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.