Day 81. La Rochelle Oct 26 2001.

Breakfast was joke. Not a quick slap on the knee joke, but a comic farce that was elaborately staged and set, delivered by unsmiling kitchen staff who had missed their calling as straight men for an army of comedians. “Why?” it was asked by a bevy of puzzled hostellers, “Why is there a menu, when our choice is between sauced apples and apple sauce, sliced baguette or a baguette in slices?" With a choice, it must be added in fairness to the hostel, between minuscule containers of jam or microscopic containers of honey. But we were given a full choice of drinks; water with our orange juice, or orange juice – watered down. The hot chocolate was a hit with the desperately hungry inmates sopping up the dregs with stale bread, desperate to preserve every drop of flavor. The offered cereal and yogurt never materialized and the only toast was dried bread left in the sunlight. To quote Mel Brooks: “What a world.”

The hostel was crowded and some of the youth seemed barely into their teens, how they could afford to travel a mystery. They filled the cafeteria and the front office but seemed strangely absent elsewhere. I got a strange feeling from them, as if they were at the hostel because it was cool and not because of any real travel needs. The same way as adolescents we would tune in to the university radio station and read the Gauntlet, not really understanding the content but sure in our hearts that if university students did it, it must be cool.

We left quickly, leaving almost everything in three stainless steel drawers locked by our feeble locks. We followed the boardwalk back into town, enjoying the sound of calmly lapping water broken by the ringing of bells or the slap of steel cables against metal masts as a breeze swept through. By the maintenance shed of the pleasure port a great orange beast of a machine had lowered its slings into the water and we paused to watch as it hoisted a small dis-masted craft from the water, its owners watching anxiously. The boat broke contact with the water hesitantly and looked forlorn as it rocked in its cradle, dripping water like tears. Behinds us boats of all description lay in hard metal cradles and shed water like artificial rain as proud proprietors cleaned and scrubbed and painted.

There was an air of activity, as if being near their boats made the owners feel more alive and they scrubbed with an enthusiasm that made it seem more pleasure than chore. Something about the sea air perhaps. We passed slowly, reluctantly, as if wanting to partake of their energy and by the time we passed we felt more awake and revived.

The Saint Nicholas tower leaned over us like a drunken soldier of fortified tower of Pisa. A long walk up the stair of the rampart walls brought us to the office, a space filling the second floor and reached by crossing an ancient wooden drawbridge. The center of the room was a stone circle around open air, covered by glass and looking down on the first floor, closed now as it was too dangerous to visit. Above us a similar eye looked down. We were given a badly translated guide in English and left to our own devices. We climbed the stairs and found ourselves in the governor’s chamber, a large circular room occupying the centre of the structure, an ornate carved merchant’s ship of stone hanging over the fireplace.

The governor of the tower swore never to leave the building during his tenure and was paid with a portion of the profits from every ship that entering the port. Around this room was a series of modern collages detailing the first exploration of the Mississippi. As France's largest Atlantic port La Rochelle is, appropriately enough, obsessed with the New World and many of the new world’s explorers have set out from the area.

The displays led us in a ring to the stairs that climbed higher to the roof and we followed the hallways that cut through the walls like mites in worm’s tunnels. Everywhere was ancient graffiti, much of it religious. La Rochelle had seen some of the worst fighting in the Wars of Religion and was once France's strongest Protestant stronghold. The stairway to the Protestant dungeon had long been walled up, to protect the governor and his family, so we took the stairs to the roof instead. The view from the roof was fantastic, looking out over the rooftops of La Rochelle or out to sea. A distant red pillar in the channel to open water marked the spot where Richelieu had built a massive dyke to cut off the Protestant La Rochelle from the rest of the world, especially aid from Great Britain. 20 000 French died of starvation in that siege and only 5 000 remained when the finally surrendered. 10 days later a tidal wave opened a breach large enough for the British ships to enter, too late.

From the main rooftop we climbed even higher to captain’s lookout. Even more impressive and a little nerve wracking. We could look out through the crenellations and see everything on down to the green water far below. Looking down on flying birds is an interesting experience. From here we could also look across and see the chain tower a stones throw away, closed for renovations. We climbed back down and explored a little. Tunnels honeycombed the main level so that the activity of the tower could continue without disturbing the governor’s family. One such tunnel widened unexpectedly into a small chapel, ornate once but now eroded with age. The font drained directly out of the building. From there stairs led down in a spiral so tight that my feet did not fully fit on the stairs, a bit of a dangerous descent. Then we were back in the office, the tour complete.

Just behind the desk was a giant iron rectangle bound in iron strips and studded with enormous bolts that held the thing together. The door was almost invisible so well did it blend in and was only discernible because of the hinges. The locking mechanism made no send sense at all and seemed almost like belt buckles. Not at all how I pictured a medieval safe.

A beautiful painting hung above it, Richelieu on his dyke. “siege de 1628, Richelieu sur la dique” by Henri Motte.

Our tour at an end we returned the guide and walked out into the city. We made out way to the Cathedral of St. Louis. From the outside it was ugly, a low bunkerlike building looking more like a train station than cathedral. Inside it was ugly too, except for the fantastic decoration that transformed ugly stone into mere frames for beauty. The church had been built over the ruins of a destroyed Protestant one in the 17th century. Richelieu’s final nail in the Protestant coffin. While it was being built they excavated the nave of a Templar church and displayed the vault covers and gravestone in a niche near the front. Eleanor of Aquitaine had granted the templar’s two tidal mills in La Rochelle.

From the church we wandered the streets aimlessly and found city hall, an old fortified building with an elaborate clock tower and a memorial from the second world war.

La Rochelle had been the centre of a massive Nazi submarine base and so had been the last place in France liberated. From city hall we walked into the gardens by the remains of the templar mills.

We are still undecided about our future. Do we continue on our journey or head home? Heather is feeling very homesick, but beyond family it doesn’t feel like I have much to return to.

Next Entry: Day 82. Rochefort
Previous Entry: Day 80. La Rochelle

Day 77. Talmont St. Hilaire. Oct 22 2001

Last night was a nightmare collage of wracking coughs, fevered dreams and aching muscles. Every time I surrendered to exhaustion and slumped down to the beaten and broken mattress my lungs protested and sent me upright in a volley of coughs that sounded terribly like the vicious barking of a dog. So violently did I cough that my head began to explode with pain with every movement. Even as my body shook I castigated myself for imagining that I could bike across France, let alone a significant portion of Europe. Only as daylight touched the casements of our window and cast first hesitant rays of light across the mossy kitchen roof was I able to find the solace of sleep.

I woke to an incessantly pounding head and church bells that no longer sounded sweet, merely loud. Heather dressed then disappeared out the door to find food to sustain us. I crawled feebly into the booth that served as our shower and curled up on the floor, allowing the scalding water to cascade over me as if in a metal and plastic womb. By the time Heather returned the room had filled with a choking steam.

Heather hadn’t merely purchased groceries but had braved an unfamiliar tongue and a slightly deaf pharmacist to bring me soothing drugs and cough syrup. She was flustered and embarrassed, trying to convey her exact needs in a foreign language had been hard for her and she kept apologizing, as if I cared that she had mispronounced the word for “husband” or “heaving cough.”

After being drugged and having a rest I began to feel human once more. Unable to merely do nothing we set out, if not energetically, then at least with a little enthusiasm, to see Talmont Castle. The castle rose from a series of decaying fortifications on a rocky outcrop near the centre of town, its crenelated and corroded peak almost lost behind a swirling murder of crows that made the place seem sinister even in daylight. We climbed the steep path that led to the wooden shack that served as the twentieth century gatehouse. The castle seemed wilted, in a way that only a tourist attraction in the final days before closing can be. They had lost their credit card machine so we were forced to dig into our dwindling supply of coins.

Built by William the Bold in 1025 and modernized by Richard the Lionheart with ideas brought back from Syria, the castle sprawled out, a conglomerate of accreted pieces. The wall that separated the lower courtyard form the upper had disappeared with age, the majesty that once must have been the lord’s manor had crumbled to dust and the castles defensive face had fallen to reveal the bones building beneath. William the Bold had built his castle over the church of Saint Peter and the beautiful arches and vaults of the bell tower peered out from surprising corners.

We climbed the staircase of the western tower and stopped at its first branching. Here was the base of the ancient bell tower, a niche almost walled over during the hurried building of outer walls. A silent room with a single entrance and windows so high and narrow they could scarcely be seen. Here William, and Richard after him, had stored their money, their jewels, and their suits of ceremonial amour. Here was a treasure chamber any thief might have given his arm to find and we stalked its floors and casually appraised its vaulted ceiling.

Then we climbed again and climbed, to the second floor that opened to the wall walks and higher still to the command room that had opened to the sky as the ceiling collapsed and higher still to a terrace beneath the flapping flags of Richard and a view from here to the sea. Below us the clustered red roofs of town bunched together in silent huddles, their red paved surfaces a highway about the streets.

We followed the passages to the latrines, to the murder hole above the gatehouse and through a maze of stones and dim light that almost left us lost. The castle seemed a mountain, stones that had been heaped one atop another in careless disregard, and then hollowed to make space for those who inhabited it. Artificial caves in an artificial hill a hundred feet above the town.

We descended an endless stair on the castles far side, sure that we must be descending far beneath the ground, only to emerge on green grass. Outside an ancient defensive tunnel disappeared deep into the earth, its hidden recesses gated off from prying eyes.

We left the site and wandered outside and only then did we realize that even the hill on which the castle stood had been fortified, the walls serving now as the rear walls of sheds and houses. The castle had been shattered by Louis XIII and the famed Richelieu so that the region's Protestants would have no place to hide.

We returned to our hotel room, how strange to write that, my pen almost automatically wrote "campsite", our hotel room and we began to pack. There is a lively debate in my mind tonight about whether we will leave at the first sign of light tomorrow or rest another day with a solid roof and bed beneath us. We cannot really afford to stay. We will pack tonight and see how things are in the morning.

As we pack we are desperately trying to lighten our loads. There is so much that we carry that we do not use but we cannot easily bring ourselves to part with. Things of sentimental value or things those we “might use if…” I am trying to learn the mystical art of packing. How do you arrange things so that you can get at what you need without flinging everything else across whatever space you have? There is the story of the Greek man, I forget his name now, who wanted simplicity and so owned only his robe and a drinking cup, until one day he saw a beggar using his hands to drink from a fountain. With a cry of joy he threw away his drinking cup. We need resolve like that.

Next Entry: Day 78. Talmont St. Hilaire
Previous Entry: Day 76. Talmont St. Hilaire.

Day 70. Nantes. Oct 15 2001.

We woke up today to a beautiful blue sky, no rain clouds in sight. I turned to Heather and said “look, blue sky” and rain clouds rolled in and opened up. Never, ever, ever, comment favorably about the weather!

But after a day inside yesterday we were definitely going to explore Nantes. First on our list: La Musee des Beaux Arts and the Picasso Exhibition. We had not expected the school children! We walked the distance to the museum and even followed one of the classes as they marched resolutely to the entrance. But the museum was still closed when we got there and stairs were crowded with youngsters so we decided to walk around the building first.

To the side we found broken stone sculptures, as if they had been cast out the back door to crumble and rot as mold and greenery ate them away. One was a mother and child, her arms shattered by an ancient calamity, so her babe hung precariously on her knee. The other was an angel, buffeted in the wind, his arm severed at the shoulder in a ragged stump. We returned to the front to find that the children had not dispersed but that the doors were open. We waded through a sea of young faces to buy our tickets.

Our first stop was the main display, Picasso La Peinture Seule, a series of works that had not been displayed since just after his death, the works from the final decade of his life. Picassos’ work, for me at least, is a strange mixture of perfection and grabage. His was a lifelong struggle to find beauty without form, an ideal that he reaches only rarely, one painting out of every hundred. To convey the feeling of a thing, a place, a person, without recourse to the fragile shell that makes its form, is to understand it as well as its creator, and that is a gift handed out parsimoniously.

It seems like Picasso found that ideal once, in a painting from his youth, and spent the rest of his life trying to find it again, his few successes only spurring him to try all the more desperately. Perhaps that accounts for his prolific collection. So many works, so few successes, but those spectacular.

Even more interesting than the works of Picasso was watching the desperation of the teachers as they tried to explain to their classes of eight year olds what his work meant, why he was such a force in the art world and what, exactly, that man in that painting was doing to those women. To their credit the teachers were a lot less flustered than any adult in North America would be in such a situation. They told the children that the couples were making love and left it at that. Our museums would, I think, just ban those paintings.

We left the main floor and climbed to the displays above, surrounding the museums central court. Here we found classics paintings mixed with an exhibit called The Uninterrupted Dialogue. The classics paintings were good. I enjoyed a scene of the eruption of Vesuvius; in fact I enjoyed all the ones that referred to classical myth or history. There was a piece called “The Aftermath of Lucretia’s Rape” where Rome was about to become a Republic that I enjoyed. Also memorable was a composition that was an allegory for the Parisian school of fine arts.

The detail in the women representing Gothic Art and the Art of the Renaissance, respectively, was magnificent and they seemed to shimmer with an internal light. The artist had done a smaller study of them, along with some priests from the main image, and they seemed almost alive.



Paul Delaroche was the artist.
But by far my favorite, and I think Heather’s as well, was “Jeune Fille” by Hippolyte Flandrin. It was a painting of a young woman with downcast eyes, coy and seductive. It was enthralling.
One other painting in the museum really stood out for me, in both a positive and negative fashion. “The Deluge” was an amazing painting, capturing the desperation of those last left alive during the biblical flood. An amazing painting that captured the suffering and the anguish. It also raised the question “How can God claim to be compassionate and yet do this?” A truly awe inspiring piece.

But it was also part of the Museums “Uninterrupted Dialogue” show. The show was meant to show older works reinterpreted through modern eyes and was quite successful. The old must constantly be re-evaluated in the context of the new or it becomes irrelevant. But the “artist” who reinterpreted "The Deluge" had draped the painting with netting filled with stuffed animals, almost totally obscuring the original painting. We only saw the original in a photograph hung next to the work.

Covering and obscuring the work of another artist, in the interests of promoting your own work, seems like one of the most obscene acts an artist can commit. The modern "artist" had a screed posted with the works denouncing the use of nude women in the painting, ignoring the naked men alongside them I suppose. She claimed to be obscuring the original in the name of feminists everywhere, doing more damage than good from my perspective.

We left the musem and went to the nearby Jardin Des Plants, a beautifully manicured garden, to discuss art and feminist theory and feelings without form. We meandered through patterned lawns, past trees and monuments to Jules Verne, and left finding our thoughts in close accord.


We went through the St. Peter gate and entered the St. Peter and St. Paul Cathedral I had seen the other day.
The inside of the cathedral soared above us, great gothic columns supporting a high ceiling. It was most impressive but cold and empty. The only art was on two tombs, those of the financial supporters of the cathedral. One was surrounded by beauty, justice, virtue and temperance in the shapes of women. But one of the sculptures, we could not figure out which, had a man's face carved in the back of her head. His beard flowing where her hair should be.


Interesting.
Overall the Cathedral and, to a lesser extent, the museum, had left us both feeling a little cold and unsatisfied, as if we had seen a beautiful body with the soul departed. The heart of Nantes seemed to have little heart.
Perhaps there are unforeseen consequences when you cover a river. The River Edre had once cut through the part of Nantes that we visited today, until in had been encased in an underground canal. A river can give a city energy and vitality might encase that power so that it can never be used.
We wandered the streets of downtown, looking for a bookstore. We went into the church of Ste. Croix and found it filled with the homeless and destitute drinking in the pews.


We went into the Palace of the Dukes and found its inside beautiful and closed to the public. It’s history inaccessible.
We walked the forever back to our campsite and found the insides of a tent small consolation after the bleakness of the gloomy day.

Next Entry: Heather's Picasso
Previous Entry: Day 69. Nantes

Day 40. Hurst Castle. Sept 15 2001

We decided to visit Hurst Castle today. Hurst is a coastal castle built as part of Henry VII’s shore defenses and I had seen it many times from the Isle of Wight ferry. Heather and I had intended to bike there alone, but the Topps eventually joined us and made the whole day into a family holiday. I was a little worried because the only way to the castle was a two mile walk or a couple of pounds each on a ferry. Accompanying us on our trip were two children, the cousins of the child who was run over the other day. They were very sweet and, I think, somewhat apprehensive.

We ate a picnic lunch at the ferry launch, and realized that is was very far for the children to walk and, for such a large group, the ferry was too expensive. Finally we all walked to the base of the spit where Heather and I took our leave and began walking to Hurst, leaving everyone else behind to play in the rocks.

Hurst was a gray castle that I’m sure inspired many prisons. The original keep was a small rounded tower similar to Calshot, which had been gradually built upon. Calshot castle is a perfect donut of stone, sloping walls protecting a moat with a single tower in the center. Because of Hurst’s late additions it looked to us as though someone had entrapped Calshot Castle in a wall of brick or mortar. Hurst seemed almost industrial in its scale and had little domestic appeal. Only soldiers would have occupied this place, no lords or ladies here.



It was almost a history of cannonry in its emplacements from 10 pound balls to 10 180 pound cannons.

 

Such a heavily armed fortress, protecting the Solent from Henry VII to WWII and it is completely obsolete.

There was also an exhibit of the Solent fortresses, heavily armed and armored circles of cannonry that have been erected in the depths of the Solent, accessible only by boat. Rumour has it that they have been purchased as heavily isolated and easily protected homes for the super rich.

Returning along the spit we walked at the waters edge. The waves were running high in the wind and it was exhilarating to walk beside it, feeling water and salt spray over us.



We ran into Simon and Cameron coming to find us. Cameron was not enjoying the walk and having temper tantrums every five feet.

Despite the brevity of the day we returned home absolutely exhausted. Kids and fresh sea air will do that I suppose.



Next Entry: Day 41. Marchwood
Previous Entry: Day 39. Rockbourne

Day 38. Old Sarum. Sept 13 2001.

Kerry came early this morning and we climbed into the car for a day trip out to the ancient town of old Sarum. It was a nice, relatively tranquil, drive up through the gray mists of a south England day and it was nice to be able to talk to Kerry.

The day dawned bleak and gray and it remained that way throughout. At times the wind and rain was so powerful it seemed to push us along the drenched grass.

 

Old Sarum rose like a great grassy donut out of the northern side of Salisbury. A steep hill rising in a circle to a great flat plateau that had once housed the entire town and now had only a lawn in the center.

  Rising from an excavated moat was a great grassy wall that protected the ancient seat of royal power for Britain.
Inside, the ruin had been so long abandoned and quarried for the nearby city that the walls of the ancient building seemed to have melted under the weight of ages. The shape and power of what must have been an amazingly powerful place was almost impossible to see from the remains.

 
From the walls we could see a panoramic view of the entire Salisbury area. The cathedral rose like a threatening needle that captured the grey clouds as they went racing by.


We both felt nostalgic looking at it, remembering our last trip and our climb inside the tower. The cathedral at old Sarum was little more than rocky paths in the outline of the ancient walls. It was hard to believe that something so large, so grand, had stood for only a few years before being demolished and then rebuilt and then completely moved.


As we walked around Sarum’s walls we wondered if we could see Stonehenge in the distance. We could not, but it graphically illustrates the tourist dilemma. We wouldn’t mind going to the monument but neither of us really wants to fight the crowds of other tourists.

After touring Old Sarum we were picked up by Kerry and returned home.
The return trip was less tranquil than the one going out. Imogene was rather bored with the car and determined to stand up and walk around with Heather frantically trying to convince her to sit down.

Our day ended, I’m afraid, on a very sad note. After eating dinner with Kerry and Simon we walked home only to find our way blocked by police tape. A local man had backed out of his driveway without realize that his daughter was behind him. She did not survive.

Next Entry: Day 39. Rockbourne
Previous Entry: Day 37. Southampton