Day 101. Arles. Nov 15. 2001

For a day in which we woke, still tired, for a day in we passed by the Roman amphitheater with a dismissive wave because our minds were too numb to care, we have seen more than I ever thought possible.

Arles woke us with a grey coldness and the typical hostel breakfast. After days of inadequate sleep we were eager to return to beds. But despite purchasing another nights rest we were evicted during the 10-5 closing period. We set out to explore Arles, the Roman city of Arelate, with drooping eyelids.

We climbed the main streets back to the centre of town, to the town hall and the church of La Cathedrale Saint Trophime with its adjoining cloister. The cathedral's great gates are an ornate masterwork, smooth stone statues in a gentle curvature, with mythical beasts over the lintels. the inside of the church does not equal the exterior but it is a nice place to sit and rest. There is a large collection of relics, a grisly display of spiritual wealth. The bones of St. Roch, St. Etienne and many others all in gilded casks. Many have small holes in which the faithful can insert a finger and touch a bit of holiness.

The cloister next door looked intriguing, but we weren’t really interested in paying. We climbed the streets towards the arena, past the amphitheater where again we are not too interested in paying. Our minds are too numb to appreciate beauty or history. We circled the arena but did not go in. We wander aimlessly and wait for the hostel to open again so that we can go back to our beds. And then we stumble on the Cryptoportiques.

Unsure of what they are we enter the building with the sign, an ancient abandoned church with only the altar remaining. The sanctuary is deserted, only a staircase leading down and a small booth to pay. We buy the pass to the city and embark on an adventure. We descend the staircase, down, down below the level of the streets, beneath homes and sewers and layers of rock. We emerge from the staircase in a dark, damp and musty tunnel, twenty feet below ground. Rows of arches split the tunnel in two and at the junction of the stairs it turns a sharp right angle to disappear into the darkness.

Arles is on a hill. When the Romans made it a colony after it aided Julius Caesar against Pompey, it required a forum. The Romans leveled out the land around the hill by building a massive basement, where we now stood. The cave was eerily silent and the light, only provided by slits to the forum above, was a pale yellow light that illuminated nothing. We followed the tunnels beneath houses and hotels, an enormous artificial cavern of darkness.

The far side had once opened on to the side of the hill, to the backs of roman shops that catered to Roman material needs and the great basement had served as a subterranean highway for goods and horses that weren’t wanted in the city streets. The caverns were bare and damp smelled of age. They spoke of ancient confidence and ability to build whatever was required. The Romans never fail to impress.

But beneath the deepest basement of the Hotel De Ville our imaginations began to run away with our minds. Heather remembered the Balrog the Dwarves unearthed when they delved too deep beneath the earth, while lovecraftian horrors from the Mountains of Madness nagged at the back of my mind. We left quickly.

But, whether by the excitement of exploring or the desire to get our money’s worth from our tickets, we had a renewed vigor. We returned to the cloister of St. Trophime. From deep beneath Arles we climbed to a garden secluded above the city. The cloister was beautiful, and secreted away from the wind, very warm. The carvings were smooth and full of energy and the stone seats were inviting but if we had not bought the tick for the whole package it would have been an entrance we regretted.

From the cloister we returned to the arena. The arena belonged to the cats of Arles and they basked against ancient stone seats as the wind raged outside of the ancient arched walls. Gently curving corridors circled the building and we followed them around in wide circles. Two dogs roamed the upper stories and we passed them many times in our rounds. They seemed lost and unable to find their way back to the ground but they seemed to enjoy their explorations even as they lost themselves deeper into the arena.

We climbed to the rooftops where three strange, very non-roman towers loomed. The exposed tops of the Roman arches rolled away from us in an endless series of stone waves. We entered the towers and looked down on the city below us. Hotels and apartments, crammed together, made red islands of roof tiles beneath us.

When the Empire collapsed those living in the ruins were faced by with the loss of technologies and the waves of invasions. They had a unique solution. Not trusting their ability to fortifications and not having enough money or manpower to build them anyway. They retreated to the structures the Romans left behind. The arena became the new city. Protective towers were erected. The arches were divided into apartments and a city was erected on the arena floor. Even now the windows and the doors of the middle ages could still be seen. How far the world fell. The arena city speaks of a terror and a loss so complete it is hard to imagine.

We left the arena and followed the streets back to the medieval gate at the entrance to the city. We passed the intersection where Vincent Van GoghMaison Jaune.” Paved over now by a new roundabout.

The quay over the Rhones edge, where the Romans has once raised a bridge of boats and Van Gogh’s fevered vision has wandered, was a filthy mess with bricks crumbling and moss covering all. The baths of Constantine were not much better, obviously not a priority for the town. We picked our way among the rubble with hesitant footsteps. The walls seemed to decay around us.

From the baths we returned to the Amphitheater in the shadow of the arena. Little was left of an amphitheater that could at one time hold 10 000. The walls were gone, the upper levels, the stages settings that had risen 3 stores above the town in a series of columns and statutes that must have been amazing. All that was left were two pillars and a piles of intricately carved and absolutely beautiful rubble. Here school children scrambled over the ruins and hid in secret niches for a forbidden cigarette far from the prying eyes of the teachers.

I wondered what plays had unfolded on the long vanished stage. Oedipus? Antigone? The Medea? Amateur performances of poetry and local auteurs that had failed and were lost to history? Flocks of pigeons blocked the sun and wind howled where once a chorus had sung. No deus ex machine had saved this theater from the ravages of time. We left feeling the weight of years.

We walked out of the city in a long walk to the ugly buildings of the Museum of Antiquity. Blue panels on a concrete triangle that seemed the epitome of bad architecture. Falling away in the gray starkness of a concrete pit were the remains of the Roman circus, the curving apex of the racetrack. The rest disappeared beneath roads and marshland.




The inside of the museum was a completely different story than the outside. Here we found one of the richest and most complete museums of antiquity we had yet seen. The towering, heavily muscled statue of Augustus from the the destroyed amphitheater at the apex, the museum fell away in the smooth geometric lines of a triangle. You begin in the prehistoric period but rapidly move into Arelate, Roman Arles. There are beautiful carven marble heads, Augustus, Tiberius, Hadrian, Caius and Lucius Caesar. There is a great augustan shield of marble and the intricate relief carvings of sarcophagi.


But it is the stories of everyday life that most fascinate. Lead pipes by the dozen, keys to locks crumbled to rust, most fairly conventional but many on rings in a style I have begun to associate with the grandeur of Rome. Objects for primping and preening that have not changed in 2000 years of history, especially tweezers. There are mock ups of the major areas of town, forum, circus, arena, which help visualize the scale of the structures on which we stood. And there was the most impressive collection of mosaics yet. Europa abducted by Zeus, an homage to Triton, the allegory of the seasons in small bits of colored tile. Most are damaged but some are impressively intact. Telling stories to the descendants of the descendants of those who sacked Rome. There is so much to see. The few preserved remains of the 28 000 wooden pilings that form the base of the circus, the shattered head of a marble child.

One exhibit that caught my eye is the remains from the hydraulic mill of Barbegal, a flour mill that ran down a hillside and was powered by twenty waterwheels. With one structure enough grinding was done in one mill to feed the entire population of Arles.

Arles sat on a crossroads of trade, the Via Domitia, the Via Agrippa and Aurelian Way all pass through the city. The Rhone with it’s cargoes of rich wines bathes the banks, the camargue plains region teems with sheep and bulls. The legacy of ruins and structures and a pervading sense of history that Romans left Arles is a powerful one indeed.

When we finally left the museum and headed back towards our humble lodgings for the night we were more tired than I thought possible. But still we have found time to follow the small yellow tiles inset in the concrete to the sanitarium of Arles where Van Gogh spent some of his time. The Garden, sheltered from the wind and rain in the courtyard of the hospital, was untouched by the ravages of weather and was beautiful in the depths of November. The hospital was clean and crisp and exuded a sense of health. But whet, I wonder would Van Gogh make of the shops that had replaced the wards, ship-owners the doctors and tourists the sick? 

Previous Entry: Day 100. Arles

Day 98. Avignon. Nov 12 2001.

The Day of Bridges.

The morning dawned blue and still, the rain clouds drained, the Mistral exhausted. We woke reluctantly and dressed even more so. We rescued our bikes from the dank garage in which they had rested from the past few days and loaded up.

The ride down the hill from the Auberge was a slick glide of effortless descent that saw us to the door of the nearest market, the last effortless moment of the day. We gathered our food and ate breakfast in the Jardin De La Fountain. Children on a field day crowded the beautiful lanes of plants and groaned as they were made to run laps around the 18th century fountain. If there is a better way to make children hate history I can't imagine it.

We left Nimes down a long broad avenue, the sides lined with trees, the centre occupied by a lively market selling everything from used clothing to amusement park rides. There was an elegant pyramid erected in the central park, flanked by two stone men holding stone rifles eroded with age, a monument to the martyrs of the French resistance, gleaming bright and cold in the November morning. Behind it, rising high on a pedestal of glory that threatened to reignite old diatribes was “La Taureau,” a proud statue of a defiant bull raising his head and horns to the sky. The pamphlet for the town of Nimes regally declared the Bull to be the true king of France. Based on the way the French treat their kings…

But no, I expressed myself on this subject yesterday and the day before.

We cycled out of Nimes and into a blasted hell of jagged rocks, rising hills and wind. A hurricane of air swept over us, around us, through us, making every inch of land a twisted epic of battling muscles and raging elements. The rocks here were pure white that leered skeletally from open cliff faces and roadside verges. A bare and stark castle rises to our left, an extension of the pale earth. We slowly inch up the curving roadside and somehow, impossibly, find ourselves looking down a long hill into a deep valley. Surely we cannot have climbed so high? But we look forward to the joy of descent, the unfettered rolling of wheels down a long gentle slope. We are disappointed. The wind has become so strong that we have to fight our way downhill, peddling like mad to gain even a modicum of momentum, which is stolen away by gusts of wind even as we struggle.

I begin to get angry; our one method of relaxing while biking has been stolen from us. But then the valley closes in around us, the trees shelter us from the worst of the wind and a cathedral silence begins to descend. Something awesome approaches. The bridge is visible only as arches through the trees at first, a span here, cut off by an overhanging branch and a cluster of leaves. Another span over there, impossibly distant, too far for them to belong to the same structure. The leaves and trees thin slowly, revealing span after span, arch after arch until with a sudden shock of exposure it appears in its entirety.

The Pont Du Gard.

52 arches of delicate filigree spanning the Gardon Valley. 50 400 tons of rock. A monumental construction of astonishing beauty. Built around 50AD during the reign of the emperor Claudius, the Pont du Gard aqueduct was built to supplement the flow of Nimes' holy spring with 400 liters of water a second. It was never meant to be beautiful, but it is.

Each span is impossibly wide. The whole structure unbelievably high. You cannot believe that it is older than the oldest government still in existence, older than almost any building you can find. It seems so delicate that the slightest push will send it tumbling into the valley below. We climb the steps that lead under the first set of aches. There is a solemnity standing beneath the bridge, as though you stand under a grand religious edifice. We climb to the second span and follow the footbridge across.

We follow the rocky hillside upwards to the arches that led to the water regulators. All are gone now, evidenced only by deep cavities in the dirt. We descend and cross back after exploring the far bank for awhile. There is an olive tree planted near the aqueduct that began life in 908 and was brought from Spain. It seems impossibly ancient and yet it is 850 years younger than the bridge.

We climb the other side of the bridge to the topmost arcade, high above the valley floor.

The aqueduct is locked off, fear of tourists preventing easy access but you can stand in the depths through which the water coursed and you can see the stone lids that prevented evaporation.

Behind us is a tunnel through the mountainside, dug in 1863 as the beginning of an attempt to return the aqueduct to working order. The Roman aqueduct curves around the mountain to the left. We cut through the tunnel and rejoined the watercourse on the other side, its passages filled with dirt now. We come unexpectedly upon the Pont de Valmala. One of the Pont Du Garde’s forgotten lesser brothers.

The aqueduct continues on, lost now beneath dirt and the roots of trees young by its standards, all the way to Nimes.

There is something about the faint ruins peering through the dirt that seems to lure you on, some ghostly liquid quality of water long vanished that entreats you to follow the course. With difficulty we resist and return to the valley of Gardon river. The aqueduct is difficult to leave. It is amazing in its scale, in its age, everything about it. We lunch in its shadow, hardly able to pull our eyes from it.

We must go and we tear ourselves away with effort. The Pont Du Gard recedes into the foliage once more, to rest majestically long after I, and this journal, fall into the unremembered dust of history.

The going is harder now, as if the bridge is drawing us back. We fight our way into the Mistral and up the hills that have become our burden. We are forced to climb, a long steep slope filled with angry drivers who were less than pleased to share the road. The climb went on forever, the mistral wind pushing us back with every advance and it does not relent even after we pass the hills crest and begin to descend. A long descent into Avignon cutting through cliffs and racing down a long bridge with a speed that makes our knuckles clench white.

We cross the Rhone into the city. One bridge of Avignon.

The Palace of the Popes becomes visible as a misshapen grey lump against the horizon, a glittering Mary looking down in gentle benediction. Then we are forced across the Rhone again to the flat shifting soil of the Isle de la Barthelasse. 2 bridges of Avignon.

Our campground is large, almost entirely abandoned. Moss grows in place of grass. The trees bend and dance beneath a wind that we hardly feel. The Pont De St. Benezet shattered by times and tides is clearly visible from the entrance. 3 bridges of Avignon. The bridge of Avignon.

We are too tired and too cold to dance. Instead we hurl ourselves into the tent sleep.

Next Entry: Day 99. Avignon
Previous Entry: Day 97. Nimes

Day 97. Nimes. Nov 11 2001

A day of rest.

Our disgust at the horrific carnage of the night before cast a pall over us for the rest of yesterday evening and it seemed to take so much of the beauty out of everything we had seen in Nimes. It was hard to reconcile such a beautiful city with such ugliness.

But it unfair to tar the whole city with the same brush. Nimes is a very beautiful place, a glistening city of marble and stairs. Oh the stairs. They have left a lasting impression on us, most especially in our calves.

The long sinuous curving stairs that cling to hills in the Jardin de La fountain, winding their way through vertical avenues lined with plane trees, impossibly green in the depths of November. Stairs that climbed over a waterfall that spiked into a small pond far below. When the stairs finally burst from under the trees to the base of the Tour Magna it was with a shock. The air had grown warm beneath the sheltering trees and now the cold assaulted us once more.

The great tower rose up like a monolith, impossibly white. The inside was alarmingly hallow, like a jar flipped upside down and scrapped clean by a child desperate to have every last taste of flavor. All that rose in the centre was a modern staircase of concrete, looking alien with it’s smooth spiraling contours in the rough brick of the tower. Climbing stairs became painful now, a strain on our legs and feet. The top, when it came, was a burst from the darkness to brilliant light and blowing air. The view, or the wind, was breathtaking.

Knowing the emptiness that was in the tower beneath us I was overcome by waves of vertigo even as I took in the landscape. I tumbled back against the wall and held the cables to the lightning rod that rose next to me and reflected on the irony of being electrocuted while worrying about the dangers of height. All that separated us from the gardens below was a thin lip of stone and a fatal drop. I cannot say now that I was sad to climb more stairs, this time down.

Next were the stairs of the Maison Carre, the building a testament in stone to so many of the reasons we came on this trip. Flawless white marble, chipped and stained by the passing eons, in a design so ancient and familiar that we almost felt compelled to drop to our knees and genuflect to gods long dead.

Then there were the stairs in the parks. The long singular staircase of Imperial faith leading to the sheltered sanctuary of the ancient temple, dedicated to Diana I have since discovered.

Then the short stairs that descended to spring of Nemausus itself, and exposed us to the source of all Nimes fountains.

Fountains abound, almost as much as stairs. The Jardin De La Fountain of course, but the Place D’Assas as well with it’s illusion of waters flowing uphill to fall in a cascade on a startled man while nearby a monolithic face spews water.

Or the Fountain Pradier with its cryptic name and nameless heads spewing forth a torrent of icy water that chilled to the bone.

Finally there are rough hewn wooden steps of the arena as well. Always today my mind is drawn back there. The pain and the suffering we saw has left me filled with words and yet speechless, filled with poetic rage and yet reduced to incoherent ranting. I write rants against the human race, filled with shame and despair for the future of our species. I am surprised by the depth and virulence of my own reaction.

But enough. Nimes has been a place of outstanding beauty and horror for us and I do not have the right words to describe the experience.

It has become cold and and the Mistral wind has picked up clouds of rain that turn the sky a sickly yellow. The small courtyard of the hostel is soaked and even racing to our evening meal has become a challenge. We will roll ourselves tight in our bunks and try to save as much of the radiators warmth as we can for the rest of the trip.

We have the room to ourselves tonight and it will be nice to be able to roll over without worrying that the creaks and groans of our bed will not awaken the room. Tonight I hope to sleep without dreams.

Next Entry: Day 98. Avignon
Previous Entry: Day 96. Nimes

Day 96. Nimes. Nov 10 2001.

The Day Of Bitter Winds.

A day of excitement, beauty and brutality so great it has shaken our faith in humanity.

The deathly winds of the Mistral clutched Nimes in icy talons, tearing at branches and shutters until the whole hillside howled in protest. We retraced our journey into the city slowly and explored the Jardin De La Fountaine with excited awe. The god Nemausus had raised a bubbling spring here and the Egyptian veterans of the Battle of Actium found welcome refuge beside his cool waters. The gardens were built over a series of canals that channeled water to the city, deep watery grooves in the earth.

Behind rose a veritable mountain of stairs topped by infinite greenery that hid the sloping hill from sight.

 
An ancient temple's ruins rose in a shadowed niche, crumbling ruins to an unknown god trapping the crescent moon of the morning between decaying stones.

We climbed the stairs to the shelter of trees and the howling of wind dropped to a quiet susurration of leaves, the sun beat down with no wind to cool it. We climbed crumbled stones paths until we slipped from the shadow of trees to the shadow of Nimes Great Tower. The tower of Roman Nimes rose from the highest of seven hills, a warning to would be conquerors and a beacon marking the gushing waters below. The tower rose 30 meters above us on the top of the hill, a white shard of antiquity gleaming almost painfully in the sun.

We climbed it’s two thousand and sixteen year old interior and looked out on a view that spanned all of Nimes and the country around it, gasping for breath in the heights. The towers innards were gone and our rarefied perch rested on a stairway built after an obscure Frenchman gutted the interior searching for a treasure prophesied by Nostradamus.

We returned to earth and the pleasure of the garden, walking a double spiral of labyrinthine hedges in delight. We hurried to the coliseum that we had seen the night before and we admired its grandiose arches the bespoke ancient power. But it was closed today for the Corrida and we bought tickets, excitedly eager to see a cultural event renown for its beauty. Then we retraced our steps through the town, back into the mazelike streets of the city’s market district, everything stamped with the city emblem of crocodile and palm tree.

Then we found the temple. The Square House of Nimes, One thousand nine hundred and ninety eight years old. Perfect Corinthian columns supporting ancient roofing tiles raised to cover a sanctuary of the Imperial Cult. The temple was magnificent. The wind whistled between the fluted columns and bit deep beneath our layers of clothes.

Our final sightseeing stop was the Castellum, the distribution tank of the in rushing water from the ancient aqueduct which ran over the Pont Du Gard. The pipes sending water throughout the ancient Roman city were still visible and although it was mostly a pit in the ground it was still a practical working part of Roman life. That more than temple or coliseum or ancient towers brought the dead to life for me.

We returned through the tiny medieval streets, a thousand colorful storefronts opening their doors and spilling their wares out into the cobblestone paths invitingly. The wind howled overhead, angry at the protection afforded mortals by the canyons of stone. We gave in to the cold and the invitations of the street merchants and bought gloves for our frozen hands. Then to the Arena for the Corrida.

It was exciting to line up with the rest and know that the arena was being used for something approaching it’s original purpose. Our hearts raced as the adrenaline surge of the crowd rushed over us. People waved happily to one another while the band played and vendors danced along the ancient roman railings, tossing peanuts and chips to the crowd and deftly catching coins tossed their way. The intensity built as we waited until the stones seemed to throb with impatience. The doors opened and the players walked to the sands. There were the matadors, their assistants, men in armor on armored and blindfolded horses and wagoneers with heavy horses and chains. They filed off the sand and took refuge in the wings and waited for the bullfight to begin. The music blared and it started.

The spectacle began in beauty. The expanse of sands, a long blast of familiar music and the powerful fury of the charging bull taking to the arena. The swirling flowers of color made as the man danced around the deadly thrust of horn or the heavily muscled bulk of head and neck. The soft, indrawn whisper of Ole as the beast surged majestically around the man.

Then the slaughter began.

The poetry of the corrida tells of the meeting between man and beast. It tells of the struggle between mind and muscle and the beauty of the dance of death.

The poetry of the corrida is a diseased lie told by those who gorge themselves on feasts of blood and agony. The songs that are sung say nothing of torture and torment, of enraging an innocent beast over and over again, so he is driven to a froth of exhaustion, nothing of spears thrust into writhing muscles and tender flesh to destroy the strength of a bewildered animal. Those who praise the arena and the masculine strength of the matador speak only softly of the darts flung into the back of a beast who cannot understand what is happening. Barbs of pain to snap a mind already at its bestial limits with terror, barbs that drain strength in spasms of frantic energy as the beast tries to free itself from agony. And nothing is ever said of a beast too exhausted to move, to stand, collapsing in a pathetic mewling heap on sand stained with its own blood, while the savage crowd boos the poor sport. Not even in whispers is it told of the shame of desperate matadors, trying to drag their ravaged prey to its feet with angry tugs on it’s tail, until they are almost dragging the beast around the sands by its ass. Advocates of blood sport don’t discuss the confusion and terror on the face of a dying bull, understandable even across the gap of species that separates us. They speak not of torment and torture. They say the matador faces a dying bull alone, ignoring the men who distract it with fluttering capes because the matador is too frightened of the savage mess of blood and agony he has created. They don't speak of a beast so wounded that it is vomiting, pissing and shitting blood across the sand. And no one ever, ever, talks about the bull falling to its side and a terrified little man thrusting a dagger deep into its skull and pureeing its brains while it spasms across the sand in it’s death throes.

We rose and left after the second bull, unable to bear the shame of being human any longer. My awe for the beauty of the stadium dissolving in a rush of disgust and humiliation that my species should be the perpetrators of such sadistic crimes. That crowds should cheer it!

A guard sneered as we left and proclaimed that “There is always one that can’t take it.” He cannot know that my heart pleads that such should be the case, that somewhere people know shame.

Next Entry: Day 97. Nimes
Previous Entry: Day 95. Nimes

Day 94. Gradignon. Nov 8 2001.

A rainy day at home, doing preparations of our train trip to Avignon. A respite from racing around the narrow streets of Bordeaux and a chance to catch up on writing.

There was such a flurry of things that passed us by in the last few days that I was bound the miss a few. Most glaring among the omissions were the plethora of names left from my list of famous painters who failed to make much of an impression on me.

There was a painting by Van Dyck, one by Rubens, Chardin, Van Gogh, so many that they were beginning to flow like water.

Delacroix’s “La Grece Sur Les Ruins De Missolonghi" was stunning and powerful and if it had been in a room alone or with two or three other paintings, each chosen specifically to highlight one another it would stop you in your tracks and force you to explore the visual details for hours. But here, mounted with a hundred other paintings it became nothing more than wallpaper. Nice wallpaper, but but wallpaper nonetheless.

I can't remember if I wrote about the statues lining the entire second wing and I am too lazy to check so I will, perhaps, repeat myself. Only three in particular caught my attention of which I know the title of one and none of the artists. The one whose title I remember was “La Garonne” an allegorical representation of the river Bordeaux faces. It was a bronze of a woman reclining in a flow of water, leaning so far back she is almost lost in the waters. On either side of the flowing water is shore composed entirely of grapes.

It was beautiful but that was not what caught my attention. The piece seemed composed entirely, I’m sure not by the artist's original intention, of irony. Nowhere along the Garonne had we seen anything to evoke beauty or tranquility. Instead the river was a churning mud mess with the detritus of a thousand kilometers choking the banks and spilling out to smash against the docks of the city. Perhaps the artist was thinking somewhere upstream.

The other two that caught my eye seemed to belong to a set. They were statues of women out of marble that had obviously been outside for a very long time. They were weathered and scratched were vandals had gotten to them. One was of a young woman with the idealized body of womanhood, large breasts but perky in defiance of gravity, thin waist, well muscles arms and legs, almost a doll-like form.

The second was a woman, still beautiful, but now with a form that was humanly possible to achive. Full breasts that curved lower across her chest, a more curvaceous figure, fuller but more sensual, less heavily muscled. The pair seemed to show the ideal of beauty and the reality of beauty.

The Museum of Aquitaine, from the day before, had many exciting works of art, many pieces that seemed to capture the feeling of an era, and they were displayed exceptionally well.

The remains of Roman statues, often only the chest and stubs of neck, arms and legs, had lights trained on them to give them a unique glow, or were mounted against a red wall to contrast with the white pallor of the statues. The most impressive piece in the collection was the bronze figure of Hercules striding purposefully through the room. His face seemed so alive that his sightless eye sockets evoked a sense of pity and dismay at the blinding of such a powerful figure.

Many of the Museum's Gallo-Roman pieces had come as the city was excavated to make way for new buildings. One particularly rich source were the excavations for a supermarket's parking lot. Interestingly, since the supermarket was destroying old buildings to get their parking spaces the city of Bordeaux forced them to preserve the facades, so now shoppers park behind 18^th century homes.

Another portion of the museum that really caught my attention was the few model ships on display, although by the time we saw them we were hurrying through the museum to see as much as possible before it closed. There is something so intricate in the workings of a model ship. Even thought they can reach enormous size the detail is amazing and the knowledge required phenomenal. I remember at the naval history museum in Southampton they had displayed the bone model ships made by the French prisoners of war and the guest book had commented derogatorily about the lack of correct detail. You had to ask if the people writing the comments could have done better. It would be fun to make model ships, but there is something infinitely sad about a person making models of ships when they live twelve hours away from the ocean.

Today the rain had mingled with the cold to become a real danger. The water runs through the rocks like the beginnings of a river and though our belongings are wrapped in plastic they are beginning to get wet as the water seeps upward. Somehow the waterproof groundsheet of our fabric home has become waterproof no longer and the spreading stains of the damp congeal into puddles within our tent as we watch, as if the water is willfully forcing its way through the plastic.

I peer outside and see a torrent of water that streams down the gravel road of the campsite. Rain in November is new for us and I can see suddenly why the world sneers at the idea of warmth in Canada. For Calgarians the best we could expect in November is clear skies, the worst, heavy snow. Never rain.

I am reminded of our trip to Prince Rupert where we were almost rained out completely. Yet it was a very rewarding trip. Not so much in the conventional fashion of most vacation, but because it revealed so much about the inner workings of our vast country and the diversity of the people who call it home. The Tsimshian people were so proud of their heritage and their homeland was so beautiful. Deep fjords, misty islands and rain drenched forests.

Somehow I am back on the topic of rain. It will be, I fear, a dominant theme.

We stopped the other day, on our way back from grocery shopping, at the ruins of a wine making estate on the road towards our campground. There was a twelfth century church and an old estate home, both closed to the casual tourist such as we. But the garden was magnificent, overreaching green trees making a ceiling of foliage, only a few leaves clustered on the ground dropped from their lofty perch. There was a pathway of concentric arcs through the green grass and it was lined with flowers of all description, still in bloom. While we stood there the cold chased at us through our jackets and sweaters, chilling skin and making us long for warm soup but it left everything around us untouched. It was as if the cold taunted us and made us imagine that the cold was only in our heads. the beauty made it seem that we are trying to flee a phantom that cannot harm us. But the rain that beats a staccato rhythm on our huddled shelters is real, it has an icy grip and we have to try and get from beneath it, at least for a while.

Bordeaux, despite it’s generous museums and hidden beauty has been a disappointment. The grandeur here has faded beneath a veneer of indifference. You can still see the magnificence, like a beautiful painting left in a puddle of mud at the roadside, but its faint manifestations are almost sad. I know that we have not been charitable to the city, nor credited its successes, the museums and the shopping district, enough. But when cities that boast only half the population, or even less, seem to make more of an effort to show what little beauty they are gifted with and seemed to take so much more pride in their patrimony, you are little inclined to be charitable.

Or perhaps you cannot blame cities but must look more to the individual. Even in Saintes there were those who treated crypts as garbage cans, in La Rochelle those who pissed on the street. There is always a certain percentage who do not give a damn for beauty or heritage.

I cannot help but feel pity for those who strive so hard to make their city beautiful and are defeated by an uncaring few. It only takes a few to ruin it for the many. Michelangelo’s Pieta was wrecked by one crazed man.

At least the people seem to have been very friendly particularly our ticket agent and the guy at the museum. Friendliness makes up for a lot but not the tons of dog shit and not, for us, the rain.

Next Entry: Day 95. Nimes
Previous Entry: Day 93. Bordeaux

Day 92. Bordeaux Nov 6 2001

We woke early, the cold making it hard to sleep. We paid the fee for another night and the owner of the campground asked if we were not afraid of the cold. I answered that we were but what other choice did we have?

The cold was too intense, too all encompassing in its icy embrace, so we had decided to leave. But to were? We had resolved to catch a train to a warmer climate. But how far could we go and could we keep our bikes with us? Despite the pain, emotional and physical, that they had caused us, we have become emotionally, almost spiritually, attached to them and leaving them behind would radically alter the tenor of our trip.

Our first stop today was the train station, rising from the city like a fabulous 18th century hall, classical statues and carvings coating its facade. We walked through in the wrong direction and found ourselves on the platforms leading to trains, illegally without tickets. We hurried back into the terminal and found the office and waited for our number to be called. We found out the price of a ticket to Rome but we couldn’t take our bikes. The nearest we could take out bikes was Nice, so we found out the price for that as well. Then we found a nearby bank, changed some money into francs and went for a walk to contemplate what to do with our immediate future.

We walked at random and hence managed, without plan, to see some of the more important sights in Bordeaux. We walked along the quay that looked over the Garonne River. We passed the School of Fine Arts, ironically in one of the ugliest buildings we had seen anywhere. We came to the Pont De Pierre, the elegant bridge that leads into town. It terminated at a roundabout in front of the colossal Port des Salinieres, a massive arch that was lost amid the bustle of traffic and the buildings that rose above its height to either side.

We passed the Chamber of Commerce and the Customs House, two awesomely beautiful buildings with intricately carved stonework and gold gilding on all the ironwork. It wasn't hard to see where there was wealth. The customs museum, displaying seized goods of many crimes was tempting but somehow it seemed wrong to pay to see illegal hides or tusks from endangered animals. No one should profit from their suffering.

We ended our tour of the riverfront at the Esplanade des Quinconces, laid out in 1820. We looked forward to it eagerly. The towers at the at the gates were the most elegant things yet seen in Bordeaux, the lamp posts that crowned the surrounding wall were cast iron in a nautical theme with black iron bows of ancient triremes projecting from them.

But the square had hosted a fair the day before and piles of garbage rose higher than our waists. More worrying still was the line of grim looking riot police, plastic shields and batons in hand blocking a corner of the square while old women shouted at them. We left, if not hurrying then at least walking briskly.

Still we stopped at the monument to the Girondins at the head of the Esplanade. A beautiful, allegorical fountain of the Republic and Concordia being pulled through the ocean by straining sea horses sprayed the air with a fine mist while a column topped by an unidentified statue rose halfway to the sky.

From here we walked to the Cathedral, but it was closed for lunch so we circled around behind city hall and ate our lunch in the Jardin de la Mairie. The garden was beautiful, the iron fence gilded in gold with the coat of arms of the city prominently displayed, a fountain circled by flowers that seemed to thrive despite the cold, the whole thing flanked by the Museum of Fine Arts on either side, children playing enthusiastically at one end.

We returned to the Cathedral. It was an indescribable edifice, vastly gothic with twin towers over the main entrance looking demonic with their angled sharpness and smooth seductive curves. Inside, the high ceiling curved above us in cavernous silence while the vast rose windows glowed.

The bell tower wasn’t connected to the church itself and its great shape, a spike slammed deep into the ground could sometimes be seen peering through the windows. I left Heather inside sketching while I phoned home.

When she was done we walked again and found the Museum of Aquitaine. We had planned to go tomorrow but thought we could run through it in the two hours it was still open. The museum was, so far at least, by far the best thing of Bordeaux.

It began with an exhibit of the areas prehistory, the many axes, knives, spearheads, arrowheads, left by prehistoric man. Here were some of the early "Venus" representations, these ones carrying a crescent in their hands and were carved into rock. A representation of the cave paintings at Lascaux adorned the walls and simulacra of ancient painted deer raced across simulacra of ancients cave wall.

There was a small exhibit of Greek and Roman pottery then a vast gallery to the Roman occupation. Elegant classical statues stood vigils over cracked mosaic floors.


There had been a major temple to Mithras here and many, many gifts to the god had been among the finds. The coins of the Bordeaux horde were spilled out in a casual pile, making it easy to see the amazing thickness and weight of the things, while the more spectacular items were showcased in a well lit tray.


Then came the section of the middle ages, with the capstones of columns and many medieval sarcophagi. Then stunningly, amazingly, the entire remains of a vast rose window mounted against a wall, a great wheel of intricate stone whose weight oppressed the room.


But more still, the era of revolution and the many republics with elegant clothes, beautiful jewelry and legacy of headless French. Then the modern era, then post modern, a display of life in the countryside and the collections from Oceania and the far north of Canada and finally a CBC sponsored exhibit about Quebec. Too much to see and displayed in the best fashion we had seen.

We left at closing, found an internet cafe, emailed, went home and got drunk on bordelais wine.

Next Entry: Day 93. Bordeaux
Previous Entry: Day 91. Gradignon

Day 87. Saintes Nov 1 2010. ‏

Sometimes the words to describe a sense of awe, beauty, wonderment and an almost overwhelming feeling of ancient power, simply do not exist. It is the difference, to borrow a phrase, between talking about lightning and being struck by it. But I will try to put words to the indescribable.

We awoke early today, worried about missing breakfast. Our alarm had cratered a couple of days ago and now only makes a horrific noise whenever it is opened. As it happened we didn't miss breakfast, we were the first ones to it. It was the same fare in La Rochelle but enjoyed much more because we were expecting it. This time we both stole jam.

After a brief morning nap we set out. There was no exploration today, we were both sure of our goal. We cycled up the steep streets directly for the Arena. We locked our bikes against the metal rail that surrounded the upper rim of the site, paid our five francs entrance fee and walked in. Here words fail me completely. I have to pause and think for even the smallest description to come to mind.

I have spent the last five years studying histories of people long since dead, the Romans foremost among them and, Virconium and Rockbourne Villa aside, I had scarcely seen a Roman site. Walking into the arena was like walking into a physical manifestation of these past five years, each stone a word in a textbook or a minute in class. In mere seconds I felt Rome, the weight and history of Empire, as no book could convey. I could hear the roar of the crowds, see blood flow on the sands, smell the sweat and excitement. I travelled time as I walked the steps, phasing effortlessly between the now of grass and ruins and the then of living breathing history.

The arena was an enormous structure built to hold between fifteen and twenty thousand people, the entire population of Mediolanum Santonorum. It was a mixed structure so that some was built into the sides of the valley while other parts, particularly the Processional Port of the Gladiators rose from the valley floor in enormous arches. The upper floors were gone, half the seating disappeared as time and people eroded the arena to the level of the valley. It was built in 40 or 50 AD when the Emperor Claudius reigned and had decayed for 1500 years and it was magnificent.
We walked down decaying stairs to the floor of the arena. The sand that had absorbed the blood of dying gladiators was buried from sight but you could feel the weight of the crowds gaze and despite the empty ruins you could hear the cheering. Smooth stone, like modern side boards, rose to protect the wealthy patrons from wild beasts or escaping warriors

We walked up the Procession Way under an arch too high to be captured in words. A massive entrance to a massive structure. The borders of stone had smudged and run together with age and dripped now with ancient stalagmites so that it seemed more cave than structure.


We explored every nook and cranny that we were allowed. The ruin is crumbling, though partially restored in some places, especially the arches. Cold blooded lizards crawl over the sun warmed rocks as they must have done since before the arena was built.

We crossed the vast arena floor, ants on a tabletop, and found the other arch, the exit. It was almost buried beneath the risen ground, a half arch the seemed sinister in the light of day. It disappeared into the hillside beneath the road. We entered the darkness and allowed our eyes to adjust. The tunnel was half filled with the accumulated dirt of ages but the arches were still impressive. Here as nowhere else in the structure, beneath a patina of white lime deposited by centuries of seeping rain water, the patterns on the rocks cut by the builders were still visible. The whole scene was very eerie.

We emerged from the tunnel, back into the area, blinking in the sunlight. Together we found a seat in the nobles section of the arena, naturally, sat down and pull out sketchbook and journal respectively. Scarcely had we begun to record, in our individual way, the sights around us then we were approached by a friendly American couple, Scott and Amy, with mother-in-law and child in tow. In a place of foreign languages a familiar tongue is a magnet and we are drawn together, if not as fellow expatriates then as neighbors on a continent.

Scott, it turned out, was working for a French company. He was having difficulty adjusting to the less competitive atmosphere of Europe and was on an enforced vacation that seemed to leave him chomping at the bit. Amy's mother was visiting them, feeling safer here than in her hometown of Washington DC. Their boy, Clayton, enjoyed running about the sand floor and reenacting ancient gladiatorial battles, climbing his father's side and demanding to be shown where the dead bodies had been taken out. Only after they left did we realize that we had failed to exchange any contact information. Too bad, because as they left Scott said, "I wish we could throw your stuff in the back of the car and take you with us." Me too.

We returned to the writing and drawing, feeling the atmosphere and the quiet of the place fall over us like a physical thing. It was so tranquil and yet energizing to sit in the midst of the vast ancient place. And then the gatekeeper came and kicked us out for her lunch break! Never have we been so discontent with the hours the French maintain. We stomped back up the stairs and tried to recapture the mood while looking through the iron fence, but it had disappeared, not to be regained.
We left with a little disappointment but still immensely grateful we had seen such a sight.

We cycled across town to the ancient Roman baths, hoping to find something similar but the baths had been small and abandoned early. When the town had regrown the site had been a church, then a necropolis and tombstones littered the grassy plain. No fence regulated who could enter here and the mausoleums were was filled with broken beer bottles and a smell of vomit and urine.

We spent the evening at the feet of the great Roman arch that had once crowned the road into town. Built at the end of the first century AD the road had linked Lyon with Aquitania. Caius Julius Rufus, a high priest of the Imperial cult, had built the arch in 18 or 19 AD. The arch had marked the entry to the town’s bridge, each arc a direction travel.
With the advent of the Middle Ages mills had been built on the bridge, backing up the waters so the river flowed around the front of the arch. The bridge was then connected to the rapidly eroding riverbanks using long planks of wood, inadvertently creating a drawbridge.
The coming of the 18th and 19th centuries had seen the gradual destruction of the bridge to make way for river traffic and only the intervention of the Minister of Antiquities had saved the arch.
The arch was built of enormous blocks of stone, out of which perhaps ten had retained their original shape. The rest of the blocks crumbled and chipped until the whole structure was a child's set of building blocks with the overwhelming feeling that anyone could walk by and destroy the ancient structure with an accidental shove. I had to resist the urge to try.

All things considered, today had been one of the trips highlights.

Next Entry: Day 88. Mirambeau
Previous Entry: Day 86. Saintes

Day 86. Saintes Oct 31 2001.

Halloween. The dark night has closed in around us, but nothing roams the streets.

Based on the sight of a single pamphlet we have come to Saintes hoping to see the wonderous Gallo-Roman ruins. We set out from our well feathered nest early, our tent, bikes and bodies bedecked with dew. Leaving was hard. It has become harder every day that we are in a comfortable spot, the unknown ahead of us.

The trip back into Rochefort was quick, if a little confused and we saw in passing anything that we might have missed on our previous visits. The library, the war memorial, the thermal baths (flying a Canadian flag, among others) and some of the town wall. I was enthralled, there is no other word, by the industrial port as we passed by. Enormous freighters filled the small space. The only entrance or exit was a lock that seemed no more than two or three of my body lengths across. It was impossible to visualize the delicate skill that must be needed to maneuver in such a space.

Last night Heather and I had stayed up late and watched as an empty freighter had chased the disappearing tide down the Charente river. The night had been inky black, the river so low the bottom was creating new rapids and the freighter has been so light in the water that its bow seemed to lift from the waves. We had watched with held breath expecting the vessel to run aground at any moment or crush one of the tiny fiberglass pleasure craft beneath its steel hull. Nothing happened and the ship gradually disappeared down the river, heading for open ocean. The sheer weight of such a vessel on such a small river is breathtaking, a whale in a fishpond.

After leaving the city the ride had little in it worth writing about. The countryside was mostly flat, the road well traveled but not too busy. We passed a few vineyards and could not help but notice that they rose a little higher here, closer to how we envisioned them. But we did not stop. We were pursued by a dark cloud that bruised the sky and just as we reached the boundary of Saintes it began to rain. We biked down what seemed to be the main street and were unimpressed. The city was gray. The rain let up but still threatened. We stopped at a map and were unenlightened by it. No mention of our hostel anywhere. We stopped at the tourist office, it was closed from noon to two, then after five. So tired were we that we assumed it must be after five. I found a small map with our destination marked on it so we set out, down the long slope towards the Charente river.

We crossed and found a massive Roman arch, the Arch of Germanicus, the ancient entry to the town’s Roman bridge. Its sheer bulk was impressive, the physical presence of long dead Romans made manifest in cracked and pitted stone.

We stopped to read its scant information then hurried on to our hostel. It too was closed, opening after 5. Our exhaustion had played with our minds, it was hardly after 1 o'clock in the afternoon. We had hours to wait.

We sat and ate lunch and I read to Heather. Scarcely had I finished the first page when a lady approached us from the hostel and asked if we wanted a room for the night. At that moment our gloom lifted. Not in a physical fashion, it was still blustery outside, leaves whipped in a frenzy across the lawn, but our gloom had not been physical, more the constant pain of readjustment we felt every time we pulled up roots and left a city. We stowed our things in a room much like La Rochelle but with carpet and comforting brick wall that changed cold into warmth and gave the room a certain intrigue, as if we had set up camp in the warmest most comfortable back alley in existence.

We rested for a while and then set out to see Saintes. The city's name comes, oddly enough, not from any medieval Saints who may have dwelt there but instead from the tribe of Romanized Gauls who had built it, the Santones.

We found an abbey next to our hostel and walked its covered walkway. L'Abbey aux Dames, a cluniac nunnery with an almost beehive shaped bell tower. Tours of the inside were offered but at a price, a price paid more for an exhibit of French photographers’ works than for the abbey. We passed.

We walked back towards the river and discovered a park tucked neatly away. We went in and walked beneath green boughs while young lovers courted and kissed on benches, looking up in annoyance as we walked by and disturbed them.

We passed, to our surprise, the Lapidary Museum of Saintes, a small building that housed the greater portion of the Roman statues found in the city, their intricate carvings almost faded to nothingness with the ravages of time. The prize of the collection was the torso of a Julio-Claudian prince, bathing in a soft golden light while ancient stone muscles flexed in a posture frozen by age.

A marble of classic proportions in a room of decaying stones and headless torsos, all excavated from the fragments of the city wall the inhabitants of Mediolanum Santonum threw together in a panicked haste to ward off the barbarian hordes. They had pulled down the forum and the baths and the houses of the rich and poor alike in their terror.

We stopped again at the grandeur of the arch and admired its power even in decay. But we had more of the city to explore. Tomorrow was All Saints Day, a religious holiday in France and we don't now what will be open. We crossed the river once more and followed tiny medieval streets to the Cathedral of St Peter. The cathedrals clock tower loomed over the city. It seemed as though it had been built in stages, each stage piled atop the other, like some Egyptian step pyramid transported to the western coast of France. St. Peters was like dozens of other flamboyant gothic cathedrals we had visited, the outside a beautiful series of flying buttresses. What shocked us was the stores and shops that had nestled between the foundations of each buttress. The cathedrals main walls forming the back walls of beauty salons, galleries and private residences.

Next we followed the marked path to the Roman Arena that had brought us here. We followed streets that narrowed and grew rough beneath our feet. We passed the manicured beauty of the L'Hotel de Ville into coarse alleyways and stairs that seemed to climb the walls of houses to the rooftops of the city many times over, only to descend into a valley once more.

The Arena lay at the head of a valley, along a wide swath of grass that had once been the main roman road, so that the gladiators could march down in a dazzling public spectacle. The Arena was amazing, even from behind locked gates closed for the night. The stones seemed alive in their decay, as if infused with centuries of bloodlust and excitement. I longed to clamber over the iron bars blocking my way and race among the ruins. Instead we left, vowing to return tomorrow.

We followed the signs leading to the church of St. Eutrope and its famous (although unknown to us) crypt, a milestone on the pilgrimage to Compostella. The altar had been dedicated by Urban II in 1096.


The church was darkly beautiful, lost in shadow, the crypt lost to sight. Urban's face gazed down from stained glass windows in a beatific peace, irony in glass. We went out and walked around; looking for the crypt, but found nothing. The clock tower rose above our heads, sheathed in scaffolding that made it echoed the layered temples of the far east, an unintended symbol of ecumenical outreach.

We dropped back to the Charente again, the highway the Vikings had followed in search of pillage and plunder. Fishermen lined its tranquil banks. The fish were wise to the devious plans of those with rods and clustered in schools of schools that chased and fed on another in the shallows on our side, away from the rods and hooks, their silver underbelly's flashing as they climbed the road of the pier in search of other fish. It grew dark and as cold as the October night it was. No ghouls, ghosts or goblins emerged to torment us, either in search of candy or earthly recognition. Instead clusters of young girls puffed rebelliously on cigarettes while nearby boys watched and waited for the cool moment to saunter over with the requisite "feu" We bought our dinner for tonight and tomorrow and walked home, glad to be out of the cold, for tonight at least.



Next Entry: Day 87. Saintes
Previous Entry: Day 85. Rochefort

Day 39. Rockbourne. Sept 14 2001

Tessa picked us up today for a trip to the Roman Villa that had been unearthed at Rockbourne.

 
It was very nice spending time with Tessa. The villa was fascinating, though not much remained. It had been the home of wealthy Romans for hundreds of years and sprawled over a huge area.

 
The layout of the tour was interesting as you were forced to walk out to the farthest corner then back, then back and forth again. But it was fascinating to look at the mosaic floors in situ. One floor was in the shape of a swastika and it brought home the fact that Hitler had appropriated roman symbols wholesale to try and give his third Reich legitimacy as the heir to the Roman Empire and hence to Europe.

 

Strange that most of Hitler’s Germany had never been a part of Rome.
The villa also had a large quantity of archeological items. Most of them lost millennia ago or thrown out with the trash. Spring shears and buttons and strigils, all a cross section of life on a very wealthy farm, wealthy enough to boast two separate bath structures. The first was obviously built in haste, to give the property legitimacy as a roman dwelling. The second was obviously the product of wealth.

 
With the possibilities of Rockbourne exhausted we went with Tessa to the local town of Fordingbridge, a beautiful town on the river Avon.


We stood on the bridge watching the water swirl beneath us as Tessa told us tales of their family trips on the canals in narrowboats. It sounds like enormous fun but a little expensive for our style of travel.

From Fordingbridge Tessa took us back to their place with a new route in the New Forest. We passed by Pig Bush where the Ormans had once lost a dog, only to have him walk home, many miles away.

Tessa had us over for dinner, which we shared with Paul and their children Megan and Thomas. Their daughter Amy was in Canada. Thomas went to bed early and Paul was tired from working night shifts at the esso plant at Fawley. But Tessa and Megan stayed awake quite late and we played games. Heather and Megan won but Tessa and I were only a single point behind in a game to fifty points. I must say that we went home very tired but that the day was one of the most exciting and fun we have had since we’ve stopped in Holbury.

Next Entry: Day 40. Hurst Castle
Previous Entry: Day 38. Old Sarum