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.
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The Festival of Yesteryear at Saint Girons
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.
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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.
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It's Party Time!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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The Roofs of Amboise: An Older Resident
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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.
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Ludo and Jane; Felix Giving Thanks for a Safe Landing
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Our Boat Guide and an Otter-Chewed Tree
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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The Teams in Action
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.
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Losing One's Head; Stables at the Chateau de Chaumont
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