From: AJnAndrew
To: Friends & Family
Date Sent: Sun, Sep 28, 2003 1:27 PM
Subject: Don't say "Si," say "Oui!" Dear All & Sundry,
Almost from the moment we’d passed the abandoned, defunct Customs
checkpoint at the Spanish/French border, still sadly declaiming our need to stop
at the white line and proclaiming the opportunity to exchange our pesetas,
pounds and deutschmarks for francs, we noticed a palpable difference in what was
essentially the same coastline.
Whereas the Spanish side, with its convoluted hillsides that tumbled off
the slack edge of the Pyrenees into the bright turquoise waters of the
Mediterranean, is carpeted in a wild tussle of shrubs and pear-fruiting cacti,
the French side, with the exact same geography and geology, is all grape vines.
Our rolling, winding road clung to tightly terraced vine-covered hills,
ascending sharply only to descend once again into one of many near-identical
villages folded into a crease in the crumpled coastline. Each village fronted
its own tiny nick of pebbled beach cut from rocky cliffs, sometimes not far
below us, sometimes heart-stoppingly distant.
As the frequency of passing cars with the ‘E’ (Espagne) on their license
plates gave way completely to the passing ‘F’s (France), they began to slow
down, giving us wide berth on a road barely large enough to form two lanes.
Rather than the Spanish drivers who would sneak up behind us and blast a
friendly (we hope) but nonetheless disconcerting Euro “beep” as they blew past,
we had a number of French drivers the whole way to the border - and on our first
few sunny-hot climbs just across - giving us cheerful thumbs-ups and even
applause.
And we began to see cyclists.
Not just French pleasure cyclists on slick road bikes or little grannies
out on their errands, but actual cycle tourists heading back towards Spain. We
stifled an urge to wave wildly and achieve some kind of split-second empathy
with them only because we were either tightly gripping our handlebars as we
pushed upwards against a nasty headwind or were tightly gripping our handlebars
as we yanked the brakes against slalom-like descents.
Lots of signs appeared, many outside little shops disguised as (or
formerly used as) wine barrels advertising ‘Degustation gratuit,’ (“free
tasting,” an insidious offer, we later found), but many also denoting what kinds
of vineyards we were passing, what was coming up ahead on the road and a
veritable forest of signs in each small summer-season village, pointing out
every restaurant and shop in official-looking understated arrows. One that
frightened us: a ‘yield’ sign with a disturbing graphic of a car blowing up. It
was on a perfectly cycleable back-road - we couldn’t begin to guess its meaning
(“Attend! Catastrophe pour vous!”?) The French love to label, we found out.
Actually we found out quite a bit about the region (Roussillon, nestled in
this most south-west region and boasting the most hours of sunshine in all of
France) by deciding to try a quick wine tour at the “Celliers des Templiers”
(The Cellars of the Knights Templar). Everything in France is just so casually
loaded with oodles of history us poor Americans are instantly overwhelmed - not
just by how old things can be, like in Spain, but how normal it is here that
homes and businesses can be run for centuries. Thrilled to discover that our
tour guide (a self-important middle-aged Frenchman who kept riding a group of
uncomprehending Germans that were chatting with each other while he was trying
to speak), was going to do the tour entirely in French, we eagerly followed our
half-dozen other French-speaking compatriots to see a short movie before the
tour. Our enthusiasm at being immersed in French quickly gave way to utter
relief that the kind gentleman had not only handed us a nice descriptive
translation of the tour, but also put the English sub-titles ‘on’ in the amusing
film.
According to legend, vines were first brought to this region by Hannibal,
who passed through in 201 B.C.E. on his way to Rome with an army of elephants.
The Knights Templar developed the fortified wine industry that continues in the
area today during the 13th century. They also perfected the technique of
open-air ageing. This once unthinkable method of leaving wooden barrels of wine
to age for up to two years outside in the sun and changing temperatures of the
Mediterranean coast was pioneered after they noticed that the wines they’d
stored on top of the decks of their ships going to the Holy Land had a more
complex flavor than of those down in the hold. As we saw, the vines themselves
were loaded with purple-blue berries that were being busily harvested – earlier
than usual for this normally late-harvest region. Though France and much of
Europe experienced a severe drought and heat wave this summer, it has done
wonders for the grapes, which thrive in a hot dry climate. Pundits expect 2003
to become a legendary vintage.
The French are so naturally thought of these days as being snobs. Just
about everyone we’ve met has been exceptionally polite. Several people have even
admitted that they spoke English (though we haven’t had to speak with many
people but check-out clerks and a few random strangers on the street for
directions or assistance, queries which AJ took great delight indulging in
because she at least knows enough French to negotiate around a transaction for
cheese or directions to a campground). Perhaps if there is one reason that they
could be called snobs, it is because of their passion for wine. But since you
can buy a very good bottle for under $3, it’s hard to fault them for not wanting
to resort to the under-$1 table wine.
Though we’d been cycling 40km (25 miles) or so a day while staying at our
little out-of-town campground in Barcelona, those kilometers hadn’t been hilly
or winding (or every day). Our bodies now felt assaulted by the hours we spent
going up and down and up again after a fairly cushy several days sightseeing in
the big city and hanging around the occasionally rainy campground. We had to
take a couple of near-rest days here and there just to go the 330 km (200 miles)
between Barcelona and Perpignan, our first real French city (albeit small), from
whence we turned west.
After several days with vineyards to our right and the craggy foothills of
the Pyrenees to our left, we were beginning to think that France is grapes the
way that Iowa is corn. Then we passed through the fabulously narrow Defile de
Pierre Lys, where the chalky serrated hillsides through which our road was
unfurling suddenly closed in on us with the swift-flowing river running at our
side a few meters below. Thereafter we went through heavily forested hills;
mostly tall logging pines, but saw that there were enough deciduous trees that
the fall colours that were just beginning to evidence themselves would soon
share the hillside with dark evergreens. The landscape became rolling pastures
and grazing cattle, and, coincidentally enough, cornfields, growing side by side
with fields of sunflowers, though both crops were now either dry and crumbling
(thanks to the drought) or had been recently buzz cut into fields of stubble.
The foothills of the Pyrenees were still undulating around us, the massive bulk
of the mountains themselves only visible in the distance on occasion.
Inadvertently we had stumbled into Cathar country. The immediate area we
were cycling in was the region where Catharism, also known as the Albigensian
heresy, spread and flourished during the 12th and 13th centuries. We were never
able to find out the exact nature of their heresy; all the unhelpful brochures
were mostly fixated on pointing out the different features of their ruined
chateaux. It had something to do with wanting the simplification of church
hierarchy, bringing God closer to the common man in a way that angered Rome (we
thought of them as medieval Quakers). Naturally, the Church took offense to
this. And since many of the 10% of the French population who were Cathars
happened to also be rich and influential nobles, and since the land of anyone
convicted of heresy went to, you guessed it, the Church, there was a really
spirited Crusade and land-grab in Southern France in the mid 1200’s, led by the
infamous (and soon to be very wealthy and landed) Simon de Montfort. All that’s
left of these presumably pure and decent Christians are legends and ruins of
their fortified castles perched eyrie-like on the tips of jagged, inaccessible
cliffs where many sought sanctuary in their last, beleaguered attempts to avoid
being burnt by the hundreds in huge spectacles (one information sheet of poor
translation lauded how “the besieged covered themselves with glory” while under
siege). Note that the jagged inaccessible part made cycling up to some of these
remote ruins a bit steep – we had to draw the line at a 17% incline and hoof it
up wooded paths. The views we had over quiet green valleys were well worth the
climb (though the explanation sheets primarily in French were not), and the
castles we saw were splendid in their ruinous majesty.
Finally, after two weeks away on this leg of our journey, we fell in love
with traveling again. Our butts (mostly) stopped aching. We figured out the
supermarket schedules (like Spain they still close for lunch, but if the town’s
big enough they sometimes stay open - even some Sunday mornings), and we managed
to organize ourselves so much so that we had a fabulous day cycling to the
adorably quaint country village of Mas d’Azil. Our passing fits of rapture,
which had occasionally seasoned what was becoming a pretty sour overall mood
(mostly due to the aforementioned aching butts and inaccessible tourist
attractions), seemed to have mellowed into a reasonably steady, if still
tentative, joy. We made it to the Underground River of Labouiche with plenty of
time before it closed for lunch. It turned out to be the longest navigable
underground river in Europe, and we, by golly, were going to blow an astonishing
15 euros for the two of us to be navigated on it. We joined a group of 9 others
and descended many, many steps to a chilly depth of 60m (180 ft), where a narrow
sliver of water snaked along the high-ceilinged, but still claustrophobic, cave.
It was your typical cave with no stunning wow of cave architecture, but its
interesting features were magnified sufficiently by fact that we were being
pulled along hand over hand in a small aluminum skiff by a cheerful (and
buff-armed) guide using thick cables attached to the cavern wall, alternately
ducking and craning our necks upward to see the many and varied formations and
convolutions that water had carved through this rock.
The rest of our day was French countryside cycling at its best. The sky
was cloudless and warm. The road was a gentle and steady downhill through pine
and mixed deciduous trees. We passed a cute French church in a quaint French
village with a tall French spire. Earlier than expected, we swung up to the
famous Grotto du Mas D’Azil, the world’s only drivable cave.
Over the millennia, the river Arize carved a vast tunnel straight through
a mountain, creating what has to be one of the world’s most unusual short-cuts.
One could only marvel at the sheer size of the gaping 80 m (250 ft) opening in
the cliff into which the D-119 was swallowed, and also at the guts of the group
of adventure-seekers who were bungee-jumping from a platform at the top. The
river below was all boulders and small standing pools (because of the drought,
the river was not running), but we cycled through a surprisingly long stretch of
dimly lit road (1.5km or about a mile) that clung to the wall of the cavern,
which in its center had further access to more and higher branches of the
complex. The caves have been used by people for tens of thousands of years. More
recent times saw the caves used as refuge by the Cathars from the Inquisitors.
Later Protestants also took refuge here, and Calvin lived here for a time and
regularly preached to the faithful in one of the larger halls known as the
“cathedral.”
Enjoying the novelty of it all, we cycled up and down the cool and winding
road a few times, then rolled into the small and utterly adorable countryside
village of Mas D’Azil. After buying as expensive and as gourmet a meal as we
could find in the local superette, (France seems to have a lot of fancy prepared
foods in jars – we’re speculating that even the French can’t be fussed with some
of these time-consuming delicacies) we were told by the cashier that the town’s
campground was closed for the season – a great disappointment, as we hoped hot
showers and electricity to charge our laptop could be the only fitting end to
our near-perfect day.
Annoyed and disconcerted, our mood lifted when we spent the last
forty-five minutes of the town museum’s opening hours being stunned by the
wealth of intricately carved finds from 20,000 years ago that had been unearthed
in the caves. It was in an elegant old three storey house, with wide wooden
stairs worn down with countless years into smooth, shiny warp. The museum’s
extensive collection contained all manner of human made items including an
atlatl (a pre-historic device to aid spear-throwing) known as “le faun aux
oiseaux.” It was delicately carved from
reindeer antler and depicted a rather life-like deer gazing back bemusedly at
three birds perched on his rear-end. It looked like it might have been carved
yesterday with great skill.
Our good cheer was soon justified. It was still early, 6:30 PM, when we
hit upon the brilliant idea of just going straight to the closed municipal
campground to discover that the entrance drive was merely crossed with unlocked
metal blockades. So we moved them aside and set up on a wide expanse of secluded
lawn, dotted generously with shady trees. AJ put together dinner and, deciding
to stay in town an extra day, we got wildly drunk on two bottles of wine and
thoroughly enjoyed the hell out of the private, quiet and eventually dark and
soothing empty campground. There were no hot showers, but the running tap water
proved not too cold that we couldn’t get a nice, thorough wash.
A large part of the last three weeks since we’ve returned to Europe has
involved pointedly ignoring the fact that we hadn’t, in fact, decided where to
go next. A number of tantalizing options were dangling in the background,
forcing choices that we wanted to put off making – more time in France, less
time in Italy? Visit family in the Netherlands? Visit other family in Berlin?
Head straight towards Italy through southern France, try to get to Tunisia?
Cycle to Paris and back to the coast to head to the Italian Alps just in time
for winter? Heaven forbid, fly in an airplane from one point to another in
between? As a rule, we never make plans that far in advance - not definite plans
anyway, because we find that mentally locking ourselves into one course of
action can force our hand later on, making us turn down other opportunities when
they unexpectedly come up. We think of traveling on an extended journey as
playing a game of Gin Rummy. The smartest strategy is to consider whether each
new card you are offered will improve your hand at that
very moment, even if only slightly. The trick with
this, though, is to avoid being forced to wait patiently for the one and only
card that will complete your hand. Luckily for us, life keeps on dealing as long
as we want to keep playing, so we can still recover if the card we want is at
the bottom of the discard pile. We just can’t sit on our hands, so to speak.
But we still had actually failed to make any plans at all, except for our
eventual goal of Istanbul. Istanbul has for us, like Marrakesh had during our
chilliest, rainiest days in Spain last November, taken on mythic proportions –
become a Mecca for us, if you will. This city that is the crossroads of Europe
and Asia was to become a final stop for us on our cycle-pilgrimage (for a while
at least). But life is, naturally, filled with more immediate paths to take.
And, of course, we can probably manage to change our minds anywhere along the
way; even if it means a direction change to really make us wrench our handlebars
around, we rarely fall on our asses. So far.
So we figure we’ll head for Paris. Andrew remembers looking out the window
over Bordeaux on our flight back to the US last June and thinking it looked nice
and flat. Paris sounds like a good, round destination, and a good place to blow
a whole lot of money just by breathing. We’ll be able to eat (and drink) really
well along the way, and Paris is within spitting distance of the relatives we’d
be able to visit and even some friends we’ve met along the way hailing from
hither and yon (a quick train trip would break the cycling monotony, anyway),
and Morocco or Tunisia or just about anywhere would be only a short plane trip
away if it was really worth it to us (or the weather was really that wintry by
then) to jump ahead to somewhere warm.
Onward we go. We’ll be toasting you along the way (many times, with many
different and varied libations of the grape variety).
Wishing you the best for Fall (or Spring if you’re Antipodean).
Take care,
Your Inner Vagabonds
AJnAndrew