

November 27
Last night Ludo and I went to the theatre in Foix. It’s very hard to motivate yourself when it’s -2 degrees outside and you’re siting beside the fire, the theatre is an hour’s drive away, and to step beyond the lounge-room door and out into the fridge (aka the corridor) involves scarves, coats and beanies. We did motivate ourselves however, and it was a wonderful play. The play, “Biography Without Antoinette”, was written by the Swiss playwright, Max Frisch, and it had five fine actors including Thierry L’Hermitte and Sylvie Testud, both pillars of the French film industry. This is the first play I’ve seen in French, and it was a revelation to me. I understood it! Even if my speech has barely improved, at least I have progressed with my comprehension. A week ago we went to the same theatre to see a performance of Ushu by a Japanese choreographer. Half of the programme was fabulous, but the other half was snoring boring, which was a real shame because we had Mum, Mahalia and Agnes with us.

Last bike ride today. Ludo and I donned scarves, gloves, beanies and layers of clothes and rode up to the Col de Catchaudegue for the last time, in the snow. It was cold, cold, cold, and involved some slick and serious manoeuvres around patches of ice and snow. It was a little dangerous, I guess you could say, but it was magnificent at the top looking out on the landscape we normally see covered in green, blanketed in white from the village on the valley floor to peaks on the horizon. The seasons change and so does our appreciation of the passage of time. It’s like a helix, going around and around but never to the same point at which it began, each turn of the helix representing four seasons. Maybe that’s why DNA is in the form of a helix: the blueprint of life reflecting the passage of time. And now that I think upon it, there are four bases that make up DNA, the sequence of which determines the genetic code. That’s a fine metaphor. I digress. We’re nearly packed.

Hay Bales in the Snow: Our Last Ride

Saturday morning. It’s cold and the sky is flat and grey. It looks two-dimensional. I’m sure it’s going to snow. Agnes and I walked up to the village’s new library to borrow some books and see Felix, who goes there to play computer games. It’s a great library for a village this size. On the way there we pass the old 16th century chapel that is now getting a new roof. Adjacent to the chapel is the old cure’s residence and garden. The Historical Society here has spent the last few years doing up this building, and replanting the garden as it would have looked a few hundred years ago, now it’s the chapel’s turn. When we went to visit the newly opened garden we saw photos of the interior of the chapel and it was a revelation. It is do beautiful inside. The ceiling is covered in clue with gold stars, and all the walls are painted with fabulous images. A few weeks ago the workmen were there and the ancient front door was open and the key was in the door, and that was a wonderful sight. The key was a venerable one, as old as the door itself, bronze, twisted, huge. I love to see a key of that beauty used for the purpose for which it was made.

So, we went to the library, and I found a book on Picasso’s Guernica to borrow. I saw Maica, so we kissed on both cheeks and talked about the party, and then I saw Aisha from the Tourist Office, so we kissed on both cheeks, and I told her we were leaving next week, then we left the library and walked back through the centre of the village and saw Noe on his bike and he asked if Emile was at home and he said he’d be by later, and then I saw the florist, and we kissed on both cheeks and we talked about her son’s birthday party tomorrow and I asked whether she’d left a coat at our place and we discussed her purchase of our clothes dryer, and then we went to the hairdresser to make an appointment and we kissed on both cheeks and discussed the cold and then we walked towards Orissia’s house and passed Arlette on the way but we didn’t kiss because she has a cold and we discussed her health and then we continued on to Orissia’s house and Alain came to the door and we kissed on both cheeks and he invited us for a pizza night and we discussed Yolan’s birthday party which is tomorrow, and then Myriam drove up and we kissed on both cheeks and discussed again the pizzas and the party, and then I left Agnes to play with Orissia and I walked home and came across Janine (who used to clean our house when Ludo’s grandparents were here) and we kissed on both cheeks and discussed our imminent departure and the even more imminent snow, and Pascale walked by and we kissed on both cheeks and they kissed on both cheeks and I asked whether Ludo had payed her for the babysitting and she confirmed that it would snow, and then I was in front of the front door, and I slid inside, one hour after I’d left for a quick visit to the library!



Yesterday I was finishing up the packing, trying to squeeze a year into a few suitcases, and I came across a firework. The deeper I delved into the suitcase I was repacking, the more fireworks I came across. Emile. Emile loves fireworks. They are not, apparently, illegal in France. The fellow at the tabac sells them to the children in the village and it makes me mad. Emile thinks this is the most fabulous thing ever sold in a shop and it’s been really hard to impress on him how dangerous they can be. He’s been forbidden to use them, but all his friends do so the danger is still there. They hold the small bungers in their hands and light the fuse and then throw them. Emile desperately wants to show them to his friend Jamie so he had the fine idea of smuggling them into Australia in our suitcases. He used amazing cunning in sequestering them in the pockets of trousers and under the fabric flap that covers the suitcase hinges, and wrapped up in jumpers…. When ordered to surrender them all it took him half an hour to find them all.

It’s time to say goodbye, so we have a weekend of parties, Mahalia has 6 friends for a sleepover on Friday night, Emile has friends for pizza and a cinema trip. We have 15 adults and 15 children coming on Saturday night, then Agnes and Felix have their little friends around on Sunday. Help!

Virginie and Aurore; Bitte, Laurent, Manoy and Giulia

Laurent and Mireille

Virginie; Mario and Olivier

OCTOBER

Orange and brown are truly the colours of autumn. The pumpkins, sorghum, the wilting sunflowers and wheat stubble, the drying corn and all the beautiful berries, even the blueberry bushes, are all different shades of orange and brown. The leaves are just starting to change. The poplars are losing their leaves first. They go light yellow before falling, brown and spent. The show is just beginning. The autumn colours only last a few weeks according to the locals so I feel like I must be out there looking at the trees all the time so I can store the beauty. Today we were up at La Soumere, a few kilometres above Seix, and it was spectacular.

This morning we had a huge spider in the bathroom. I told Mahalia to put it in her bedroom to eat the pesky flies and she looked at me strangely until I told her there were no venomous spiders in Europe. “Let’s go to Europe then” said Felix. It’s liberating to walk in the forest without fear of snakes, swim far from shore with no fear of sharks, and spend time in the garden without worrying about spiders.


This month is going to be our hiking month. We have to do the high walks while it’s not too cold, and before the snows come and make it impossible to walk without equipment. Yesterday we went hiking up at the end of our valley, beyond Salau. We started from the old tungsten mine (the Mine d’Anglade) and walked up the eastern side to 2,200 m. The forests were burning with oranges and browns and yellows and the reds are starting now too. It’s all too beautiful. When I come home to the house I can’t wait to get outside again to be amongst all the colours. I have to keep the images behind my eyes and carry them with me.

The Mine d'Anglade and our path up the Mountain

The tungsten mine closed in the 80’s and it was the death knell for the little village of Salau. The mine buildings are empty and broken and the walls inside are covered with graffiti, good and bad. The entrance to the mine shaft is locked up and the bitumen is potholed all the way down to the village. Whenever I ride up to Salau I feel the eeriness and the sadness. There are few traditional villagers left, only those fleeing the cities, seeking a life far from anything, perhaps those running from life. The valley is narrow there and is in shade most of the day. It’s a sombre place. A good place to hide.

A few decades ago there was a move by the government to put a route to Spain through our valley with a tunnel from Salau through to the Spanish side. We’re incredibly lucky that this bilious idea was canned. Even though the tunnel would have assured the viability of the communities here, it would have completely ruined the beauty of the valley, and the life people enjoy here. We were surprised to see 'NO TUNNEL' banners up on the houses in Salau and Couflens on the way up. Is this crazy idea being floated again?


The hike up from the Mine d’Anglade was uplifting. We climbed from 1,100 m to 2,200 m – a challenging walk made all the more challenging by the fact that we lost the track a third of the way up and spent the rest of the climb plodding through heather, blueberry bushes and low rhododendrons on a very, very steep incline. 100 m from the top I called a halt while Ludo carried on to the peak. From there you could see clear into the next valley, where we rode the bikes up to the Crique d’Anglade two weeks ago. My legs were spent, exhausted, couldn’t carry on. So I lay in the grass and felt the sun on my skin and thought that very soon it won’t be possible to expose any skin; it will be suddenly cold. From where I lay I could see clear to the Port de Salau, and so high were we that I could see beyond the Port into Spain. On the next ridge, in the far distance, I could see an old shepherd outside his mountain hut, but no-one else was visible. There were only mountains for miles around. Only the eagles for company.

Middle of October

Another big walk from Salau, this time to the Port de Salau and into Spain. This was hard coming five days after the last big hike. We didn’t see one person from the beginning of the walk to the end – we were far from everyone and everything the whole day. Near the top of the mountain we passed another mine, a very old mine. At 2,000 metres, without road access, on the donkey route between France and Spain, is the Mine de Salau. A significant infrastructure comprising four 50 metre metal pylons marched up the mountain carrying the cable that was attached to the mining car. There the cable was supported by a long building comprising dozens of arches built out of stone from the site, hand hewn. The mine must have been about a hundred years old and it’s amazing to imagine how it was constructed without any machines, and how the workers commuted by foot. The nearest road is some 1,000 metres below, down a very steep track, and is snow-covered in winter.

Col de Portech

Ludo’s Mum came to visit for a week, and apart from a trip to the opera in Toulouse, the week was taken up with walking in the mountains, and enjoying the festival in Seix to celebrate the descent of the cows and sheep from their mountain pastures. The village was full of shepherds and farmers in berets and boots, selling their stock and competing with each other for the best looking horse. The local hall was full to bursting on Saturday night for the big dinner, and there was cow poo all over the place lending the festivities a jolie bouquet. There’s no end to the excuses these villagers can find to liven up country life!

Horse Trading; A Village Character

October 22

Felix has had a monumental fall from his bicycle. He left the house with his helmet on, but hit the ground without it. He’d left it at the library. He was in pretty bad shape and had to have stitches above his eye, and was grazed through his clothes right down the side of his body. Then the sticking plaster on his forehead gave him a nasty rash that had to be treated. No more cycling for him this year, and I hope it was a good lesson to him, and all of you readers, about the necessity of wearing a bike helmet! I think Ludo was almost as shaken as Felix.

I’m reading ‘Les Miserables’ and am now on Book two of five books. The first was the beginning of Jean Valjean’s story, the story of a young man jailed for 19 years for stealing bread, of his redemption from a life of crime through the grace of a priest, his elevation to mayor and businessman, his second descent into gaol and his escape. This second book is about Jean Valjean rescuing 7 year old Cosette from a life of near slavery, and their life running once more from the law. At the moment they have secreted themselves in a convent in Paris, known only to the convent’s gardener.

It’s interesting reading a book in the 21st century that was written at the end of the 18th century, and printed in the middle of the 19th century. It gives you a sense of the continuity of knowledge, of the fact that the big themes of life are always the same, only their interpretation changes according to the social standards of the time. Victor Hugo wrote a half century after the French Revolution, and decades after the defeat of Napolean at Waterloo, events that profoundly changed the order of society in France and in the whole of Europe. In Book 1 Hugo spent an interminable 100 or so pages describing the battle of Waterloo with barely a character in sight, and in Book 2 I’m ploughing through a 50 page section on convent life and why the monastic religious life was no longer relevant at the end of the 19th century. Apart from these diversions it’s a great story and a rollicking read, even in French (which means I must be missing a good 20% of the story!).

One of the first things we bought for the house when we arrived in January was a piano. It stands in the salon, the room at the front of the house that, when I first came here 18 years ago, was like a morgue – cold, dusty, dark and quiet, brown wallpaper, faded artificial flowers and a dead deer rug on the floor. We painted it white, bought a blue lounge and a warm red rug, put my large print “Les 4 Saisons au Salat” on the wall, and put the television and the piano opposite each other. One of the joys of this year has been seeing the piano used far more than the television. Mahalia plays it all the time, Agnes plays frequently, and even the kids’ friends play around on it. And I have picked music up again for the first time in a long time.

It’s been a journey, reacquainting my fingers and hands and wrists and forearms to the physical aspect of playing, and even more challenging retraining my brain to make the quick connection needed between the notes and the movement of the fingers. I see so clearly what I never really realised before: how important music, or more specifically playing a musical instrument, is to a persons development. It makes you think a different way, makes memory work through sound instead of just through sight, and it helps you understand time. Learning a piece of music doesn’t come easily. It requires a substantial investment of time, which I fortunately have in abundance this year. I’ve learned my first jazz piece, am struggling with a few Mozart sonatas, and I’ve accepted that the spread of my fingers is simply not big enough to cope with the digital callisthenics required in the theme to “The Piano”.

October 26

The Metro; Camp Nou

Barcelona!! What a happening, fantastic city! We’ve been here two days and have fallen under its spell. I haven’t been a real fan of all things Spanish, but Barcelona has won me over in a weekend. I’m so glad we’re staying until Friday. We have an apartment in the centre of the old city just off La Rambla, the Champs Elysee of Barcelona, where every man and his dog (and the rest of the family) goes rambling, from the port to the Placa de Catalonya. From the top to the bottom of La Rambla there are street performers dressed in the most perfect costumes and make-up.

Last night we took the metro to the foot of Montjuic to watch the ‘fountain show’, a liquid extravaganza of water, coloured lights and soaring music that the kids loved. There was a long hill with a castle at the top, terraced gardens and long staircases all the way down with a huge circular fountain in the middle. Masses of people perch themselves on every available step and wall to watch as the majestic fountain changes shape and colour in time to Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Freddie Mercury’s ‘Barcelona’.

Fontaine de Montjuic

In true Spanish time, Ludo then took Mahalia and Emile off to the Nou Camp, the 120,000 seat stadium that’s home ground for Barcelona Football Club, for the 10pm kick-off (yes, 10pm) of Barcelona vs. Almeria. I think this was one of the highlights of Ludo’s year.

September 29

Last day in Barcelona! The highlight for me has been the day we spent at the science museum, CosmoCaixa. It’s the best science museum I’ve ever seen, and one of the best museums of any kind I’ve been to. We spent 5 hours there! It had fantastic interactive exhibits explaining complex physical and mathematical principles that were fun and easy to understand. There was an amazing collection of archaeological and natural artefacts, a section on geology, and an aquarium section that was better than the Barcelona Aquarium we saw the day before. It included a huge walk through Amazonian rain forest complete with alligators, birds and metre long river fish that you could see over two stories, from underwater to the tree canopy. In addition to all these goodies, the building was a beautiful design, outside and inside. I thought it was worth the trip to Barcelona just to see this museum. Admittedly, I might be more interested than the average person because of the work I did at the Powerhouse Museum in its infancy, but the kids loved it too.

Felix lost his Rhythm; Emile in Contemplation

We visited the Parc Guell, one of Gaudi’s extravaganzas, on a hill overlooking Barcelona, on a beautiful day. The built part of the park was impressive, with Gaudi’s characteristic organic architecture frequently covered with brightly coloured mosaics, but the natural environment, like a lot of Spain, was dry and dusty and of little interest. Gaudi must have had an amazing imagination. I’d like to live in his head for a day to see how he looked at the world. Catalonia must have an interesting effect on a lot of people – Gaudi, Picasso, Miro and Dali are all from this region, and they all had a huge impact on changing the way we look at reality.

Gaudi's Salamander; Enjoying Gaudi's Amazingly Comfortable Bench

The Picasso Museum was impressive for its collection of Picasso’s early work, which was donated by Picasso’s secretary and lifelong friend, Sabarthes, and because it’s housed in a series of beautiful medieval buildings with a labyrinth of stone arches, winding staircases and carved wooden ceilings. There was a small but superb section on Picasso’s significant impact on printmaking, especially on the one-block linoleum printing technique. I could have spent hours in front of these works.

The Picasso Museum

Local Fashionista; Palau Musica

Barcelona has an incredibly rich cultural life for a city of 3 million people, and we wanted to experience as much of it as possible, so Ludo and I walked through the streets of the old town on Monday night to the beautiful, meticulousy renovated, art deco Palau Musica to see a Sibelius/Nielson concert. Accompanying the Goteborg orchestra of Sweden was the Armenian violinist Kashatrian, who received several standing ovations for an outstanding performance on his Stradivarius.

Do you have to arrange the dog poo? One of the Splendid Shopfronts

Another night we went to a concert in a series by masters of the Spanish guitar. We arrived at the church late, bought our tickets, and were personally accompanied past several hundred patient concertgoers to two seats in the centre front pew. I don’t know who they thought we were, but we felt like pretty damned important! The sound of the sole guitar in the cavernous stone space of the old church was food for the soul. Until the jackhammer started….. How Spanish is that? A jackhammer working at 9.30pm?

Today Ludo took the boys to the zoo, and Mahalia, Agnes and I strolled around the labyrinthine streets of the old town, looking at the shops and eating icecream and tapas. Many of the storefronts feature art deco mosaics, 1930’s curved glass, wonderful woodwork and medieval stonework which made the experience a real discovery.

To finish off our stay here we ate tonight at Los Caracoles, the oldest restaurant in an old city. We walked through the crazy kitchen into a 200 year old wonderland of hanging hams, wooden beams, murals, fireplaces and wells, with every inch of spare wall space hung with signed photos of the rich and famous who had eaten in this venerable establishment. Los Caracoles is big on atmosphere, though a little thin on good cuisine.

Los Caracoles

September 31

Today we drove back to our mountain village, and as always when we return from the cities and plains, we feel particularly blessed to be living here. While we were gone a lot of snow fell on the mountains and we now feel that winter has truly begun. We lit a fire, put the fake blood, witches costumes and hairy, clawed gloves on the children and sent them out into the Halloween night, and then sat down with a cup of tea.


While we were away many of the littlest people in our lives had been going through difficult times. Virginie’s month-old Lucas went to hospital with a bad infection, and so did cousin Gemma’s little Jamie. Worse still was Anne’s little girl Jeanne, who has been suffering for several weeks with a pain in the hips. After an MRI we now know she has an infection in one of her vertebral discs. She is in hospital for a few weeks on antibiotics and yesterday was put in a plaster cast from her neck to her hips, under a general anaesthetic, and will have to stay like that for 3 months.

On a brighter note, Eve and Ben had a healthy baby boy yesterday, as yet unnamed.

That was our October.

September

SEPTEMBER
Sunday 14
This morning the last day of the Tour de l’Avenir started in Seix. Probably the second most famous cycle event in France, it’s a race for future champions that starts in the north and after 10 days or so ends in the south. This year the finish is in Mirepoix, a small town near Carcassonne with a formidably preserved 12 century wooden colonnade right around the town square. Our village was full of support cars stacked with bicycles and teams of cyclists with multi-coloured lycra stretched over solid wooden thighs and spindly arms. It’s a singular physique they have.


This afternoon we went to Saint Girons to fossick around at an authentic vide grenier (literally 'attic emptying'). We had such a ball. I came home with a very old padlock that opens sideways and has a triangular key, a hand knitted baby cardigan, a beautiful piece of lace and 8 place mats hand embroidered by the old stall holder’s mother. Ludo returned to the car very happy after his negotiations with the stamp merchant. Agnes used her pocket money to buy some shells, Emile bought a wooden box of board games and some tinny jewellery for his collection, and Felix looked a lot but bought nothing. Mahalia stayed at home nursing a cold.

Dancing in the Village Square

September 17
September is a beautiful month in the Pyrenees. The air is pure and crisp and has a clarity that lets you see for miles and miles. Mountains that seemed so far away in the hazy summer atmosphere have now moved closer. On a clear day every valley and ridge and peak is distinct and distinctive. Yesterday, while the children were at school, Ludo and I drove to the Port de Lers, 10 minutes beyond the spectacular Col d’Agnes, and walked to the south up to the Pic de Girantes (a pic is a peak). Without the little kids we were able to climb much faster and in an hour and a half had reached the top, a 700m climb. The Pic de Girantes is at 2000m, and stands by itself surrounded by valleys, so from the top we had a 360 degree view of the Pyrenees. It was spectacular. The day was so clear we could see all the way to Spain in the south, and to the plain of Toulouse in the north. Before us were two lakes, the Garbet reflecting the mountains around it, and the Alate lake throwing off a million tiny diamonds of sunlight. One month ago we walked past this lake with Patrice and Veronique and the children and saw only the rocks at its edge, so thick was the fog. It was great to see the trail we took laid out before us, like a map on a table.

The View From the Pic de Gerantes

On the way down we came to a troupeau de mouton and their shepherds, and one of the fluffy ladies had just given birth to a tiny white lamb. It was searching for its mothers’ teats but couldn’t quite find them. It must have been very difficult because not only was the gangly creature uncertain on its legs, but its relatives were swarming around and knocking the poor baby down as they raced after the salt the shepherd was throwing around for them.

September 18
Nearly every morning I make a cup of tea and sit out in the courtyard garden, watching the day grow. It’s dark still at 7am now, and as I sit here I can see the sky slowly lighten. Today is clear of cloud, which is not common this early. There is mist covering the village, borrowing an eerie peach hue from the orange streetlights, but I know it will disappear as the sun rises. All is quiet until you listen for the sounds you don’t realise are there: the odd bird chatter, the inevitable tumbling of water over river stones, a car coming into the village on the road across the river, the incessant tick tock of the cuckoo clock, then the church bells chiming seven o’clock. It’s time to wake up the children.

September 22

It was freezing! Only Mahalia didn't take the plunge and had the last laugh..

We walked to Spain today, from the Col de Pause up to the Port d’Aula. It was a magnificent autumn day and it was a hot ascent. The kids complained nearly all the way up, especially when we passed the Etang d’Areau’s cool green waters. This is always the pattern – complaints most of the way up until the race to the top, then everyone’s jolly and really happy on the way down.

Ludo and I had been frustrated by this walk twice before. Once we were unable to complete it because we parked where the bitumen ended which made the walk too long for Francoise, who was with us that day. On the second attempt we were all prepared, just Ludo and I, and we drove as far as we were able over a badly rutted and very steep track, and parked at the top just as a storm moved in and rain was flung horizontally at the car by a Spanish wind. It was great to finally walk over the top of the mountain today and look into Spain. From the Port d’Aula we could see the valley of Aran where we went skiing in February, and the ridge that hid the Refuge des Estagnous from view – our second refuge experience. The mighty Mont Valier was on our right the whole way up, with one lonely patch of snow remaining on its flank.

We picnicked by the Etang de Prat Matau alongside a herd of Merens, the solid black horse of the Pyrenees. Mahalia and Agnes spent an hour plaiting their manes and feeding them apples. The boys spent the time harassing masses of tadpoles and skipping stones. It’s a shame it’s not an Olympic sport because Emile has an amazing talent. We stripped to our undies and swam in the Etang Areau on the way down. Paddling at the edge lulled me into a false sense of what was possible. When I dived in the temperature beneath the first 30cm was glacial! I learned yesterday what blueberry bushes look like and they’re not at all as imagined. They’re a little like nandina plants, quite woody with leaves that are now turning orange and brown, and the bushes on the mountains are very low – from 20-80cm high. There are two places around Seix that are renowned by the locals. One is at the Col de la Core and the other is above the Ustou Valley. I was going to go blueberry picking by myself a week ago and am glad I didn’t or I wouldn’t have had a clue what I was looking for!


We’ve started giving the kids extra coaching in maths and English because they’re falling behind here. I’ve had some books sent from Australia which are helpful. Felix isn’t being challenged at all at school. He’s already a year above where he should be because French start school at 6, not 5, and we suggested he be put up again at the start of this school but that didn’t happen. I think he’ll just have to tread water until February. Agnes has Robert this year, who taught Mahalia 3 years ago, and Emile last academic year. He’s an excellent old style teacher who is also principal of the little school. This will be his 33rd year of teaching. Robert is fabulous at teaching French, but doesn't spend a lot of time on maths.

Scenes From our Village

Agnes came home last week with the news that she came first in her French test. This means either that our little girl has picked up French grammar extraordinarily quickly, or that the competition isn’t that strong. I’d like to think the former is true, and hate to think the latter is true. She’s a bright little girl who picks concepts up quickly and seems to have a great memory, which is a clear asset in the French system where learning by rote plays an important role. With Ludo’s insistance Emile has developed a solid homework ethic which will stand him in good stead when he starts high school next year. Before we came here homework, and school work in general, was onerous for him. He had no focus and little interest beyond getting it done to please the teacher and his parents. Now I think he realises how important it is, and sometimes might actually find it interesting. I can’t say he enjoys it yet though! Mahalia is doing really well and her only close friend here is, not coincidentally, one of the only other students in the class that also works hard. She’s enjoying Spanish and does well in all her subjects, but I fear she might be falling behind her cohort in Sydney, and will have some catching up to do when we return (except in French!).


Over the year it’s become clear that the educational advantages open to French children here are preponderantly available to city children. These small village schools, by and large, find it difficult to attract the best teachers unless they’re locals coming back to their region. The socio-economic conditions of the parents make it difficult to raise extra funds for additional resources, and also often mean the parents are unable to help the children with their homework. Indeed, academic expectations are generally not as exigent as they are in city schools. Of, course, these are the same issues found the world over in schools far from urban centres. It makes me sad to think that if you want to live in a beautiful place, far from the madding crowd, your children are going to suffer academically unless you top up their school hours with some serious extra tuition, assuming you are able to.

Aurelie's Produce; A Big Family....

We have only 10 weeks more in our little village and an acorn of sadness is slowly building inside me. It’s clear to me that I would rather live away from the city. The freedom the children have here is a special gift to them. They have been so lucky to be able to wander around the village or down to the river by themselves, to walk to and from school in a few minutes, to play with their friends until 7 or 8 pm, to explore the mountains and the forests on the weekend, to run down to the boulangerie or the tabac for a bag of lollies on pocket money day, to collect blackberries and hazelnuts and figs and apples and chestnuts from common ground, to spend the afternoon at the horseriding centre, helping Lorena with the junior class. They have also been lucky to move closer to their cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents here. As their French has improved, and is now almost fluent, so has their ability to form real relationships with their French family, particularly Ludo’s mum. I wonder how much of this year will stay with them in the years to come? I’m sure Mahalia and Emile will hold close their memories. Agnes is nine, and I can remember a holiday I had in New Zealand when I was nine, though with few details. I wonder if her memory will be clearer that mine? I have no idea how far into the future Felix will carry his memories. We’ll have to wait and see.


Along with that little bit of sadness, there is also a core of excitement at the knowledge that I’m going to see my family and friends again in a few months. Most of my family has been to visit, and Mum will be here in November, but my friends seem so far away. When Ludo was in Paris for a week and I was here on my own all day while the children were at school I realised just how much I missed having girlfriends around. It's also difficult to live without having a goal. It’s been such a privilege to have time completely free from demands of any kind; no deadlines, no job, no hours to keep, no taxiing, no sporting fixtures, no studying, not even any socialising to plan! Our minds are like a clean slate. Uncluttered, and apart form the odd chess game, unused. That’s not strictly true. My mind has to work every time I speak French. Even after all this time I still have to think of each phrase I construct before I can let it out within earshot of a French person. I have also made a point of reading almost exclusively in French which has paid big dividends. I think my reading is almost fluent now. There is still, of course, a lot of vocabulary I don’t understand, but when I read Le Monde I understand just about all the articles, and a good novel in French entertains me just as much as an English one now. I’m racing through Les Miserables at the moment – such a great novel.

It’s been a very interesting situation spending almost every hour of every day with Ludo, and I’m happy to see it’s been a positive one! We have a lot of interests in common which has helped enormously, and I think we’re pretty easygoing personalities generally. One discovery that I’ve made about Ludo is that he’s rather an A-type personality. I always knew he was ambitious and loved to achieve and to win, but I think I never realised how strong this impulse was in his personality. And I think this characteristic is even more pronounced here than it is at home because he is in his element, in his true milieu, so he feels more confident and stronger. He also has even more energy than usual because work isn’t sapping any, so he needs to be doing something all the time. The kids and I were rather relieved when he went to Paris for a week early this month so we could have a break!


As difficult as it might be to believe, even though we are goal-less, we are always doing something. Either cycling, or walking, or visiting other places in Ariege, organising the next holiday or enjoying it, showing visitors around (and we’ve been lucky enough to have friends and family visiting non-stop), skiing, organising the vegetable garden, and of course painting the house in the first month here. We go to Toulouse to top up on a bit of city life for a day, to the river to swim, spend Saturday morning doing homework with the kids, …. When the children aren’t at school the house is full of them and their friends. Because the house is close to the centre of the village it’s a drop in centre and play centre most of the time. The big attraction at the moment is the ping pong table in the basement.

The rest of September
Just when I was really missing having friends around, Mandy, Jamie, Tessa and Max arrived. We can’t entertain guests here without taking them up into the mountains to walk, so our first venture was to the Col d’Agnes to do a reprise of the trek we did with Patrice and Veronique, but in the sunshine this time. We started on a zig zag track through steep pasture to the Col de Saleix, and then up a very steep path slippery with shale and over the ridge to a flat track that passed by the Etang d'Alate This was the lake we saw form the Pic de Gerantes earlier this month, the one we couldn’t see in the fog the first time around. We walked as far as the ridge that descends to the Refuge de Bassies and sat there for lunch, in awe of the spectacular valley below with it’s chain of lakes.

Blueberry Bush; Mandy, Jamie, Tessa and Max above Bassies

On either side of the return track the hills were covered with pink heather and autumn coloured blueberry bushes, so on the way back we all set to picking blueberries. They are about half the size of the blueberries that come in punnets at the vege shop, so it was a very long process and it was just as well there were ten of us. Agnes was under an enormous amount of pressure not to drop the box that contained the results of a few hours of intense finger work, and she acquitted herself admirably. (She’s the queen of the wild fruit, nut and berry collection, and comes home every day with apples or raspberries or hazelnuts or pears from some secret source.) Those that had been cheating by eating their haul were instantly recognisable by their black teeth and lips.

Our next excursion was to the Fete des Noisettes at Lavelanet. There wasn’t much emphasis on hazelnuts, but we feasted on millas (a corn based dessert), snails, home made sheeps’ milk ice-cream, roast pork, oysters freshly pulled from the sea that morning, hazelnut crepes and the very best black figs I’ve ever tasted.

The Gastronomes and the Gastropods

Lavelanet is an arrow’s shot from the Chateau of Montsegur, so we drove up to investigate. It’s an amazing place with an amazing history. It’s perched several hundred metres above hills and ravines on a rocky outcrop with sheer faces, so one has to climb up to visit. This was the site of the last Cathar resistance, the impregnable place was besieged by the papal troops for 9 months in 1244 resulting in the near starvation of the 600 Cathars that refused to bow to the Catholic Church. Fifteen soldiers eventually climbed the peak on Christmas Day, knowing that the believers would be diverted by their worship, and took one of the towers. The Cathars still held out for another few months before they capitulated, starving and exhausted. They climbed down the mountain, men, women and children, to be burnt alive on a pyre. The chateau is only a shell now, but it retains an eeriness that has followed history through the centuries.

Agnes, Mahalia and Tessa; Montsegur

When we came home Mahalia and Tessa set to making a velvety smooth pastry for the blueberry tart, Mandy put a layer of blueberries mixed with a little sugar in the bottom to cook and when that was jam-like in consistency we added another layer of uncooked berries and served it with a sprinkle of icing sugar and cream. It was the most delectable fruit tart any of us had ever eaten. The combination of soft berry layer with the slight resistance of the uncooked berries, the freshness of the produce, and the personal knowledge of the effort it took to bring the berries to our table, made it a memorable culinary experience.

Monday was a rest day so we did a cycle around the valley and Jamie and the boys went fishing after school, hiding behind bushes with their lines because the fishing season closed a few days before. On Tuesday we drove to the Col de la Core and went hiking along a track on the eastern side, through a birch forest carpeted with more blueberry bushes. We passed the Cabane de Subera and fell to talking to the shepherd that was living there guarding a few herds of sheep and cows for the summer. He was from La Soumere, one of our favourite places in the hills above Seix. In the course of rhe conversation we learned that his grandson was in Emile’s class at school, and he learned about Ludo’s roots in the region, and when we mentioned that we had been looking at buying a grange near his village, he said he had a house in the village for sale, but only to locals.

The Shepherd; The Lost

This is a typical comment from the villagers and farmers around here – they don’t want to do business with people from outside the area and outsiders moving in find it hard to become integrated. In the recent mayoral election in Seix there were two contenders – one supported by the old guard being the farmers and villagers that have been here for generations, and the other a ‘neo’, from the growing proportion of the population that come here to escape from the city and live a life closer to nature. Most of the latter are 21st century hippies, some of whom work, many who don’t. The clash of cultures is striking. Anyway, in the shepherd’s eyes we were OK because Ludo’s ancestors were in the local cemeteries. It doesn’t matter that you have to dig back a few generations!

Musee de Toulouse-Lautrec

Albi, the centre of the Albigensian (Cathar) ‘heresy’, is a beautiful town reknowned for its red brick, imposing cathedral and as being the birthplace of Toulouse-Lautrec. It’s over two hours drive from Seix so it was a bit crazy going for the day, but that’s what we did. We started with a visit to the Toulouse-Lautrec museum which is housed in a spectacular building of vaulted ceilings. It was an impressive collection of his work. His parents were first cousins which meant his constitution wasn’t strong, and as a teenager he had two broken legs – at the same time – which left him a short man. It was during this convalescence that he started drawing, and continued until his early death at the age of 37. We moved from there to the covered market to salivate over the local produce, then walked across to the fortress-like, very tall, red brick cathedral. The region’s bricklayers must have had work for generations in the 14th century. That was when the cathedral was built, as a physical symbol of the church’s power after the crushing of the Cathars at Montsegur. It took 100 years to build.

Albi Cathedral

The Cloister (12thC) and Pharmacie ( 18thC) at St Lizier

The temperature then plummeted and we returned to our mountains to see snow dusting the top of Mont Valier. The next day we layered up and did a circuit of two valleys. We began at the 200 year-old pharmacy at Saint Lizier that’s been amazingly retained in its original state complete with surgeon’s tools and marble operating slab, then headed up the adjacent valley to Audressein for a memorable lunch at the Auberge d’Audressein, an establishment that almost had its first Michelin star this year. I had a cold melon veloute (soup) with a scoop of basil icecream that was another culinary highlight. Mmmmm.

Mandy's Clogs; Another Paper Mill Closes Down.

The tour continued through Castillon and up the Bethmale valley to the clog maker at Aret. He’s one of the last wooden clog-makers in France. He scours the forest for the wood he uses. For the traditional pointed clogs of Bethmale he must find roots that are curved to the right degree, which he carves by hand and leaves to dry for 6 months before adding the leather top piece and decoration. It’s an amazing way to make a living. He sells to other countries and says there are more and more people realising the benefits of wooden clogs that don’t make your feet sweat in the summer and keep our feet warm in winter. Ludo and Mandy both bought a pair! At the next village we stopped by the kitchen of a lady that makes jams, pastes and sorbets made from fruit and vegetables from the forests all around, and from her garden. Her quince sorbet is, without exaggeration, the best sorbet I have ever had.


The Red Circus Tent in the Middle of the Village; Mahalia, Agnes and Friends

Friday night was circus night. A few days before we watched in amazement as a bright red tent was pitched in the middle of the village square. It was a small tent that provided an intimate space for about 250 villagers, two musicians and three incredibly talented acrobats. Who would have thought it was possible to climb a 3 metre ladder balanced on a moving broom while it was sweeping? The new mayor is responsible for bringing the circus to town. She’s a violinist and computer person with a love of the arts and she has a lot of energy that is just what a dying village needs.

Ludo and Jamie took the boys to Perpignan on Saturday to watch a rugby game – three hours there and three hours back for footy. They were dedicated, and poor Felix vomited, and that's the end of September.

Seix in the Summer

Saturday, August 2
August is party month in France. Every town, village and hamlet has at least one festival during August, involving dancing, bands, fun rides, exhibitions, concerts and markets. The Festival in the tiny village of Seix had all these things. It started on Friday night. A stage was erected in the main square between the rows of stately, bollarded plane trees and the band was set up. As dark fell after 9.30 pm the band started, very loudly, with music the oldies could dance to, and as the night wore on the music grew louder and louder and a younger and younger audience was targeted. It was puzzling that the music selection didn’t seem to move much past hits from the 80’s. Needless to say, we didn’t sleep much last night, and given that the partying will continue tonight and tomorrow night, there has been a run on ear plugs at the chemist today.

The Festival of Yesteryear at Saint Girons

Sunday, August 3
Today there was a yesteryear parade in Saint Girons. I have never seen so many old tractors in my life and believe that every barn in Ariege must house at least two, so long was the parade. Everyone went to so much trouble to dress authentically and to present their animals faithfully as working animals would have appeared in times past. There was an old fire truck, an old-time rugby team, penny farthings, hay carts, troops of hunters complete with horns, and dancing troops with fiddles and pipes. It was a real celebration of the Ariegois pride in their past.

Saint Girons: The Parade Goes On

Monday, August 4
Most of the Theaus (me included) thought the best part of the long weekend was the dodgem cars. I love dodgem cars. I never realised before that you can get whiplash in a dodgem car ….. but I still love them! There were many games and shooting galleries for everyone to lose their euros in. Oh, and there was a fantastic fireworks display. For such a tiny village we were amazed at the quality of the show. The fireworks were set off on the hill behind our house (the Puech), next to the little old chateau, and we all sat across the river to watch them. All the lights in the village were turned out for the display that made it so much more exciting. A black as dense as squid ink encompassed all of us. It did freak me out a bit given that only one child was within sight.

It's Party Time!

The weather is hot enough now to dip our toes into the Salat. Five minutes walk up the river on the track out of the village leads to a wonderful swimming spot where we lie in the sun on the rocks, like lizards accumulating enough heat to sustain us when we plunge in to the water (which is really just melted ice). It’s bracing, invigorating, refreshing, but most of all it’s bloody freezing. I seem to lose all feeling in the extremities, and wonder how the boys fare. It is also a real gift to be able to swim in such pristine water. It’s so clear you can see every pebble at the bottom of the river. One hundred metres further up, at a bend in the river, there is a deep swimming hole. This is the place of choice for the young and reckless, who jump, and even dive, off the wall that runs along the road out of town, 4 metres into the current. You have to jump quite a way out to clear the boulders on the river bank, and each time they jump I have my heart in my mouth.

Swimming in the Salat

Tuesday, August 5
Ludo’s cousin Patrice, his partner Veronique, and their identical twins Pierre and Fabien, joined us on Tuesday, and yesterday we left the house at 8.30 pm with the six kids and headed to Foix for a sound and light spectacle, staged in front of the town’s famous castle. It’s a distinctive chateau with three towers built high on the rocky crag that looms heavily over the town. One tower is square, one is round, and the other is crowned with a hat-like roof. It’s a chateau that has seen a lot of important historical figures pass through its halls: Gaston Febus, Trancavel and the Cathars, Henri IV through to German soldiers in WWII. It was an amazing show performed entirely by 200 volunteers and dozens of galloping horses, meandering cows, and a gaggle of geese, all decked out in period costume. Felix lasted until 11.30 pm before he shut down, the other children collapsed during the one hour car trip home, and the rest of us finally closed our eyes at 2am.

Chateau de Foix

After three nights of rock music until 2.30 am during the village festival, and our 2 am finish last night, we thought we’d head off to the Refuge of Bassies today. It’s only a four hour trek, and the impending rain means it won't be hot, but it's really hard to generate sufficient enthusiasm in the troops. What’s wrong with them???

Friday, August 8
We’re back. Our fingers are a bit crinkled from two days of dampness, but we’re otherwise unharmed. We set off yesterday morning, 4 adults (two of whom had never undertaken such a trek before and weren’t in great shape) and six children. We all packed our courage in leaky backpacks, and set off from 1,400m with a reasonable amount of enthusiasm in the gentle drizzle. By the time we reached the Port de Saleix at 1,800m, it was blowing a gale, we were wet, and as the rain insinuated itself into our backpacks, so our courage also suffered, and when the track rose very steeply to an unseemly gradient I was wondering about the wisdom of continuing when some of party were clearly struggling (Kim would understand where we were about now). By this stage, however, the track back down looked about as inviting as the unknown track ahead so we forged on, over the peak and down the other side. The path overall was not nearly as difficult as the hike to the refuge des Estagnous which saw us climb from 900 m to 2,300 m, but it was challenging because of the conditions – dense fog, rain and strong wind, especially on the steep ascent to the peak. We were sodden from the waist down for most of the journey, and we couldn’t punctuate the trek with meals and chocolate stops because resting in these conditions was less comfortable than plodding on towards the promise of a warm, dry refuge.

When we reached the peak before the final descent to the refuge the fog cleared long enough for us to see before us the most beautiful valley, threaded with a four or five stunning lakes. Far below us we could also see the refuge at the head of the first lake. It was an incredibly welcome sight. The weather didn’t improve for the return journey today, but here we all are, dry and warm, proud to have accomplished the challenge.

Pierre, Veronique and Patrice: Setting off the Next Morning

Thursday August 14
I sneaked out of the house early this morning while everyone was sleeping to ride up the valley before the holiday traffic makes it a little more dangerous than usual. I love being out in the morning when no-one else is about, only the river for company. It was overcast. The ridges were swathed in cloud. At home, clouds are so high that they seem like part of that azure sky, out of reach. They may as well be floating amongst the stars they’re so far away. Here you can almost touch them. Here they are like other solid parts of the landscape – like the trees, or the boulders in the river, or the mountains themselves. They can be grey and brooding, lying heavily on the peaks, or they can be white and light and barely touching the ridges, drifting over the top and oozing down the other side. You can actually see clouds pouring down the slopes, descending as you watch, knowing they’re going to obscure your vision and yourself very soon. There are tufts of cloud, that have somehow become separated from the big mass, and they cling to the sides of the valley like a bit of cotton wool would stick to skin nicked by a razor. Sometimes it seems like the sun is actually lifting the cloud out of the valley, and little cloudlets rise like wisps of smoke from a cigar.


Virginie’s little girl, Marion, arrived by train today to spend a week with us. We took the opportunity to see the second Narnia film before picking her up at the Gare de Toulouse.

August 21

The Roofs of Amboise: An Older Resident

The Chateau d'Amboise

We’re in Amboise now staying with Virginie and her family. Virginie is confined to the house in a horizontal fashion until her baby gains enough weight to make its exit. The kids are having a great time. It’s like playschool here with our four children, Eric’s three (Manon, Barbara and Joseph) and Marion.

We’ve visited the chateaux of Loche, Amboise and Chaumont and were particularly impressed with Chaumont. It was inhabited until WWI and so doesn’t feel like a museum. You have more of a sense of what it was like to live in such a splendid place. The garden was amazing and the stables were extraordinary. They were an architectural marvel as well as being 4 star accommodation. The horses even had a kitchen. We have also swum at the Aquatic Centre at Montrichard, cycled through the forest next to the house, and taken a fabulous boat trip at dusk down the Loire, on a flat wooden boat built in the traditional manner, just the 11 of us. We picnicked on an island in the centre of the river and were fascinated as the boatman pointed out trees that had been chopped down neatly by the chewing of otters. Their sole source of food is the poplar tree – it’s leaves in the summer, and it’s bark in the winter. The bark must be submerged and softened before they can eat it, which is why the intelligent little critters chop them down near the bank of the river so they fall in the water.

Ludo and Jane; Felix Giving Thanks for a Safe Landing

Our Boat Guide and an Otter-Chewed Tree

Marion; Barbara and Mahalia

The children finally seem to be getting used to French childrens’ hours; eating at 8.30pm and sleeping after 10pm each night, and Felix manages to sleep a little later in the morning which makes the day better for all of us. He's still not too keen on the chateau visits ......... He told me last night that the worst part of his life was going to sleep, cleaning his teeth, and visiting churches and chateaux.

August 23
We're now in Normandy. In my mind Normandy has always been associated with WWII and the landing of the Allied troops. The beaches here are still dotted with the concrete bunkers that served the Germans as they tried to hold back the D-Day landing. We walk in an atmosphere just like that of a black and white war movie: grey and windy with squalls of rain passing periodically. I love it. I love being in a country where the weather changes and the seasons mark the passage of time and provide structure to the year, the wardrobe and the food we eat.

Driving through France from the south to the north east, we passed through a lot of farm land. The hay has now been cut and rolled into enormous reels that either dot the fields and look artfully arranged, or are massed together to make straw chateaux that would do one of the three little pigs proud. Often they are wrapped in plastic to protect them against moulding in the winter, and I wonder what they do with the plastic when it’s removed. Does it decompose?

The fields are yellow, going brown, and the red poppies are disappearing, overtaken by masses of white Queen Anne’s lace. Summer is in full swing and the wheat is being harvested ahead of the corn and sunflowers. The heads on the sunflowers are becoming so heavy that the showy yellow petals are sagging with the weight of the seeds, nodding like sleepy old folk. Did you know that the florets of a sunflower describe Fermat’s spiral? Or that in 1567 a sunflower plant in Padua grew to 12m high. The farmland of Normandy is compartmentalised by earthen walls topped with hedges to keep the incessant wind at bay. These structures are called bocage.

Emile in His Summer Gear; Stranded Boats

August 24
Were staying at Hauteville on the Cotentin, in a holiday house rented by Ludo’s friend Mark and his partner Emmanuelle, and their one year old Xeno.
When we arrived yesterday we went straight to the beach because it was a rare sunny day on this coast. Felix was very excited about swimming at the beach, and he and Ludo had costumes on ready for the plunge. When we looked down from the boardwalk to the beach it was clear that wasn’t going to be easy. The water was literally kilometres away! Low tide in Normandy. It’s really low, low, low, low, low, low, low. We had thus to content ourselves with scratching around in the sand for vongole to have with dinner and when our finger muscles were exhausted, drew up a soccer pitch on the immense expanse of sand and played until hunger led us back to the house (which is brand new, clean, and 150m from the beach).

August 27
Francois’ parents have a holiday house 45 minutes north of here near Carteret, so we went to visit him and his parents there today. Their block is surrounded by bocage. On one length of bocage there is a gap where an American tank drove through in 1944. History is everywhere.

Mahalia and Agnes Looking for the Atlantic Ocean; We Found It!

Tonight the girls had the ride of their young lives. At 8pm they saddled up at the local equestrian centre and set off for the beach at low tide. Imagine having the freedom to gallop at full stretch for an hour with no obstruction to hinder you, before a sun setting red over the sea. A fine time.

August 28
We managed to coincide our beach-going with the high tide today, and it was really impressive. The water rises right up the rock wall that was built to hold the foreshore together. We grabbed the chance and slid down the stair railing into the water before it pulled out again. In two hours it was gone, receding to its 5 kilometre low tide level!

Granville; Taking the Boat to the Chausey Islands, near Jersey

Each morning I’ve been rising early and exploring the coast of this part of the Cotentin by bicycle. Corn fields, sheep paddocks, stranded boats, bocage and grey stone villages. At Regneville, the next village, there is the ruin of a chateau destroyed at the end of the 100 Year War between France and England in the 15th century. Tiny Regneville had the distinction of hosting the English navy when it came to attack the monastery/fortress of Mont St. Michel in 1425.

August 29
Today Ludo’s friend from University, Jean Luc, and his family (Nathalie, Romain and Clement) arrived to share the weekend with us. It was with much enthusiasm that we greeted them, as their levity was needed. They also bolstered the numbers for the beach soccer.

The Teams in Action

August 30
Eleven hours after leaving Hauteville, we arrived in Seix this evening, ready to start the new school year. I’m so happy to be back in our beautiful, calm, green valley, to resume the daily to and fro of life in a small village, the chance meetings in the streets that aren’t rushed and are full of exchanges about the lives of our neighbours, to hear the sound of the river again, always constant, the background music to our French lives. The tourists have departed and we can once again park the car near the house, buy our baguettes without waiting 20 minutes in the queue at the boulangerie, and let the children ride their bikes in the village without worrying about the out of town cars. We’ve been blessed to share the best part of two months with friends and family, as hosts and as guests, but it’s also good to be just the 6 of us again for a little while, to regroup and enjoy a few days of quietness. The children are looking forward to going back to school. Even for them the holidays have been long.

Losing One's Head; Stables at the Chateau de Chaumont

July - The Long Summer Holidays Begin

July 3

Victory! Today I achieved my goal. I made it to the top of the Col de la Core: 1,400 m high. It took a few hours, a lot of patience and all my strength, and it was a rather lonely thing to do. Cycling’s like that I guess, quite solitary, and here where I can cycle through unpeopled forests and fields and mountains, it’s also a meditation. The mountain was shrouded in mist and rain above 1000 m which made it rather dangerous and very cold, especially on the descent. I feel quietly proud of this achievement, given that 14 years ago I wondered if I’d ever be able to walk properly again.

Last day of school today. The long summer holidays start tomorrow. Eight weeks of sun (hopefully) and good times. There have been fewer and fewer of the kids’ classmates turning up at school in the last few weeks. Mahalia’s class had to hand in their text books almost two weeks before the end of school, which meant that serious lessons haven’t been happening. Consequently, of 40 odd pupils in Mahalia’s year, only three stayed on to the last day. Most left two weeks ago. That makes 10 weeks of summer holidays for the high school students. Even in the primary school half of the children had disappeared by the last week. This long holiday must be a nightmare for working parents. Many children go to holiday camps while their parents work, and the strength of the extended family in Europe is very important to surviving this period too. Grandparents step in to mind the children a lot more here than they do in Australia. The number of divorced parents also helps (paradoxically), as children will spend one month with one parent and the other month with the other one.

There were 8 days of teachers’ strikes between September last year and July this year. That’s two weeks of class time. The right to strike is enshrined in the consciousness of French society, but nevertheless, parents have lost patience. Consequently Sarkozy is introducing a law requiring teachers to give 48 hours notice, also requiring the local councils to provide alternative child care during the strike. Cheekily, he’s introducing it during the summer school holidays.

July 13: ISLE DE RE

Tidal march with thousands of migratory birds

Yesterday we returned from a week on the Isle de Re, north of Bordeaux. We slipped in just before the crowds become too big. The annual exodus from Paris starts mid-July. Ludo's sister Anne, and two of her children, Jules and Jeanne, and Francoise and Roger were also with us.

The Isle de Re is a flat island about 30 km long, just off La Rochelle. It’s a fantastic place for cycling, and that’s what we did all week. Now that Felix is six, cycling together is possible and it was a real pleasure to leave the car and ride to the beach, to the restaurant, to the lighthouse … everywhere! The stairs of the lighthouse were a real work of art. Each stair was cut out of stone to fit into its position in the spiral and to slot into the circular stone wall.

The Lighthouse; Aperitif on the Port

ATypical Street on the Isle de Re; Emile and his Cousin Jules

The island survived historically on agriculture and on the making of salt. They still make salt in the marsh basins. Today it survives on tourism, and there has been an enormous amount of development since a bridge was built connecting the island to the mainland 20 years ago. There are cycle tracks all over the island, our favourite being a long one through the marsh land where thousands of migratory birds nest over the spring and summer.

Ludo and Francoise in the Courtyard; Francoise (Alias Juliette)

In the harbour at Sainte Marie; Roger and Jeanne

Francoise, Ludo, Anne, Roger; The Cousins

We had every type of weather, but managed a few days at the beach, which unfortunately was a polluted as the result of a recent oil spill. There are too many people in Europe for the number of beaches available - they are always very crowded. For an Australian tourist, it's much better to stay inland because invariably the beaches are a disappointment. There are some beautiful spots of course, but to find one with space to lay a towell is either very expensive, or impossible!

Mahalia; Emile in his Cairn

On the way home we stopped in Toulouse to watch Kung Fu Panda in French, which was really good. We recently saw Indiana Jones too. That was, however, not so good – and it wasn’t just trying to adjust to Harrison Ford’s French, which was disturbing to say the least!

July 14

Bastille Day. It was rather quiet in the village today, but at 4pm everything came to life with a band set up in the main square providing music and dancing for all comers. When the first band finished, half the village sat down for dinner at the trestle tables set up on the main square under garlands of coloured lights. After dinner another band hit the floor and all the oldies were up waltzing and tangoing around what by day is the car park. French people really know how to celebrate and they love to dance. I noticed that Papi Germain (remember he of the fresh eggs and milk and toothless kisses) had asked the prettiest girl there to dance. It was obvious she couldn’t wait until the interminable song was over! Now that I remember, in his barn there were a lot of calendars on the walls with well-endowed, scantily-clad women. A toothless playboy!

We left at midnight, just when the music was moving forward a few decades.

Main Square at Night; Papi Germain in Full Swing

July 15

Felix asked where babies come out at the table tonight. When I told him he burst into raucous laughter ‘Ha, ha, ha, ha’. He thought it was the best joke. We have lots of questions coming thick and fast. Why does the tide go in and out? How do you breathe on the moon? Why is it rude to burp? How wide would wings have to be to support a boy (Emile wants to make some)? Why is his belly button sticking out? Why is the sea salty? The internet has been very handy…..

The year is just flying by. Once you hit the half way mark it changes the feel of the adventure, introducing a hint of nostalgia that I guess will become stronger as December approaches.

July 16

Today the Tour de France passed through the bottom of the valley, at Riverenert. Did you see the boys cheering on Cadel Evans? This photo is of the boys watching a race that occurs each year in Seix.



Sunday 20: REFUGE DES ESTAGNOUS

Refuge des Estagnous: Sunset from the Refuge

Yesterday we returned from another trek in the mountains, this time to the Refuge des Estagnous, which sits below the biggest mountain in this area, the Mont Valier, at 2,837 m. This 1,400 m climb was even more ambitious than our last effort, at 1,000 m (remember, we could barely walk the next day?) We began at a leisurely pace meandering along the river and through a beautiful beech forest, but conditions quickly became seriously challenging. We came to a spectacular waterfall tumbling down a granite cliff, and realised that we had to get to the top of it, and that was just a third of the way into the climb! Ludo and I quietly had serious doubts (unverbalised at the time) about the childrens’ ability to make it to our sleeping place, but we forged on nevertheless, hoping they wouldn’t need counselling later in life as a result of this experience.

Half-Way Up: Emile on Strike, and Agnes Cooling Off, Ostrich-Style

It was hot, almost vertical and really hard on my left sciatic nerve (piriformis syndrome – a pain in the butt), which was already suffering from my ascent of the Col de la Core 3 days prior. However, the scenery was spectacular all the way up with cascades and waterfalls shining like ribbons of mercury in the afternoon sun on the other side of the valley. At 2,000 m we came to the Etang Rond (Round Lake), a huge turquoise disc of clear snowmelt that was fed by water falling from the Etang Long, 100 metres above. We just kept climbing, bursts of activity punctuated by chocolate bribes. It was a long climb, relentlessly up and up for nearly 6 hours. I’m sure that plain mountain refuge never looked more splendid than it did to us on Friday night, with the mighty Mont Valier looming behind.

Reflection of the Mountain in a lake just below the refuge; The Round Lake

The setting of the refuge was so very beautiful that I fear I could not possibly do it justice even in my mother tongue. It was a pristine environment, open only to those who arrive on foot from a long way down. Above the refuge is a ridge of serrated crags and the Mont Valier, and immediately below it are a series of small lakes that reflect the colour of the surrounding mountains (the colour in these pictures has not been embellished). Further down are the Etangs Rond and Long that feed the river we followed up from the valley far below. Agnes, Emile and Felix spent a passionate hour skipping stones, catching tiny frogs, harassing millions of tadpoles and building dams while Mahalia, Ludo and I spied marmottes and two isards (a type of mountain deer) with their baby.

Mountain deer (Isards);The creek just below the Refuge

Dinner was delayed by a spectacular sunset, rather rare at this altitude which is usually swathed in clouds. The people that climb these mountains all share a love of the peace and the beauty and the isolation and the challenge they present, so invariably there is a strong sense of camaraderie at dinner. There are three guardians at this refuge, all jolly folk, and good cooks, and the refuge itself seemed cleaner and in better shape than the Refuge du Pinet last month. The guardians live up there for 5 months of the year over the summer, and receive one helicopter drop each month to top up supplies. We had a room to ourselves this time – fortunately because our sweat soaked clothes, in a pile on the floor, nearly asphyxiated us during the night!

Mahalia and Agnes close to the top; Jane and Ludo ("what have we started?")

As we set out on the return from the refuge the following morning, we passed an old man who was just arriving. About 70 years old, he had left at the crack of dawn and in 3 and a half hours had accomplished what had taken us 6 hours! The descent was quicker, but just as hard. The entire path from top to bottom is littered with boulders and stones of all shapes and sizes that are not easy to walk on. It was really hard on the knees (especially Ludo’s soccer injury). We collapsed in the car after 5 hours of dogged hard slog and sped in 30 plus degree heat to the nearest glacerie for two scoops of home made icecream.

Today we drove Mahalia and Agnes and their friends to an equestrian centre in Fabas, an hour north of here, for a five-day horse trek. (Coming the day after a two day mountain ascent I’m wondering if this constitutes a mild form of child abuse? I’m pretty sure Mahalia thinks so.) They’ll be sleeping in a tepee! So now we have only the boys until Thursday and the house feels almost empty. Whenever one of the kids is gone it’s like the walls have changed places, or the ceiling is a bit lower, or the pattern on the carpet has changed colour and direction – everything’s not quite as it should be. With two of them gone we’re even more disoriented. It’s so much calmer (even though the calmer of the four children are the departed) and I don’t feel in a perpetual state of chaos. I rather enjoy the (relative) serenity (for a few days anyway), and imagine it must be like this for a lot of smaller families, but I miss the party atmosphere…..

21 July

Last night I woke at 2am to the growl of thunder rolling through the valleys and over the ridges of the mountains, over and over again. Each rumble went on and on for such a long time. It was a soothing sound to someone tucked up in a cosy bed, under a roof that doesn’t leak.

Tomorrow we’re taking the boys for two nights in the Bearn region of the Pyrenees, west of here. Just the boys – how weird.

July 24

Our Hotel at Oloron; Cathedral Door at Oloron

Our hotel in the Bearn was fabulous. Not really a hotel; it was more a bed and breakfast at a family farm – the guests, the hosts and 28,000 ducks. It was a beautiful old farmhouse, well renovated, with a most welcome pool set in a hectare of parkland surrounded by corn fields. The farm produces foie gras, confit de canard and magret de canard, and that was what we ate at dinner the first night. I felt somewhat uncomfortable about our proximity to a place that force feeds ducks to fatten their livers for 15 days of their short lives. Our hosts went to some pains to tell us that the ducks don’t suffer, there being no evidence of the chemical in their blood that indicates distress. Super-sizing the French way.

We managed to visit two chateaux with the boys: the Domaine de Laas near Oloron, and the Chateau M……. This chateau was an amazing place in that its interior is in its original condition (covering several periods over the last half millennium) and it is still inhabited by the owner, a melancholy aristocrat, chronically short of breath, who conducts the tour of the chateau himself. One millennium ago it was built as a fortress on what was then the French border, then was turned into a hunting lodge for the mother of Henri IV. It subsequently underwent several other changes of ownership and use. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live in such a museum. There was nothing modern about the place except perhaps a bathroom (which we didn’t see). There were books from the 15th century lying around gathering dust in the library, rooms covered in hand printed, hand-tanned leather wallpaper in its original condition, 16th century painted wooden sculptures, priceless oil paintings and porcelain – every room was crammed with priceless objects. There was even a piece of furniture given to Louis XIV and ….. when they were married in nearby St. Jean de Luz. The building and its contents are registered as a national treasure but the owner receives no support from the state, and slowly, inevitably, time seems too heavy a burden for the building and its precious contents to bear.

On our second night we ate at a restaurant in a little village not far from Oloron in Basque country. It always surprises me how the most modest establishments can reveal the most amazing dining experiences. Felix loves going to the restaurant – a chip off the old block – and this night was no exception. On the way home in the car his sleepy voice floated through from the back “I’m so happy I have tears”.

July 25

I picked up two very tired girls today who had slept very little for the last four nights. Apparently the tepee was positioned under a tree with an aerial root system. They weren’t thrilled to hear that their horse-riding exam is on tomorrow and Monday. Certainly we didn’t time things too well! (The abuse continues….) I was proud of Agnes who not only suffered a very bruised foot from a horse treading on her toes, but fell off her horse while cantering and got straight back on again.

I’m not the only one that makes gaffs in French. There’s an expression in French the equivalent of “there wasn’t a soul around”: “Il n’ya pas de chat”, which means ‘there wasn’t even a cat’. Felix made us laugh so much when he said in all seriousness “there are no dogs either”. That was not quite as funny as his query about how you surf on a Mexican wave.

July 29

The valley was serene and misted this morning as I left the village. I rode up the valley, slowly, deliberately, not pushing hard so I wouldn’t aggravate that sciatic nerve. It was so calm after the heat wave of yesterday and the compensating torrent of rain that fell last night, the summer-starved Salat seemed glad of the top-up.

It’s about 15 km to the end of the valley, to Salau, and it’s steadily uphill. The river stayed on my right side until Couflens, then flowed to the left side as I crossed the bridge there and continued to Salau. It’s a beautiful ride, but I’ve done it many times now and I marvel less at the explosive greens, the steep mountains and the absolute clarity of the water. Instead now, the monotonous motion of my legs and the constant noise of the river put me in a sort of meditative state where I think and think, and plan things, and wish I had a pen and paper with me because I know I will forget it all when I return to a house full of voices and activity.

The cloud sat in the valley nearly all the way up. I intended only to go as far as Couflens, but when I arrived there I could see blue sky and the Spanish peaks dotted with the remains of the snow, and I had to go that far, I couldn’t stop there. So I continued past Couflens, plodding steadily, drawn on by the ridges protruding through the clouds like the prows of a mountain armada.

It was the easiest ride to Salau that I’ve had – I was hardly aware that I had ridden all that way, and that’s a wonderful way to ride. It was almost effortless. There were hardly any cars, except one that tried to cut the corner coming around one of the hundreds of river bends, right in my direction. It gave me the fright of my life.

Mahalia and Agnes passed their second level horseriding exam today - Yay!

July 31

Middle of the school holidays. What long holidays. I’m suffering form holiday overload and need some structure to the days again. It’s hot, and it will get hotter. The Festival of Seix starts tomorrow and Francoise is here to celebrate with us.

A Month of Vertical Challenges and Visitors

June 3, 2008

June dawned for us at 2,200 m, surrounded by mountains covered with snow, tucked up in a refuge at the edge of a frozen lake....

Setting Out; Chocolate Stop

Yesterday we put the walking boots and shorts on and drove over the Col d’Agnes (where we saw the bike race last month) to Vicdessos in the next valley. We parked the car at 1,200 m, set of with a few daypacks filled with lunch and pyjamas, and started up the path towards the Refuge du Pinet. It was a challenging hike, relentlessly steep, through birch forest, along rocky ridges, over several snow-melt brooks and eventually through drifts of snow. The kids went straight up without complaining, even Felix.

Emile alone on a mountain; Another chocolate stop

Emile managed to let his backpack tumble over the edge of a little cliff, which caused everyone a great deal of angst. It fell in a difficult to access position, but that wasn’t the worrying aspect of the situation – more troubling was the fact that it contained our precious supply of Cherry Ripes (courtesy of the ever-thoughtful Elle), and they were spread all over the rocks. As agile as he is, Emile collected them all with our encouragement from above.

The Refuge de Pinet and the view from its balcony

We didn’t expect there to be much snow at the top, but how wrong we were. The last few hundred metres were covered in thick snow and it was cold, cold, cold. The other arrivals at the refuge (friends of the guardian) were a group of five who were equipped with poles, ski jackets and pants, helmets, crampons, the whole kit. They were serious mountaineers who planned to conquer the 3,000m Montcalm the next day. I think they thought we were lunatics arriving in shorts, with four kids in runners, the youngest being six years old!

Patrick, the guardian; Emile, the coat-carrier

Our guardian, Patrick, was celebrating his birthday that night so we fell on good times and had a great meal of confit de canard accompanied by kir for an aperitif, wine with dinner and champagne with dessert. Not your usual mountain refuge fare. The sleeping quarters were basic but comfortable: two rows of bunks with six mattresses in each. If you didn’t come with friends I’m sure you’d leave with some because there was nothing separating one mattress from the next. The wind howled all night providing oodles of atmosphere, and I went to sleep imagining I was living in another era – perhaps as an explorer, or a member of the French resistance fleeing the Nazis over the Pyrenees to Spain during the war, one of Charlemagne’s soldiers returning to France in the 10th century after subduing Spain, or maybe even one of the perfecti, the Cathars who fortified themselves in these mountains and withstood papal troops for months before being burned alive as heretics.

So steep we needed a rope...

The next day I was still a woman of the 21st century with the incredible good fortune to be in a spectacular place with her husband and four children. As Sister Maria sings, “somewhere in my youth, or childhood, I must have done something good”. Speaking of Sister Maria, if you bring to mind the “Doe a deer, a female deer” mountain scene from the Sound of Music, that’s a little what our experience here was like, except instead of seven children singing and eating apples, we provide four children eating Cherry Ripes.

The trip down was harder than the trip up as is often the case, and the next day Ludo, Mahalia and I could barely walk down the stairs. The last time I was aware of my quadriceps to this degree was after running in the City to Surf with insufficient preparation. Emile, Agnes and Felix seemed not to suffer at all.

We had a day of rest yesterday so why not hop on the bike today and climb another mountain? We left the kids at school struggling with French grammar and set off to the Col de Saraille, at 950m this was attainable for me. Despite it drizzling most of the way it was a beautiful ride up through Anilac and Cominac, well-known for their stone granges with stepped pediments, and with magnificent views across the valley and over the snow-capped mountains to Spain. I managed to reach the col without stopping once which was a milestone in my cycling history. On the way down to the restaurant in Erce we passed two women on a trek with a donkey. We had seen them 3 days before at the Col d’Agnes. It sure is a slow mode of transport.

June 5

Col de Catchaudegue (900m) this afternoon. Yes! Drizzling again.

Today Francoise and Roger arrived for a week, and tonight we invited our neighbour in for a drink to celebrate her birthday. Our birthday present was the only one she received. She has no family and has had a hard life (orphaned during the war, Vietnam vet husband who was prone to violence). She doesn’t have an easy personality, so even though she has many wonderful qualities, after 30 years in the village she has a hard time being accepted, and has few friends here. She so values the few friends she has that any display of generosity towards her is returned 10 fold. Her gifts of home-made jam and heirloom roses from her garden are legendary in this house, so I expect we’ll have a few pots of jam soon. She runs a shop in the village that showcases the products of craftspeople in the region.

June 9

Two days ago I was awakened at 6am to the sound of clunking sheep bells as a flock of brebis, encouraged by their shepherd, made their way through the village on their way up the valley. I couldn’t shepherd Ludo out of bed to see this spectacle but I’ll try again next time a flock comes through. For June is the month of the transhumance in Ariege. This is the mass movement of herds of cows, goats, sheep and horses from their winter lodging in the valleys to the high pastures in the mountains. The transhumance has taken on a bit of celebratory aspect in the last decade or so to maintain a tradition that is slowing dying, because few young farmers want to spend months in the summer shepherding their stock in the isolation of the high Pyrenees. The celebrations accompanying the transhumance seems to be getting bigger every year in the valleys of Ariege, and include feasts, dancing and fetes in villages along their route. Agri-tourists wanting to experience this disappearing culture also join the annual pilgrimage at different points along the trek, camping with the herds and flocks at night.

Francoise; Music from Bethmale

Yesterday was the transhumance through the valley of Bethmale, over the Col de la Core (remember my cycling goal?) We piled everyone in the car and endured the long and winding road and more than a few stops for car sick family members, to join in the celebrations at Castillon and Bethmale. First stop was the vide grenier (‘attic emptying’ - street stalls selling all manner of old things) at Castillon before we continued up the valley, past the Bethmale lake, along a rutted road, until we reached a point where we could go no further by car. We donned our wet weather gear (we’re still waiting for summer) and walking boots and set off on the last few kilometres to find the beasts.

Transhumance in the mountains

After half an hour or so we rounded a corner and before us was a magnificent vista, another cirque, a tableau of fir forests, waterfalls, steep mountain pastures and in the middle of it all, the incongruous forms of blue and white striped tents, a melange of farm creatures and several hundred keen walkers who had climbed the mountain with the shepherds! It was really an amazing sight. To see an area that is usually so lonely and isolated, peopled and busy was very strange. The villagers of Bethmale were dressed in their very distinctive costumes, playing the folk music of the region, and a feast was provided for those who had the foresight to order a week earlier (that didn’t include us). It was a wonderfully festive atmosphere created by those who love these mountains.

Costumes from Bethmale

The costume worn by the people of Bethmale features strange wooden clogs with long curved points and a carved heart at the toe. The legend surrounding these clogs goes back to the last millennium when the Moors invaded Western Europe from Spain, through the Pyrenees and up as far north as Poitiers in the Loire Valley. The young men of Bethmale fled into the mountains and during their exile they fashioned all manner of weapons to rid their valley of the invaders, including the sharp points of their clogs. When they heard that the Moors had been defeated at a battle on the Mediteranean coast, they crept down under cover of darkness to wreak vengeance on the enemy. One young man emerged from the battle with the heart of his fiancée’s Moorish lover skewered to his lethal clog. Whether it’s true or not, it’s a great story isn’t it?

June 13

Dad and Cheryl arrived today in Toulouse by train, late because of yet another strike. It’s been 30 years since I spent more than a lunch or dinner with them, so I’m really looking forward to this whole week. It was very strange to see them in this very French environment! We had a great time, with a lot of hilarity over several games of 500, and Dad’s forays into the village shops.

The day after they arrived the transhumance passed through Seix, and the village celebrated with lunches, dinners, dances, markets and the Vache Landaise. The Vache Landaise is a little like bullfighting without the violence. A small arena was set up in the meadow next to the rugby field and all the villagers filled the stands to watch the spectacle. There were semi professional toreadors who took to the arena to do battle with the young bulls. One of them was incredible, doing aerial somersaults over the bull as it charged him. After those who knew what they were doing left the ring, those who hadn’t a clue were allowed to test their reflexes. Even kids over 12 were allowed in. Emile stretched the truth a little, and proved to be the most audacious of them all, narrowly missing the bull many times and always relaunching himself in front of those little horns. He had a ball (but fortunately not a bull).

Carcassonne

Dad is a bit of a history buff, so we thought a trip to Carcassonne was in order. This time we managed to visit the castle. It has a long and fascinating history, beginning as a fortified Roman village, becoming the stronghold of the Cathars under Trencaval, who was besieged and ultimately beaten by Simon de Montfort’s papal army in the 13th century. Most of the population was allowed to leave unharmed with the clothes on their backs, and they established the modern city of Carcassonne across the river. Fortified Carcassonne was subsequently used by the French monarchs for a few more centuries as a southern bastion before falling into near ruin in the 19th century when it was used as a great source of building stone for the new town. An architect of the 19th century whose name escapes me undertook extensive studies and drafting of the ruined fortress and initiated a restoration campaign in the 20th century that lasted for some 50 years. Consequently the fortified city is in an amazing state of preservation today. What incredible foresight the government had to commit to such an undertaking.

We saw Carcassonne in January in the dead of winter, and again now in June. I have also seen it in August. I loved it in January, thought it was OK in June, and hated it in August – a direct function of the number of tourists present.

Mahalia at full canter; Dad shovelling horse poo

Another highlight of Dad and Cheryl’s week here was the Grotte de Niaux. These caves are in the same valley as the one we travelled through to climb to the mountain refuge, near the town of Tarascon. The Grotte de Niaux are famed for their prehistoric cave paintings, ranging in age from 14,000 to 12,000 years ago. They also have graffiti on the walls from the 17th century. We had to walk in complete darkness, carrying one torch per couple, along slippery rock pitted with holes, for nearly a kilometre. In true French style there was no warning of the slippery slope, of the head banging opportunities, or of the puddles, but fortunately Ludo warned the group of the latter by stepping into one early on, ankle deep.

We reached a domed chamber at the end of the cave, the guide took all our torches, and using a special light that wouldn’t damage the paintings, she showed us the most extraordinary art work; depictions of bison, cave lions, horses and symbolic markings in ochre and black charcoal. In art history we are taught that perspective was ‘discovered’ in the Renaissance, but these drawings were perfect in their proportions and perspective.

Dad challenging Emile; Cheryl, Ludo and Dad

Their last night here we spent at the Hotel de la Poste, one of our favourite local restaurants. It has a wonderful wood-panelled dining room with a huge stone fireplace and candles, and is very welcoming in winter. However, it’s summer now, so we ate in the huge garden surrounded by roses and lilies and clematis, and Ludo introduced Dad and Cheryl to the pleasures of foie gras, magret de canard and orange soufflé.

June 20

Kim arrived today, and how good it is to see her again. We dropped Dad and Cheryl at the airport in Toulouse, 1.5 hours from our house, and went straight to the railway station to meet Kim. Wasting no time, we took Kim shopping in the beautiful city of Toulouse. The buildings there, built almost entirely of rosy red bricks, nestle between the mighty Garonne and the Canal du Midi, both of which are lined with majestic plane trees that provide welcome shade in the hot southern summers. It’s a wonderful city for cycling, through narrow winding streets and along the waterways. It has a rich past and has been an important player in the history of France. Now it’s a big aerospace centre – this is where the Airbus planes are assembled.

Felix and Agnes in the School Show

This afternoon was the end of year school concert. Emile somehow managed to get the most challenging part and had to memorise lines and lines of the French play. He acquitted himself with aplomb. There was some doubt as to whether he would be up to going to high school in September with the rest of his class, but so far has he progressed at school that there are no concerns now. He’s transformed in the last few months, becoming a self-assured, gutsy 11 year-old who surprises us every day (more later!) Agnes shone on the stage as always, and we couldn’t pick Felix’s accent, so integrated has he become.

Their school reports were all amazing (although Felix’s behaviour attracted a few comments) and Mahalia earned honors. Ludo has spent a lot of time helping the kids with their homework and this has contributed a lot to their achievements. In a way these results vindicate our decision to come here, even though the start was very difficult for everyone. The kids have well and truly integrated into the life of the village, they all have good friends, they know their Papa’s culture and his language, and Felix (alone of the four) now even speaks to Ludo in French.

June 23

Secoa and St. Jean de Luz

This weekend we took Kim to St. Jean de Luz, near the Spanish border on the Atlantic coast. Ludo spent a lot of time here as a child so it has many memories for him. It has transformed over the years from a fishing port into a chic tourist destination to the point where you can’t see the sand for the bodies in July and August. It still has a lot of charm, though, and the end of June was a good time to visit. French people really know how to celebrate and on Saturday night, to celebrate the day of St. Jean, there was the bataille de confetti and the toro de fuego. The kids love the bataille de confetti, which allows them to throw bags of confetti over everyone all night. It’s lots of fun, and two days afterward I’m still finding confetti in pockets, shoes and other interesting places! At midnight someone dons the papier mache head of a bull (the toro) covered in live firecrackers and fireworks and he runs all over the main square with hundreds of children shrieking behind. The first time I went to this festival I thought it was going to be a real bull, and spent a lot of time wondering how they would keep everyone safe with a firecracker laden bull on the loose. I still haven’t lived that down.

Why can't we have this much fun after a wedding?

June 21 is also the annual fete de la musique, when all over France in every little village and town and city, anyone who can play an instrument or sing takes to the streets to make music. Consequently not only did we throw confetti with reckless abandon, we could dance with abandon too.

and more confetti

On the way home we visited the Chateau of Pau, birthplace of Henri IV, he who slept in a turtle shell as an infant, changed religious conviction six times and had 74 women in his love life, 54 of them verified.

Fete de la Musique

June 24

Almost made it!!!! Tonight I went as far as kilometre 9, altitude1,100 m, on the road to the Col de la Core. I had to stop because I could only see 50 m in front of me through the heavy mist. It was hard, hard, hard, work. I’m feeling very proud of myself and I’m sure I’ll be able to make it to the top soon. Yippee!

June 28

Love is in the air, and although Mahalia is very private about her private life Emile is out there and has his first real girlfriend, Yael, who admires his skateboarding skills and his exotic antecedence. He also had his first real date last night, at the cinema with Yael and her Mum. Consequently we were minus Emile when we went to Aulus les Bains for pizza and mini-golf. Now pizza and mini-golf doesn’t normally bring to mind places of great beauty, but picture this. A little stone shepherd’s hut with a large stone fireplace, situated in the middle of flower filled fields, at the edge of a tiny spa town full of 19th century, shuttered hotels, surrounded by mountains dotted with enormous waterfalls and forests. I love this place.

We’ve been travelling through Aulus a lot recently on the way to some beautiful walks. One rainy day we took Kim on a challenging walk up to the lake of Garbet, the source of the river that runs through Aulus. It was a difficult walk in any conditions, but in the rain it was particularly challenging. We slipped and sloshed our way through thick mist up to the cirque du Garbet, half way to the top, but decided to leave Ludo to finish it alone when we couldn’t find a way across the swollen river. He disappeared in the mist and the torrent, his boots over his shoulders. Just before heading back through the forest, we turned around to find that the cloud had temporarily lifted, revealing a majestic cirque rising sheer from a circular mountain meadow threaded with the river and its rivulets. It was breathtaking.

June 30

Yesterday we went underground, and took a boat for a few kilometres in a massive cave system carved by the underground river Labouiche. It was a little spooky, especially when Ludo asked how far the river rose after heavy rain...

Today we took Kim on another hike beyond the Col d’Agnes where we managed to attract the attention of a solid looking bull, become infested with solid-sucking ticks, and to lose Mahalia for one solid hour. I don’t know if Kim (or Mahalia) will ever walk with us again. Kim leaves on Tuesday, a sad day. And now we must prepare ourselves for 2 months of summer holidays ……….