Gypsy Camargue

We head deep into the heart of the area of France called the Camargue. The Camargue is low flat land between Arles, the capital, and the Mediterranean. It is a land of low-lying yellow rice fields, edged on each side with tall pampas grass or a mix of trees, planted as windbreaks. 

White horses gallop into picture postcard shallow blue lagoons, flicking their tails, which become indistinguishable from the tufted pampas heads. Cowboys, called gardians, herders for centuries in the Camargue, gallop after them; while along each Promenade de Cheval queues of more well-behaved white horses are put to gentle work, carrying beginning riders, one queue after another, a riding school economy that drives the Camargue. 

The fields are heavy with bellowing black bulls. We figure these are being bred for use in the arenas we have been visiting. We also notice that bull meat is appearing on menu items everywhere, and on some of the billboards: saucisson de taureau, they say. So, the bulls are multi-purpose. I just don’t think I could eat one. 

White cattle egrets sit companionably on the backs of the black bulls, keeping a sharp eye out for their friends, the pink flamingos, busily grooming and preening their long pink legs, bills and and pretty pink-tinged wings, in the nearby shallow lagoons. Everywhere is a painter’s pot: colours of white, black, pink, yellow, green and blue. 

And, of course, to go with this vibrancy, the Camargue is gypsy land. Hints of gypsy lore and gypsy décor are obvious everywhere, even in the churches. Every May hoards of gypsies from all parts of Europe converge on this land, meeting up for their annual Pelerinage des Gitans, in a little town sitting on the sands of the Mediterranean coast: Saintes Maire de la Mer. So, we hunt it down. 

Saintes Maire de la Mer apparently got its name after the death of Christ when a group of the Marys -- Mary Magdalen, Mary Salome (Mother of apostles: John and James) and Mary Jacobe (aunt of Jesus), along with their servant, Sara, were put into a boat and shoved out to sea, left to die. Their barque, so the story goes, washed ashore at this point, and here they were welcomed by the local gypsy leader, Sara. Sara wished them well, listened to their tale, and offered them peace, if they only promised to baptise her and her little band of gypsies, into Christianity. Voila! So goes the priest’s tale. One of a store, no doubt. 

Not too many centuries later, a church is built in the Marys’ honour. It is a small dark stone church with a lot of giggle about it. There is a statue of Saint Sara in the crypt -- decorated in a coat of gay gypsy bling, edged with tassels of jangling, dangling golden coins and all the spaces in between are heavily stitched with flashing sequins, to catch every bit of light. St Sara is surrounded by so many offerings of red and green lit votive candles that the crypt roof is completely black. The temperature in the crypt is a full five degrees warmer than elsewhere in the church. Hellishingly hot.  I am not at all sure Sara would have appreciated it. 

Garishly decorated altars throughout the nave bear witness to many of the Mary miracles. Various bits of body parts have been remobilised thanks to the saints and their reliquary. Cripples have walked again. Hot winds from the 1833 Mistral blowing deadly heat across the Camargue were stopped in their tracks. Such is the combined power of the Marys, so it is believed. And if that isn’t enough to woo and wow the tourists, there is, behold! a full-length replica of the Shroud of Turin hanging along the back wall of the church. And who says that is not Jesus.  It looks exactly like him.  

Saintes Mairie de la Mer is built around great sandy beaches with protective bays braced in giant manmade horseshoes of stone. I bet it throbs in summer with heated sunburnt bodies splayed on the sand. As we left the church folk walking the little town started gathering around permanent barricades edging the road that leads towards Les Arenas: the Bullring. We had no idea what this meant until a vehicle with a loudspeaker whipped by yelling in such a way that those who understood scattered fast. We followed the leader. Then came the complete surprise: our first ever bull run. Just as in Pamploma, a cavalcade of gardiens galloped gallantly by on their white horses stringing between them a herd of black bulls bound for the bullring, There was to be a bull fight in the Arena that afternoon. Which we would miss as we were making tracks.   But we were there for the parade.  

We headed further down the coast to Aigues Morte. Mainly because I liked the sound of the name, which means: Dead Water. Which, though, a bit of a worry given that Aigues Morte has now become an inland port with the shift of sand and sea, is fairly self-explanatory. Aigues Morte is a completely walled town, much like Saintes, and is gorgeous. The walls were constructed in the 13th Century on the orders of Louis IX, who attempted to launch the 7th and 8th Crusades from here in 1248 and 1270, as he sought to reconquer the Holy Lands. There had to be money in crusades given the number of kings and popes, abbots and hosteleries itching to be involved in them. Louis did not have much luck. He was captured during the 7th Crusade and died during the 8th. Sadly, the omens were not in his favour. 

Aigues Morte is groaning in produits du terroir. From this land salt is made, tangy with the perfume of the garrigue: Fleur du Sel de Camargue -- flavoured with thyme and lavendar. The Camargue, too, is famous for its long grained fat white rice. This, too, is often bought in the local shops flecked with edible roses and jasmine. And, of course, there are tons of dried sausage made from bull meat, the other local specialty selling big in the little boutiques. Not to mention the delightful clothing for Apres La Plage wear – no Apre Ski wear here from smart little shops decorated with just a single vine growing from a a pot hole in the concrete, from which flourishes a beautiful winding vine spreading shade and tendrils and trumpeting with vivid purple morning glories. Like Arles, Aigues Morte, despite its name, is such a pretty place. 

At sunset we leave the village and drive past the last of the sweet summer lavendar fields hunkered between fields of the yellow headed rice. Occasionally, we see long lagoon boats bearing home the last of the tourists behind borders of tall bulrushes, tipped gold by a setting sun. Tonight we camp further inland in the heart of Provence and wind up atop the very hill that Dante looked down from, and which inspired his epic poem, the Inferno. Indeed the name of the wine cave we sleep above bears the same name: Cave du Val D’Enfer.  A monster cave it is, buried deep underground, showing scars where massive rectangular blocks have been gouged from the mountain’s heart. The wine in these rocky caverns is chilled. We sip it, and eat tapas here in this cavernous underground cathedral, sitting on massive cut-away wine barrels curved into wooden seats, corked in the centre with a table holding tapenade, olives, salami and cheese. It is cool. Spectacular. Otherworldly. And not a Netherworlder in sight.

Flamingoes feeding on the riches of the Camargue waters

Riding school, Camargue

Everywhere there is water

White horses of the Camargue

Ah, Arles! The high yellow note

Amazing unforgettable Arles! We arrive in Arles to find we are in time for the famous Saturday Gipsy Market which is one of the longest, most colourful markets we have ever visited: flamenco skirts with frenzied frills, tasselled shawls dropping gaudy gilded coins, dollar store merchandise, and Van Gogh straw hats flood the market. Hopeful sellers chat and flirt and every so often do a little happy jig as they woo buyers with their glinting gypsy grins and wicked charm. 

For centuries gypsies have used Arles as a meeting place and a crossroads. Southern France feels so very Spanish these last few days with all the bullrings and the flamenco décor we are seeing, notwithstanding the frequency of tapas appearing on many menus. (Here, our digital camera died, with absolutely no warning– so photos for the next couple of days are snaffled from the net.. We could not have been more distraught. These few days were serious highlights for us, and to have lost our camera, right at this point, was a real disaster.) On our walk we passed another amazing Les Arenes, built in the 1st century by the Romans. At the time this one was built it boasted the facility to evacuate the 25000 attendees in only 5 minutes, if needed.

Arles is an amazing place! A place to spend a lot of time. It is all atmosphere: ancient houses with red tiled roofs and soft distressed yellow and pink faded stuccoed stone, period bridges with ancient light fittings, intricate iron balustrading on balconies, beautiful little religious grottos hanging over narrow ancient alleyway entrances, and tiled sections niched into the soft pastel over the lintels of narrow terraced houses. Not much has change in hundreds of years. 

Arles is the town Van Gogh worked himself into such a frenzy that he ended up, in anguish, cutting off much of his ear, and ending up in an asylum. I adore Van Gogh, and have been aching to get here to walk in his footsteps. We ate where he ate. We drank where he drank. We stood where he stood to paint, so that we could reason why he chose exactly that spot, of all, to view his subject matter. Amazing to see from his perspective. To hypothsize why he chose this aspect, and not another. We visited the sunlit Yellow café he painted and imagined him setting up his easel, thick with his messy daubs of paints (I doubt he would have been a tidy painter) and attacking his subject with a frenzied passion.

We tracked down his home. Here, thanks to Theo’s money, he rented the Yellow House, which we unearthed just outside the stone walls of the ancient city, but within easy walking distance, stumbling distance if needs be, of the café culture and the night life. Though bombed in 1944, the footprint of Vincent’s small Yellow House remains, and, to make it more vivid, in the Van Gogh Foundation rooms, we actually saw a model of how it might have looked with the sunflower room decorated, along with the single bed he prepared for Gaugin’s visit, and the woven chair he lovingly bought for Gaugin to sit on, while dressing. “There’ll be the prettiest room upstairs,” Vincent wrote to Theo, “which I’ll try to make as nice as possible, like a woman’s boudoir.” (Vincent Van Gogh, Letter to Theo, Arles, 1888) 

His own room he wanted spare, like a monk’s. Nothing for himself. Almost penitent about wanting the few items that he did, that he had to rely on Theo, to fund. In this house, in this town, Van Gogh dreamed, with the coming of Gaugin, of setting up an art school, for people of like minds. People with passion who wanted to pursue the beauty of his passion: Impressionism. Three hundred paintings he whipped up in the frenzied 15 months he had been here. He hoped there would be more. But it all went so terribly wrong. 

Gaugin stayed in the Yellow House with the yellow sunflower painting over the bed, for only two volatile months. Then left. The day he left, 23 December 1888, Vincent cut off his ear. The following day, Christmas Eve, he was hospitalised. That was Van Gogh’s last Christmas alive. “Mr Rey says that instead of eating enough and regularly I have been particularly sustaining myself with coffee and alcohol. I admit all that, but it will still be true that I had to key myself up a bit to reach the high yellow note I reached this summer.” (Vincent Van Gogh, Letter to Theo, Arles, 1888) 

And yellow is how I will remember Arles. Though the sunflowers have dropped their petals now, the fields surrounding the town are all still yellow-tipped with ripe rice in all the fields. These, too, are edged with eager little yellow wildflowers setting themselves up to ring out Vincent’s high notes as the season progresses. We slept, that night, in a Mas close to Arles. Farms are no longer called Fermes here, but all seem, now, to be called Mas. This one produces olive oil for sale. It also harvests wheat for pasta flour, and stores and sells the wheat shafts as hay bales. Everything around seems yellow. We dream of Vincent.

Cafe Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at night

Van Gogh's Yellow house

Arles character 

Garlic at Gypsy Market

Yellow or Arles

Montpeiler to Nimes

Somehow this year we keep popping up in cities, when our preference is for small towns, even villages. Most cities we really should continue to bypass, but we are often too inquisitive, so we find we must stop and many times we wonder why. Montpelier, though, is one of the good ones. Again, we had fun searching for a parking space in its narrow inner-city streets, but ended up wriggling our way into the last spare spot in an open parking space very close to the old town centre.

Montpelier is the capital of the Languedoc department and currently most of the streets, lanes and plazas are under construction. Workers are building a tramway through the heart of the city and large excavations appear like gaping wounds all over the centre, exposing subterranean plumbing pipes, sewerage, ancient foundations and other detritus, usually hidden from sight.

Notwithstanding this, Montpelier’s centre has a lovely feel to it. It is a university town, so there are alleys filled with students and bookstores, a mix we always enjoy. Added to which are dozens of interesting little coffee shops, specialty boutiques, and stacks of noisy and excited tourists thick on the ground in the Place de la Comedie, which has grand buildings with elaborate facades that keep the camera shutters clicking, so the mood all over the city is great. And it feels fun.

On to Nimes, where more road construction, tiny arterial routes, after-school bumper to bumper cars, and traffic building up for a large wine and food festival in the heart of the city that evening, plays havoc with our patience as we try to park (again, we luck out on a brilliant park) then, later on in the day, attempt to leave. Quelle horreur! Tho’ we actually managed all that with some ease.

Nimes has a brilliant old arched bullring, Les Arenes. It is quite amazing to think that the heavy hewn stones that make up most of this arena were placed here by Roman workers some 2,000 years ago. Today it is one of the most beautifully preserved bullrings in France, and from here you can literally feel the city throbbing and pulsing, priming up for this evening’s entertainment and bullfight.

Thousand of folk were pouring into the city centre for the evening events. On every street corner there were bands, buskers, and muzac; and every single restaurant in town (and a few were specially set out and rigged up just for the evening) was primed ready to serve the masses. Paella, tonight, was definitely the favoured item on most menus.

These days, the noble bull, is no longer killed. Instead groups of matadors manage to entertain the crowds by retrieving red tassels from the bull’s horns, a trying and skilful play, which keeps the hoards happy given the early queues at the arched gates.

One of the most amazing events in the centre ville was a group of drummers and a swinging trapeze artist who were playing and swaying as they were hung and swung as if they were a human mobile from a crane at least 4 stories high. The crane was raised and lowered, as they performed, to each of the four corners of the square. Super brave.

We picked up a piece of fascinating trivia in Nimes, too: when Levi-Strauss set about importing suitable cloth to make his sturdy work jeans for farmers in America in 1848, he imported heavy woven cotton which came through Nimois tailors, out of Egypt. When the bolts arrived at his factory they were marked from Nimes, de Nimes. Hence the evolution of the word, denim.

Tonight we camp in a vineyard, and as it is now grape harvesting season we are invited to watch the grapes that had just been harvested from the surrounding fields around our camping car, being poured into the rotating press near the cellar door. Stalks and skins are spat out and reloaded onto a truck to be used in the fields as fertilizer, while the grape juice is piped into vats inside the building for fermentation. Local folk keep wandering in to the cave while we watch, refilling their empty bottles for the evening meal.

Wines from here are sold locally, and to markets in America and Mexico. We were warned, with a wink, that they are looking for distributors for new sales in Australia. For that we need another life, and on lovely evenings, like this, one, we often wish that was possible.

Place de la Comedie, Montpelier

Les Arenes, Nimes

Drummers making music while hanging from a crane, Nimes

Grape crushing at our vineyard stopover tonight

Enroute to Provence

We left Eus for a week or two and are off on a circular driving jaunt, visiting Provence,  to hunt down one of my favourite painters, Vincent Van Gogh.

Enroute we spent another lovely morning in Perpignan, buying expensive recharge for my recently acquired broadband dongle, 50€ for less than 1 GB, which is shockingly expensive internet access. But still, the days are gone when I am happy to do without access to the internet. At home I would chomp that up in 2 or 3 days.  Here, I will have to be a little more abstemious, I fear.

Despite the negative press in our guidebooks downtown Perpignan continues to delight us. Here, from an original little chocolatier we bought a small bamboo container filled with nearly pure chocolate teaspoons (the chocolatier showed us the moulds she uses) to stir into and enhance our morning espresso and there have been audible moans of delight in various plazas in southern France this week as a result.

We bypassed Narbonne, which looked tacky, though outskirts often are in this area, whereas historical centres seem always to be fascinating. We may live to regret this decision, but I doubt it somehow given what came after.

We headed to the start of the Canal du Midi at Beziers. This was the loch section at the very start of the Canal du Midi. It was stacked lock-high with tourists, and it took a single large vessel one and a half hours to negotiate seven locks up and seven locks down, with a drop of 21 metres, and the nine gates that contain them, plus a small stretch along the Midi. This is too slow for me. I can’t see me doing a Canal du Midi tour anytime soon, despite how much I enjoyed watching Rick Stein do his.  Edited of the boring bits though it was.

So far we have followed the Canal du Midi at Toulouse, Carcassone and Beziers. Its guaranteed feature, to date, is that tourists are still interested in it. To me, it looks little different from most other locks. Historically, though, it was vital. Built in the 17th century Midi’s waterways were for a time, a very short time, the principal trade route between the waters of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, via the Garonne River.

Our other reason for visiting Beziers was to find the Catholic church which had been burned to the ground when it was filled with Cathars in 1209, during the heresy persecutions. A modern church has since been constructed on the very site using the original pillars that were scorched during the massacre.

After great difficulty negotiating extremely narrow, hilly, medieval streets we finally found the Eglise de la Madelaine. It was sombre. The anguish of the Cathars was all pervading. Thank goodness, someone had whitewashed the burned pillars. So sad.

We drove from Beziers to Montpelier via Sete. Sete, a port and holiday destination on the coast. was touted as worthwhile -- but it did not appeal to us. Our little camping car was deviated up the steepest hill road it has ever had to traverse, almost in the heart of Sete downtown section, so that probably set our mood.

Sete’s beaches are windswept and buffeted, more suited to kite surfing than to sun-bathing and its sea views are hogged by hectares of high density pastel coloured housing being erected all over town, blocking out the sun. In a few years I can see these becoming like many of England’s council estates.

One interesting note: a lot of Italians now live in Sete, as most of the folk from the village of Gaet left Italy during the depression and relocated in Sete, seeking jobs and a better future. I hope they found it. We chose not to stay.

But, really, this near-coastal area of France had little to offer us. We couldn’t miss noticing the increase in litter on the sides of roads everywhere we drove, then when the billboards started to appear almost as thick as in hell-hole Bratislava last year we were astonished. No one tells you it is like this enroute to Provence from the south.

When we saw the first North African prostitute in a layout between Beziers and Montpelier we blinked, disbelievingly. But, as we drove on, there they were, in layout after layout, mostly single girls, but sometimes pairs, touting their wares for the passing truck trade—and, occasionally, we’d see a pimp in a van dropping another off. Prime time for passing trade, post lunch.

Catholic France. Hard to believe. Albeit on the short route between Spain and Germany, this area looks for all the world like the worst parts of the Czech Republic and Slovakia border territories we visited last year.

We camp in our least favourite campgound near a sad excuse for a beach near Frontignan (ha! – the French come here for weeks in the summer -- god help them!) and we were eaten all night by mosquitos. I counted 50 bloodsucking bites on one side of Bec’s face in the morning, poor girl. They really made a feast of her face.

Perpignan 

Canal du Midi near Beziers

The canals are popular with tourists

Eglise de la Madelaine, Beziers

Windswept beach near Sete

Simple stylish street stall enroute

Villages within cooee

Marquixanes: This is our nearest village (Mark'-i-shen) about three miles away. We don’t come here often, but we can buy fresh French bread here and wine on tap. Such a sensible offering wine on tap, and one which is becoming quite boutique and trendy elsewhere in the world, but is normale here, using locally grown grapes and hooking a tap to the vat or bowser. We simply take our own bottle and it is cheap. Which highlights the cost of packaging. 

Marquixanes is built much like Eus, with its church at the top, and homes teetering and tottering down the side of a small mountain. Currently, it looks more like the set for a low budget French resistance war movie so it is not surprising to stumble upon a stone memorial in the place du village, honouring a young local French resistance boy killed by Germans secreted in the heavily scrubbed hills around the village. 

Most houses in the winding streets are old and crumbling. Ancient wells from ancient times adorn derelict and boarded up Spanish-style courtyards, but with even a little renovation these could be made incredibly picturesque. Disconcertingly, every so often, a stunning renovation has already turned one of these wrecks into something so smart and gracious you are forced to do a double take. Who on earth did that? Why? Do they live here all year round, or just here for the occasional visit in season? 

If all the houses in the village looked as loved and cared for as one or two of these renovations, Marquixanes could easily vie with Eus for the tourist market. And one day this quite possibly could happen. 

Prades: This is our shopping town, about 5 miles away. It is also where our nearest farmers' market is held, on Tuesdays. Prades is bordering on unappealing, even ugly, in the main. It has few old buildings of much interest, apart from a church in the centre of town, and the modern buildings are generic, with little appeal. 

What it does have, though, is one of the most comfortable centre villes around. It’s place du village – a long rectangle, where the main part of the market is set up-- is totally encircled and shaded by old thick-trunked oak trees that have been pollarded and pruned to shade the patrons of the street cafes, and the market folk.

And a random assortment of hobos hang out on park benches with their wine casks and beer bottles under the shade of the old oak trees in the aftermath of the market, when the square has been vacated and vacuumed for their pleasure. It is not often you see this in France, but you do in Prades. Mind you, this is such a fruit-growing area,  and it is harvest time, that it makes sense for there to be an influx of temporary pickers and itinerant workers here for the season. Perhaps these are they. 

On the other hand, for the last sixty years Prades has played host to Pablo Casals Chamber Music Festival which brings hoards of classical music afficianados to the valley each summer.  These winos in the village square are not music folk. 

One of the most beautiful venues for Casals music festival is up in the hills a couple of kilometres out of Prades: the wonderful Pre-Romanesque Abbaye de St Michel de Cuixa. This is a shady and contemplative spot with a stylish vaulted crypt, pretty cloisters reconstructed in pink Villefranche marble, and an almost primitively brutal stone nave. its alcoves adorned with delicate minimalist statues: mostly wooden, from long ages past: mostly 13th – 15th century. 

Again, I have a favourite. This time it is the thick white stone slab of altar marble that once decorated a Roman monument somewhere, but was brought here in the early days of construction, and eventually consecrated as the Abbeye altar in 974.  Over one thousand years ago. 

In the aftermath of the French Revolution this simple slab of white altar was sold, then used as a balcony for a house in Vinca. There it would still be perched had it not been discovered in 1971. Three years later this ancient piece of stone was brought back to the abbey, sited again as the altar, and that is where it proudly stands to this day.  And, hopefully, for another thousand years, or more. 

VilleFranche de Conflent: Is a gorgeous little village, another of Frances’ most beautiful, one of three in this Department, and of great interest because Vaubin, one of the greatest engineers ever in France, designed the fortifications here. 

Vaubin was born into a noble family, but at an early age was left a poor orphan to be brought up by peasants. Had it not been for a group of Carmelites who recognised his potential and tutored him in maths and sciences Vaubin would likely have grown up to be a peasant. Instead, he became one of the most celebrated and innovative engineers in French history. Any village that has Vaubin fortification credentials is now instantly famous.

Villefranche and its fort have become so. Deservedly. Vaubin’s fort, and its massive walls, has protected them from the dreaded Spanish invaders.  This is a delightful little place: my favourite in the valley, so far. Like Eus it is on the pilgrim route to Santiago. Atop many of the door lintels sway effigies of broomstick witches: offering additional protection from the marauding Spanish beyond the mountains.

Perpignan: This is the capital of tbe Pyrennes-Orientales – just a little over a half an hour's drive from us. This once was the capital of Majorca -- and Spanish -- until King Louis X1 came along in the 15 century and made it part of France. 

Lonely Planet says it has little to offer, but the downtown is fun. There is a delightful canal serpentining its way through the centre, great restaurants abound, and the people are delightfully friendly.

Here – at last! -- I found an internet dongle that will give me access to the Internet if and when I can discover how to simply recharge the French SIM card. The trials of a second language!

It is interesting to note that while we come across large numbers of English speakers in market places all around the Pyrennees-Orientales, they, like us, have little French. Sadly, some who have worked here for 35 years have little French! But, this region is more French than the Dordogne and the Lot valleys that we drove through two years ago.  Not that we are looking for English speakers, quite the reverse. It is just interesting to note where the English migrate to in Europe. And France, clearly, is one of those countries.

Wine on tap at Marquixanes 

Prades' farmers market

Vaubin's beautiful fort walls in Villefranche de Confluent

Abbaye de St Michel De Cuixa altar

Broomstick witches protecting locals from marauders

Perpignan canal

Vincent and our well

Water causes problems too. Our well has been leaking. This is not a pretty round stone well with a lovely copper well head as one often sees in medieval villages, ours is a functional hole.   In the back wall.  Behind the downstairs washing tubs.

Filled with water that has to overflow. The overflow for the well is piped out into the pedestrian traffic (there are no roads up where we live, only paths). Since before we arrived the pedestrian path has been flooded with the overflow from our well.

It has been like this for months, and Anita has been beseeching the mayor, local dignitaries, and any bureaucrat who might listen, that this well needs attention.

This is not just an ordinary house well.  It looks to us as though water from further up the hill somehow collects in this well before it gets diverted further down hill to be used in roadside irrigation channels. Tomorrow, they say. We will be there tomorrow. But, this is the Mediterranean, and ‘tomorrow’ more often than not means ‘manana' and there is always another tomorrow.

Daily since we arrived we have been told that someone will turn up 'today' to fix the well. Sometimes someone does turn up. They look at it, scratch their chin and wander off in a babble of French. But, eh, the fixing has never happened. And, it was not until one of our dear neighbours slipped in the overflow slush the other day that Vincent, a plumber, and his mate, appeared, around dusk, to check out our well. Much noise and hilarity soon followed. Pete could not resist, so joined in the fray.

Vincent brought a pump to get rid of the overflow, but felt compelled to strip to his breeches, and personally accompany the pump down into the well, slithering his long bony body against the rough sides of the tiny well, shaped not unlike a chimney pipe. Down he went and on down, accompanied by lots of hoots, shouts and hoopla. Up came things, one by one. Things that may have been blocking the well.  

Stone upon stone, a bottle of wine still capped, more rocks, ancient broken bits of ceramicware, a beautiful whole old pot crazed and stained, more bottles of capped wine, many more, and more stones, more bottles of beer. And more wine. An endlessly satisfying treasure trove. Vincent, his mate, and Peter were in high hilarity: all in a jovial pirate heaven.

After they’d finished pumping the well, Vincent’s mate ripped off one of the wine stoppers, guzzled the wine to test it and pronounced it perfectly drinkable. 

So out slithered Vincent. He checked the well to find it behaving nicely, no longer spilling its excess all over the pedestrian path, then packed himself and his mate off, along with pump and pipes, and the remaining bottles of unopened rescued wine, heading off down the now dry hill path to while away a pleasant evening ahead. 

And for one night, and one night only, the well behaved beautifully. In the morning, emptied of all its weighted stones, ancient pots, and mysterious cache of nearly a dozen bottles of mature wine, the well began, again, to weep. Sloshing its watery excess all down the pedestrian path again.  And it is doing it still. As it ever was.

Vincent examining the problem

Rubble and detritus from our well

Looking down at our water overflow drenching the alley

Then came the garrigue

The name of our village, Eus, comes from the word ‘yeuse’ meaning ‘oak’ as this area was once richly coated in hardy oak trees. These ancient oaks have long gone. 

Even before the monks of the twelfth century moved in to add their bit of destruction to the forests, the Romans and tribes who came before, felled the native oaks mercilessly, burning their timbers to beat metals for sale. Over the centuries they helped strip the land clean to build roads, strategic hill towns, stone terraces to cultivate vines, and to lay endless hectares of valley flats to produce grain, fruit and vegetables.

Add to that centuries of grazing horses, sheep and goats ripping out roots what has grown in place of that natural forest is this man-made scape, called garrigue: a mix of tufted, scrubby vegetation consisting of stunted oak and juniper bush, underbrushed with woody clumps of rosemary, lavender, thyme, and such like. 

Not that it is unattractive, it isn’t. And on a moist gentle breeze it is headily aromatic. But it remains a constant and highly visible reminder of our ferocious need to consume. And more so now than ever. 

We can drive for hours yet the hill vegetation remains fairly consistent: stunted garrigue. Also while we watch the valleys are currently being harvested of tons of nectarines, peaches, haricot beans, potatoes, pears, apples, grapes, figs, and rockmelons. To name but some of the produce on offer, this very month. 

As with the wine on tap, we can stop and buy our fruit and veg direct from the producer out of practically any barn door or opened shed that backs off a farm on to a roadside pullout. These are often attended by Portuguese workers; and, as we can see the occasional temporary caravan parked in nearby fruit fields, we wonder if they are here for the season as cheap labour: fruit pickers and farm helpers. It certainly looks like that. 

We have to be super-careful when we do stop for produce, as, not only are the roads narrow, but on both sides they are bordered by deep open inground canals, gushing with irrigation water.  Even after the slightest rain, water plunges down these surrounding mountains where it is channelled under every hill top village path – you can hear it run as you walk—then it is diverted into these open irrigation concrete channels carved deep to both sides of even the narrowest roads. If our camping car landed in one of these ditches we would be trapped to our axle, and it would be no fun trying to get it out. 

No matter how green the irrigated valleys, how high the mountains, how little rain is needs to bring water gushing down the roadside verges and all the uncultivated bits of land seem always to be dry, crusty and parched looking. A drought could wreck much havoc in this valley: could quickly cripple this local economy.

The shop owned by the Mairi is open most mornings 

Garrigue cover on every hill and valley

Produce for sale everywhere

Produce is often for sale at the local warehouse if you know where to look

Water gushes down these hills

Overseeing it all

View from on high

Lavoir under the arch

Houses tumbling down the hill

Our little house on the hill

Our house in Eus is all colour, clutter and tres casual French chic. It sits halfway up the mountain. From a distance the homes looks just like pink-tiled ochre Lego boxes tossed and tumbling downhill. Eus is one of the most beautiful villages in France so tourists ramble up and down the tiny village passageways until late in the evening. Lots of tourists. Every day. I am amazed at the number.

Our house has three floors: the entrance opens onto the middle level, via a door from a medieval narrow alley to one side. After unlocking the door,  two complete revolutions, you take one step down to this level, as you enter the tiny kitchen space and the compact living room, bathroom and narrow hall which leads to outdoor steps, downstairs.

The floor on this middle level is tiled with tomettes, those delightful red glazed hexagons, so typically French. To match the tomettes, the kitchen is all red: red and white squares, red and white spots, red hearts on white, or white on red: cushions, chair covers, tablecloths, tea-towels, prints, floor mats, china, curtains, wall hangings, canisters – everything: right down to dustpans and ticking wall clocks. 

There is a hob and an oven set in a single small fixed unit where there is room for stacked china and cutlery and sel, poivre and herbs. We make space for our groceries on a small square table pushed against the wall near the fridge which is covered in red and white oilcloth. 

Everything is at hand. The broom, if you want it, the wine glass, the tea towel. You barely have to reach for a thing. Everything is in its place, and every space has a thing in it. 

The bathroom is Beetlesque orange: all tangerine dreams and marmalade tiles. Bright citrus splashes: bathmats, towels, wall hangings, medicine cupboard, and a retro tangerine-tinted Sunlight soap print. It would be impossible to be sad in this room. There is even a terribly French bidet. 

The living room has white walls, white toiles du soleil curtains, spiced up with spritzy orange and red Santa Fe stripes: cushion covers, throw rugs, basketry, napery. The combined colours work. 

Spaces on walls are hung with saucepans, graters, utensils, tea caddys, memo lists – and clusters of prints and works d’art in delightful little collections. There is even a singular French Brie cheese boxtop, too charming to throw out, hooked to a small space on the china cabinet wall. And a framed Pablo Casals poster advertises a chamber music festival held in the next village, Prades, each summer. Prades was the cellist’s favourite village and he often made his home there. 

Up a narrow flight of stairs that hug the wall on which the kitchen cabinetry is hung is a quiet single guest bedroom, a narrow toilet, and our delightful space--a combined and quite large studio-bedroom, coloured in lemon, orange and grapefruit, that overlooks the Pyrennees through two awesome sets of windows which I can hardly bear to shutter. Here the flooring is wood, with occasional throw rugs, where needed. 

Downstairs, beneath the kitchen is a laundry room, a well, a cellar, and an excellent storage space, large enough for another low-set bedroom or two, if you sealed the flaky schist on all the walls. On the same level, but open to the sky is the garden. A fig tree hangs from above and ripe figs burst from it each day. There are vines, dripping orange pods, which I can’t identify climbing the stone surrounds, and hardy tufts of parsley scrabble up from the pebbles.

Here, too, our outdoor dining suite is set on concrete and pebbles beneath a shade umbrella. All terribly Mediterranean. The stone walls of the house rise two floors, enclosing this space, which stops at a pedestrian path above. We can often hear passers-by, but it is not possible to see them in this amazingly private garden. 

This outdoor space, alone, is the size of many of the boutique homes in the village. Set into its stone walls are niches holding candles for dining at dusk, and tangy potplants that fill the air. As well as being beautiful, it could be Camelot, as rain seems to only fall just after sundown, which is just as well, as we have yet to find the watering hose should we need it to refresh the garden. 

We’ve added our pot of basilica to the scented garden, as it has decided, this year, to last forever. We’re harvesting it daily, but still it grows. Eus is marketed as the sunniest village in all of France, and our basil is in on the act. 

Solid thick external walls keep out the heat, and picturesque window shutters which we secure back on little slide fasteners, keep in the cool. These very French shutters cover all the windows, up and downstairs, on which more toile au soleil hangs.

Added to which there are stacks of books I plan to devour: Anita Shreve, Margaret Atwood, Steven Fry, Sebastian Faulks. Ahh! Along with DVDs: The Painted Veil, The Constant Gardner, and many of that ilk: works we rarely take time out to enjoy at home. Here we will. 

Many of the local residents are artists, sculptors, silversmiths, leatherworkers, potters, even philosophers, so while there are less than 400 inhabitants in this village (albeit several are absentee homeowner) this local group of residents has a complete schedule of serious musical and literary performances on offer at this time of the year. 

At least twice a week there is some event at one or other of the two eating places that advertise visiting artists: poetry readings, collected folk tales and chansons du Languedoc-Roussillon region, avant garde groups with thin elegant wrists, and thinner instruments, and last Friday, a Cajun soloist and instrumentalist we could hear from our bedroom window -- simply superb. 

And if it all becomes a little too French, or a little too esoteric, or even a little too late – most guest artists don’t start till 9pm, and some featured artists not till much later -- one can simply sit enchanted, as Eus looks out over a valley, that at night, twinkles with the clustered lights of at least three villages.  It is all utterly charming.

Plumbago climbing our front door

Very French Kitchen

Clutter and colour

One end of our living room

One end of our boudoir

The other end of our boudoir

Our charming outdoor area

Cathar eyries and Eus

We had, then, barely 54 kilometres to travel to our house in Eus, but that took us most of one very hot parched day. How these Cathars chose hot dry climes in which to dwell! We stop for our mid-morning coffee at a little Bar-Tabac in a featureless little village, whose name I can’t remember. We are now avoiding hotels and restaurants, heading for Bar-Tabacs in tiny towns. Often they are the only shops open in such villages. Their espresso is usually superb and the owners love that we are Australian, and chat to us incessantly, as if we understand every enthusiastic word they utter. Ah, to do so.

We stop again to see the Cathar strongholds of Puilaurens and Queribus enroute from Carcasonne. Both are built halfway to heaven. Puilaurens, more so. It was first a Visigoth fortress, and only later became one of the ‘five sons of Carcassone’. The Cathars held it until the Crusade crushed them. Today, it looks as if a supreme architect designed its shape, so that its snaggle-toothed stone crenelations replicate the snaggled edges of the sharp stone topped mountains that encase, guard and seem to protect it.

Queribus, similarly, grows in pure lines, straight up, out of the very rocks from which it was made – pure, organic, elegant architecture. I wish more architects appreciated context and created so organically.

Access to the castles is vertical and dangerous, even for sure-footed mountain goats, who, surely, would not choose to walk these places. How anyone conceived of a construction in such a place is the first question. Then, how any human climbed to the top with one masonry brick, let alone clung to pile one atop the other might make a tale in the telling, akin to the amazing theories of construction of the pyramids, of Stonehenge, and the like.  Marvels. They are marvels, and surely wonders of engineering and design.

We stopped for groceries and goodies in Prades (pronounced, Prada: our shopping stop for our stay in Eus) then make what we think is our final stop for the night, a carpark outside the Mairie (Mayor’s office) at the top of the village of Eus.  We are to be here for two months.

Later it turns out that we have to move our camping car as we are in the wrong section of the village. We eventually find that we live in another even more difficult to access part of town,  but, because there are often so many day tourists here, we find we have to park way away from where we would like to, anyway.

Bec and I leave the motorhome loaded up with sacks of groceries, loose bags of toothbrushes, pyjamas, laptops and wallets, as we hunt down our house.  Peter spurns carting anything. He will, he says, come back later for his stuff.  Wise words, in hindsight.

Eus, like Puilaurens and Queribus, is built on a slope halfway to heaven. The sun is hot, the Mairie  is shut,  the folk wandering the streets appear to be tourists as Eus itself is on the list of France’s most beautiful villages so it sees its fair share of tourist traffic. The local residents are probably all indoors for siesta. Spain is just over the top of the pointed Pyrenees behind us. Since Albi, we have noticed the countryside is turning quite Spanish.  Entrances to fermes have a stuccoed, even an adobe look about them: there are more pink tiles and that Santa Fe scruffiness that we have come to love.

Eus streets are like medieval alleys, rising vertically to the sky, twisted, interconnected, maze-like. No one we speak to knows the address we are seeking: no one, it seems, knows the owners, even the one or two locals we think we are asking.  We are, and this is rare for us, but twice now on this trip: lost.

Much to Peter’s chagrin we end up phoning our friends, the owners, who live in England and get the first set of directions.  We head off again, purposefully. We think. Half an hour later, dripping with sweat and long divested of our plastic bags and treasures that we leave somewhere against a stone guardrail protecting a deadly precipice, up or down, who remembers? we phone yet again. Lost still.

Again, we are given directions. Again we think we are clearer. We think. But we are lost, yet again. I am sure there must be tourists who turn up in Eus one day and find themselves surfacing from these winding mysterious alleys days later. A little like Venice where tourists are guaranteed disorientation and loss. Which is half the fun, there, actually.  Here, though, it is hilly and today is a hellishingly hot day.

I can’t remember how often we do this, but, finally, Anita, bless her stoicism! realises she’ll have to stay online, and guides us with baby-steps, through the maze until we arrive at her front door, search for the key, which, too, stubbornly evades our quick search, until la! we enter a cool and shuttered interior. Our home for the next two months in the Pyrennees-Orientales. At last!  It is nearly dark. This has taken us most of the day.  We feel a little idiotic.  

Now, we need to go back and find our goods and chattels discarded enroute; then haul them high and low, like the Visigoths and the Cathars before us: every bell, book and candle that we need has to come from the camping car to this little house for the next little while. At least, until we leave again. Which won’t be too soon if I have anything to say about it

Before we head off to retrieve our possessions, we open the bedroom shutters on the top floor of our clifftop home and look straight out and up at the majesty of Pic du Canigou, opposite, which rises higher than the clouds, and almost as high as the Pyrennees get.  We will wake to this amazing sight every single morning. We can even see it from our bed.  Ooh-laaah! the charms of a mountain high eyrie!

Puilaurens citadel

Chateau de Queribus

Eus, a perched village of beauty

Lovely little archways everywhere

View of Pic du Carigou from our bedroom window