BARCELONA/FRANCE/TURKEY – TRAVEL DIARY 2003 - PART 4 of 7

Transcript of Tape-recorded Diary

PART 4 of 7

Earlier in the day we’d been by Metro to the Parc Guell.  The Barcelona Metro is extensive and efficient, and the guide books describe it as second only to Paris.  To our minds it was better - better because of the signage.  Very easy to find your way around the system and to find your way around Barcelona and, with so many stations, an ideal way to travel - although as Judy Rowe pointed out, there’s much also to be said for the bus system, because travelling by bus you can see your way and see the wonderful Barcelona architecture.  But, obviously, quite a bit slower.

 

The Parc Guell is one of the significant examples of that architecture.  It was designed by Antoni Gaudi on the commission of Eusebi Guell who had the idea of a twenty-hectare park with decorative public buildings and landscaped gardens.  This was in the 1890s and, in the event, the cluster of houses was not built; and when the park opened in 1922 there were half a dozen buildings only, Gaudi landscaping, and the awesome snaking park bench - the park bench 499 feet long, completely decorated with mosaics of broken pottery and ceramics.

The buildings that flank the gateway are of irregular shape with colourful Gaudi tiling - and the word that can aptly be used to describe Gaudi architecture: indescribable.  Gaudi lived in one of the houses in the park from 1906 to 1926.  UNESCO has designated Parc Guell as a world heritage site.

 

After the Parc Guell, again by Metro, to Sagrada Familia, the Temple of the Sacred Family, the masterwork of Gaudi - commenced in 1882, and incomplete at his death in 1926.  It’s only in recent times that work has recommenced, with the intention that Gaudi’s vision should be realised.  The crowds were large and we took in the exterior, deciding to leave the interior for another day. 

 Judy went off to the beach and Anne and Gary returned home.

 

Our Tuesday bus tour took us to another Gaudi building, the Casa Mila, otherwise known as La Pedrera.  This house, five or six storeys high, has a wave-like façade and chimneys that look like abstract sculptures.  La Pedrera means “stone quarry”, and the building’s nickname refers to the pale stone finish and the lumpiness of the structure.  The building comprises apartments, with two courtyards and, in the basement, Barcelona’s first underground carpark.  There is no straight wall anywhere in the building.  The guided tour gave us a complete understanding of the building including apartments set up as they would have been when the building was built between 1906 and 1910.

 

A pleasant stroll from La Pedrera to Casa Terrades, nicknamed Casa de les Punxes, that is the house of the points (nicknamed for the turrets).  On the way I’d stopped at a friendly photographic shop and the chap had salvaged a film for me. I’d finished the film and then foolishly rewound it the wrong way ripping the film out of the cassette.  My friend was able to put the camera and his hands into the black bag and remove the film, and put it into a light-tight container for me.

 

Casa Terrades is not a Gaudi house, but was built contemporaneously between 1903 and 1905 and is a striking example of Barcelona Modernisme - described in the books as a variant of art nouveau born in Barcelona, an extravagant architectural style that became a means of expression for Catalan nationalism.  Every great architect needs a great patron and the exponents of Modernisme, and Gaudi in particular, were fortunate to have wealthy patrons who were prepared to let their architects take complete control of the design and the project and to see the building through to completion without interference.

 

Before the bus had taken us to La Pedrera we’d seen a lot more sights on foot.  We’d had lunch at the Port Vell area.  This is an area also made over for the 1992 Olympics, very similar to Sydney’s Darling Harbour (although  not nearly so exiting), but already needing a bit of a facelift.  Then a walk through the Barri Gotic, the Gothic Quarter of the old town; an area occupied by the Romans during the reign of Augustus, although the only remains of Roman times are in museums.  In the Gothic Quarter we saw the Barcelona Cathedral - not of great interest - the striking feature to us being the choir stalls located virtually in the centre of the nave, with wooden pinnacles rising above each of the choir seats.

 

Also in the Gothic Quarter is the Museu Picasso, and there we spent an hour or so feasting on the master’s works.  The guide book says that the museum is housed in five adjoining Medieval palaces.  Certainly, it’s a rabbit warren of rooms and levels.  It was opened in 1963 with works donated by a friend of Picasso; and after that man’s death in 1968 Picasso himself donated the works that had been kept by his sister; and then upon his death more works were donated by his widow.  Picasso was not a native of Barcelona but lived there from the age of thirteen for a number of years.  In all, the museum has 3000 Picasso works.  It’s particularly interesting to see early works, drawings by the fifteen-year-old, and to confirm the obvious fact that even though an artist’s later and principal works may be abstract and unlifelike, the artist can nevertheless draw like an angel.

 

One detour on the Tuesday had been to the Gran Teatre del Liceu, the Barcelona Opera House.  This is a must-see building, and we needed to enquire about times of access.  Wednesday morning was ideal, and we obtained our tourist tickets for the next day.

That next day: back on the bus first thing.  Not using the bus as a tourist bus but rather as a way of getting to the Opera House; and then our ten o’clock tour.  Not a great grand ostentatious building like the Paris Opera, but a sublimely beautiful theatre interior. 

 

“Gran” it certainly is; and fascinating to know that it’s been restored twice after fires, in 1861 and in 1994.  The Opera theatre is on La Rambla, and on Wednesday La Rambla had a street market, so we were able to browse through the market on our way to the next high point, the Palau de la Musica Catalana 

..... only to suffer the bitter disappointment of finding the place closed for renovations. According to the guide book “this is a real palace of music, a Modernista celebration of tilework, sculpture and glorious stained glass.  It is the only concert hall in Europe lit by natural light.”  It was completed in 1908 and is in a narrow street, and it’s hard to tell how our photos of the facade will turn out; but the interior, for us, will have to wait for another day.

 

Now to the tourist bus and out to the Sagrada Familia.  Huge crowds but definitely worth the visit.  I chose to climb the spiral staircase in one of the towers rather than to take the lift, but it was an awfully congested process with dozens of people in a sense trapped, moving a few steps at a time until we were able to emerge on to an area of the rooftop.

 

The return tourist bus trip home to Placa d’Espanya passed many more of the tourist sites.  There are just so many, and in the time available we could simply not see them all.

 

On our last day in Barcelona, Friday the 29^th of August, Anne and Gary, the sightseeing-aholics, (first) took a tour of the Guell Palace.  Guell, the rich businessman who commissioned Gaudi to design the namesake park, had earlier commissioned Gaudi to build him a city home.  Guell’s family had lived on La Rambla, and Guell wanted a house in a side street connected by corridors to the family home.  The house, built on a small piece of land in a narrow street, is relatively unimpressive from the outside, although undoubtedly Modernista in style, but the inside is indeed a palace.  The guided tour through the building took us from the stables in the basement, to the ground floor where Guell conducted his business, to the first and upper floors containing the rooms for entertaining, and even a private chapel.  And thence to the roof, where each of the chimney pots is individually shaped like a tall toadstool, each covered with ceramic tiles.  It was said that Gaudi had complete freedom in the basement and on the roof because the family never visited those parts of the building.

 

From Palau Guell along La Rambla, the full length of La Rambla past its upper end at the Placa de Catalunya, to Casa Batllo another Gaudi masterpiece.  This is the one with the curved window frames and windows; and, again, we were able to do a tour of the building.

 

From here we took the funicular railway to Montjuic hill again, and across the road from the Olympic Stadium we took in the gallery devoted totally to the works of Joan Miro, the Fundacio Joan Miro.  Miro was a surrealist painter, lived from 1893 to 1983, and his works are not to everyone’s taste.  But when you see a complete collection like this it’s informative to learn the way in which the artist’s style changes through his working life.  A very worthwhile visit.

 

From the Miro museum we walked through the nearby park past the Museum of Catalonian Art.  This is an extraordinary building, but the collection, I’m afraid, was too much to tackle with so little time available on our last day; and, in any event, cultural indigestion had set in.

 

We continued our walk down Maria Cristina Avenue to the Placa d’Espanya - this time no fountains working - and home. 

 

 But that night, irrepressible, our last night in Barcelona, the three of us went to town and again walked the full length of La Rambla from the Placa de Catalunya to the Columbus column.

Impressions of Barcelona: well I’ve already said what a magical place it is - magical architecture, magical culture, magical Metro, and magical people.  The worst feature is the dog droppings, although to some extent this is under control - every street seems to be tree-lined and so many of the trees have a square of dirt around them, unpaved, and it’s in these squares where the locals seem to have trained their dogs to do their business.  So, so long as you stick to the pavement and don’t step in the dirt you’ll have a reasonably odour free visit.  Actually, I lie, because there is a pervasive odour and I was not able to identify it.  I think it was the smell of cooking fish, which is a significant part of the local diet, but it also at times smelt like a dirty drain.  So, who knows?

 

There are wonderful wide avenues, and a number of them are sufficiently wide for there to be thirty or forty feet of pavement along one side with room for bicycle traffic and maybe three or four separate avenues of trees.  The guide book says that Barcelona has more street trees than any other city in Europe, and I can believe it.  The tree plantings are of uniform species and every so far along there’s a tablet in the pavement indicating the type of tree.  The most prevalent species looked to be ones described as Brazilian acacias, very like what I would at home call a cassia.  I say prevalent, but prevalent only in terms of recent plantings.  Far and away the most popular tree is the plane tree; and in the older parts of the city these are massive.  They don’t let them spread, so they’ve been cut to grow tall, but the girths of some of them could be five feet through.  I was also interested to notice several streets with Australian kurrajongs.  They are of a slightly different variety from the ones we’re used to seeing.

 

A surprising feature of the supermarket that was fairly close to our apartment was its lack of stock.  Perhaps this was just an example of poor management.  (On the other hand, the smaller supermarket had well-stocked shelves - but had a shortage of shelves!)  It had absurdly few lines and lots of space between the racks, and in Australia the same business could have been crammed into an area half the size.

 

Barcelona is not a honking city, drivers don’t press their horns at the slightest pretext, and we found the drivers to be invariably courteous and competent.  It’s a great city for pedestrians, and even the guide books point out that the traffic lights for pedestrians stay green for an exceptionally long time.  Anne and Gary are agreed:  we have no hesitation in recommending Barcelona as a great, a first class, tourist destination, and we’d love to return one day.

 

- - - o O o - - -

 

I hadn’t intended on this trip to do any actuality recording because it’s not usually successful.  I’ve recorded the sounds in the Paris Metro, I’ve recorded a thunderstorm in Perugia, I’ve recorded impromptu amateur opera singers in the streets of Paris - but the tapes never get replayed and these things don’t transcribe into text.  But today it seems again to be the right thing to do, because we’re visiting Gallipoli.  We’ve alighted from our tour bus at a cove, just beyond Anzac Cove, where there’s a long memorial wall with information panels.  We’re going to walk our way back to Anzac Cove itself.  The sea is calm, beautiful, blue; gentle waves of the Aegean rolling into a narrow beach, very light touches of white tops. And a big expanse of lawn; and the marker wall with the word “ANZAC”.

 

The cove is the site of the first landing on North Beach on the 25^th of April 1915.  North Beach is just to the north of Sulva Bay where the Briish landing was meant to be.  The steep hills behind are mostly covered in vegetation but there’s a very tall outcrop of clayey formation - very forbidding, and no doubt used as an observation post by the Turkish forces.

 

At the water’s edge North Beach is a mixture of smooth stones and greyish sand and lots of seaweed and flotsam; and just under the commemorative wall there’s been some restoration done - obviously a storm at some stage has gouged away part of the sand dunes.  It’s now a row of large stones held together by heavy wire mesh; and the beach could be any beach, any cove, anywhere.  I’m not jingoistic and not very patriotic in the official sense, but the Anzac thing has always seemed to me to have great significance, not because it was the making of a nation - any of that - but just because of the bravery on both sides, the great drama of the story, and most of all the axiomatic fact that Australia as a nation celebrates a decisive military defeat.  I guess my views have been reinforced by years of attending Anzac Day parades in Melbourne as a kid, and the great Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, and the annual myth-making that goes on around Anzac Day.  But it’s become a more powerful force of recent years.  Two reasons, I think.  First the growing interest of the younger generations in visiting Gallipoli and Anzac Cove; and second, something that to me was quite significant, and that was the bringing back to Australia of a corpse, and the burial in the Canberra War Memorial, of the unknown soldier; a thing initiated in the days of Paul Keating, and which was commentated upon so eloquently by Bob Ellis.  Ellis, the world-weary writer who, so averse to these public displays, attended the unknown soldier ceremony, and was greatly moved and said so.  In a way the force strengthens as the years go by.   And if you need further proof of the Anzac “legend” consider this extract from Alan Moorhead’s Gallipoli:  "On May 24, with death in all its shapes around them, Turkish and Anzac troops worked together in digging great communal graves.  At the end of that dreadful day, stamped forever in the participants’ minds, some 4000 bodies had been buried.  For both sides, working together in this common act, the enemy ceased to be a propaganda figure.  He was no longer a monster, a fanatic, or a figure of fun:  he was a normal man, and feelings of rancour died."

 

Around the corner of North Beach there’s a new cemetery being installed.  I guess all the dead were Australian troops, certainly the ones that I can see from where I stand were.  All the headstones are bearing their number, their name, their regiment, their date of death - together with a cross.  No provision, I’m afraid, for an atheist’s faith to shine through .... yes, there is!  One stone has no cross on it.  “In memory of our dearly loved son.  Mr. and Mrs. W. Blakeney of Yarck (Yarck in Victoria).  Died aged 22 on the 7^th of August 1915.”  One can only presume that some descendants have indicated the wish not to have included the symbolism of the Christian faith.

 

There are about twenty Turkish workmen, and the ground has been bevelled back from the seafront.  Little stumps of headstones are being inserted, somewhat in random order.  Where they’re placed they’re placed in rows.  There are little truncated rows over an area of half an acre; and at the back there’s a large structure which I presume will have the name of the cemetery and its particular position in the scheme of the numerous small cemeteries that are dotted over the peninsula.  My limited research has left me confused.  North Beach was indeed the site of the landing that was intended for Sulva Bay - but it was the British landing.  How come, therefore, we saw existing and proposed cemeteries for Australian troops?  I suspect that we weren't at North Beach at all!

Above Anzac Cove on a grassy knoll is the large plinth bearing the wonderful words of Mustafa Kemal [In some places you see the spelling Kemel.  But Google has 893 entries for Mustafa Kemel and 143000 entries for Mustafa Kemal - so I guess the “a’s” have it.], the local commander during the conflict, later to become the leader of the Turkish Republic.  “Those heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.  Therefore, rest in peace.  There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side in this country of ours.  You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears:  your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace.  After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”  Ataturk (Mustafa Kemal) 1934"

 

 

More important than the beach is the vista of the cliffs above.  When I say cliffs:  they’re not overhanging crags, but it’s an eighty to eighty-five degree incline of gravelly shaley clay - nowadays cut by a bitumen road about fifty feet up from the beach level - and beyond that again another hundred-and-fifty, two hundred, feet for the first ascent.

 

- - - o O o - - -

 

We’ve now moved on to Chunuk Bair, the highest point on the peninsula and, accordingly, very windy - so this is no doubt recording badly.  It is the point where Mustafa Kemal set up his command post and from which he said the battle would be won or lost.  And its notable that during the battle the New Zealanders captured this hill and held it for some time.  And it’s on this very point that stands the memorial to the New Zealand soldiers. 

 And close by an imposing statue of Mustafa Kemal mounted on an enormous plinth, surrounded by native pine trees.  There’s one vendor of wares.  Down the slope are a number of trenches that have been reconstructed.  The view is superb.  Down below, the western side is an extensive plain, many trees down the slopes.  Further on, steep escarpments, tree covered.

 

Further beyond, the blue sea in a lovely shallow curved bay.  From the distance white sands and, further away to the northwest, Sulva Bay the site of the second British landing, in August 1915.

 

From this high point at Chunuk Bair it’s possible not only to see the Aegean where the landings took place but also the Dardanelles, the objective.  This is the only spot from which the Allied forces ever saw the Dardanelles.

Further down the hill we are now at the memorial to the 57^th regiment of the Turkish army, the one commanded by Mustafa Kemal and the regiment responsible for the Turkish victory on the peninsula.  Unlike the Allied memorials which are massive stone monoliths, this one is open, with arches on four sides and three levels, rising to a conical point like a bell tower.  And down the slopes in front of it there are gravestones, memorial plaques to some hundreds of the members of the regiment who perished.  The one piece of information on the headstones that’s readily clear to all observers is the age of each soldier at the time of death - mostly 19, 20, 21; the oldest I’ve seen is 27,

Tape 2, side 2

 

but all young men.  We just stopped at a small New Zealand cemetery called Quinn’s Post, specifically to look for a great uncle of Hamish on our tour.  And among the hundred or so graves we found it very quickly, and Hamish has been able to take some photos, and others have been taken of him standing beside the marker.

 

- - - o O o - - -

 

Now, I think this is our final stop.  We’re at Lone Pine. 

 This is the point of the most significant Australian attack, and the site of serious fighting - 2200 Australian dead and 4000 Turkish dead on this hill - now the site of an enormous memorial cairn, and a memorial wall engraved with names; and there is indeed a lone pine, quite a handsome tree.  I’d always had this mind’s eye picture of a gnarled and aged specimen, but it stands about thirty feet, the first branch about twelve feet up, and the crown mostly quite uniform and round, rather like a mushroom.  Better still, rather like a broccoli stalk.

 

We’re very fortunate today in that there are so few people, just our bus-load and one other bus-load of about the same number.

 

- - - o O o - - -

 

My illusions have just been shattered.  This is not the original tree, it’s a seed from the original just as in Australia there are other offspring; and I’ve no idea how old this one is.  It certainly carries the same significance as if it had been the original.

 

From here we can see the Aegean Sea, but I don’t think we can see Anzac Cove - it’s hidden by the hill itself.  And reading the lists of names on the large wall, David has just by chance noticed two soldiers’ deaths recorded with the name of Weeks, and wonders whether there were some remote ancestors, previously unknown to him, who died at Gallipoli.

 

- - - o O o - - -

 

We have now stopped, our last stop before we go to the boat ferry to cross to Asia, to the Anatolian - eastern - part of Turkey.  This stop is at a - what’s described as - small museum with a number of artefacts taken from the battlefields.  In front of it is a large paved forecourt with further Turkish memorials, I think to the Turkish naval forces.  There’s nothing translated into English here so I can’t be sure.

 

Just when I wanted the wind to be active it seems to have died down.  The reason for my change of heart is that this spot is surrounded by pine trees of the lone pine variety, and the wind whistling through them gives an eerie effect - not that there’s much eerie on a beautifully sunny day like today.

 

As I wander I see more reconstructed trenches, and the thing that’s surprising me - in contrast to the trenches traversed by Mel Gibson and Mark Lee - is that they’re only between three and four feet deep. 

 These, I guess, must have been the fighting trenches as distinct from the trenches used as lines of communication between outposts.  You’d certainly have to keep your head down in one of these.  The amount of wood logs necessary to build twenty feet of trenches, based on what I see before me, would amount to fifty lengths of pine tree.  So, if the peninsula was heavily wooded before the attack it most certainly was denuded by the time the occupying force had been here for a few weeks.  I must check to see whether timber was actually brought to Gallipoli by the navy.  I haven’t been able to find out - and I’m not prepared to plough through C.E.W. Bean’s comprehensive history.  But a final word on Gallipoli.  The Australian War Memorial has estimated the number of lives lost through the nine months Dardanelles campaign:  New Zealand 2701, Indian 7594, Australian 8709, French 9874, British 21255, Turkish 86692.  Read and weep.

 

To be continued..........

Gary Andrews

 

BARCELONA/FRANCE/TURKEY – TRAVEL DIARY 2003 - PART 3 of 7

 Transcript of Tape-recorded Diary

 

PART 3 of 7

 

On Monday we visited the town of Luzech.  We’d passed through here on our way to Duravel on Saturday and it looked interesting, but when we got there on Monday everything, literally everything, was closed.  It seems the custom is that so many shops and towns are open for business on Sunday and that they have a closed day on Monday; and with no bustle of people Luzech didn’t seem so exciting after all.  Then we were back to Prayssac - a town much closer to Duravel, closer to where we’re staying.  It wasn’t busy either, but it seemed much more pleasant.  Lots of flowers, both in hanging baskets and in street pots.  We did some shopping at the supermarket, which was open, and then home for lunch.

 

The supermarkets we’ve visited haven’t been nearly as large as the ones at home, but pretty large nonetheless, and I suppose they’re built to serve the needs of the local community.  They have what to us are two irritating features.  Some of them - although not all - have this requirement that you weigh your own fruit and vegetables and seal the plastic bag with the barcoded sticker that comes out of the scales.  So long as you know that this is the routine it’s not so bad.  But pity help the stranger who arrives at the checkout with bags of greengroceries that haven’t been pre-priced.  The other irritating feature is the scarcity of checkout operators.  There always seem to be uncomfortably long queues.  The operators sit at their desks - they don’t stand - and the operators do not fill the plastic bags.  So, there’s always a scramble on the external side of the cashier while the customer is filling bags.  If the customer has had a very large trolley-full of groceries there’s often a delay, with the next customer unable to be served while the bench beyond the cashier still has on it the goods of the previous customer.  Bloody inefficient so far as we can see, and it’s clear that Australia has world’s best practice.

 

After lunch Anne and Gary off to visit and to stay overnight with the Gautiers, the friends of Judy and Wayne Russell.  [Wayne was a pilot with Ansett, and during the troubles had been able to get work based at Toulouse.  Not a happy time, but French provincial living was a great experience for the family.]  The Gautiers live in a farming community - a small hamlet called Les Fihols which is off to the west about halfway between Montauban and Toulouse.  [Actually, to the south-east of Duravel.]  We’d rung Elysabeth the previous Friday from St.-Paulet-de-Caisson and made the arrangements, and there’d been an expectation that we were coming via Villemur-sur-Tarn the nearest big town, and we’d ring from there and get directions.  In the event we travelled a different way and headed for the town of Le Born.  We knew this name as the place where the Russell kids went to school when they stayed in France.  All was fine up to there, but at Le Born we found that we had no signal for the mobile phone; and then when we tried the pay phone we just couldn’t get through.  I found out later that even though we were ringing a number just a couple of kilometres distant, in rural France it’s necessary to put the zero in front of the eight-digit number.  But there was a lady in the street, and we showed her our piece of paper with the Gautiers’ address on it - and she knew Elysabeth, and gave us directions.

 

At this stage we still didn’t realise that Les Fihols was a group of houses, a tiny village - thirty people in fact - and we’re looking for a property with this name on the gatepost.  But, again, there was a lady in the street and when we mentioned Elysabeth’s name she knew who we were.  Elysabeth had said that Judy’s brother and sister-in-law were coming to stay, and so with a big smile she just showed us through the gate - it was just the next house down - and we’d arrived.

The Gautiers live in a delightful house that was once the barn or storehouse for the farm.  It’s been converted over the years by Bertrand into a fully functional family home.  Each of the four sons has a room upstairs, and they have plenty of privacy to do their study - although at the moment two of the sons are away studying in nearby centres and come home only at weekends.

 

Right next door to the Gautiers’ home is Elysabeth’s old family home.  It has been occupied by five generations of her family, although her own parents never lived there; they’ve always lived in Toulouse.  But Elysabeth and Bertrand have chosen to live in the country and to live on the old family farm.  Much of the property was sold off by the grandfather some years ago but they still have a number of hectares including their own area of forest where they cut their own timber for firewood.  They have no farm animals so the space around them is garden and parkland and meadow.

 

Anne and Gary stayed overnight in the old family home.  A substantial property - more than 150 years old - fully furnished with all of the old family furniture and photographs and memorabilia.

 

Later in the day Elysabeth took us to visit the farm where the Russells had stayed - for three months, four months - some five years ago, and she described this as the biggest farm in the area - 400 hectares and operated by two families.  The scale of the farming in this part of France - and everywhere we’ve seen - is totally different from the scale of operations in Australia.

 

Later we visited Le Born and the school where Emily and Jessie had attended along with the two younger Gautier boys.  There were so few children at the school at that time that the four of them were picked up by taxi every morning.  And now the school is closed.  Part of it is being used as the local town hall, a rather grand description for the centre that attends to the administration of what is a very small community.

 

Later again Elysabeth dashed off to pick up Matthew from school.  Matthew is aged fourteen; and then later Silvan arrived home from high school at Montauban.  Silvan is seventeen.  And then later again Bertrand arrived home from Toulouse.  Bertrand works for the French electricity network and it is his job to buy electricity into the national grid.  One source of supply, I think, is the small hydro stations that we’ve seen along the major rivers.  This year there may be difficulty in obtaining supply - the river levels are down.  It’s been such a hot stifling summer, with weeks of temperatures above 40 degrees.  There was a break in the weather a couple of weeks ago but this came in the form of a severe hail storm which, among other things, smashed sixty-odd windows in the building where Elysabeth works part-time in Villemur-sur-Tarn.  But there’s green everywhere as a result, and this wasn’t the case a month back; and the temperature hasn’t returned to former levels.  We’ve had an absolutely delightful week of temperatures around 30 degrees.

 

We had a late barbeque, with Bertrand cooking the most enormous sausages, about a foot long and an inch-and-a-half through, one with duck the other with pork.  And then after dinner Silvan entertained us on his didgeridoo, and Bertrand - with not much persuasion - brought out his wind instruments.  In addition to working full-time for the electricity company, Bertrand teaches music and specifically the playing of ancient folk instruments.  He plays a number of straight flutes, and one with a reed like an oboe, but his particular specialty seems to be instruments similar to bagpipes.  The first he played had a huge drone pipe and a sack made from a complete goat skin - a much larger instrument than conventional bagpipes.  And then he played a much smaller one with the bag made from the skin of a kid.  High pitched and shrill.  But fascinating to see him play and to hear the ancient tunes.

 

Next morning, with Elysabeth, an hour-and-a-half walk through the countryside and the woods accompanied by her beautiful Labrador - a one-year-old dog with creamy fawn hide, full of energy, and a beautiful nature.

 Down past what Elysabeth described as a river but which was no more than a metre wide and half a metre deep.  Quite dry.  But in a normal year it runs well; and on one day a year they have a day out for the whole of the Les Fihols populace fishing for trout which the Gautiers have previously placed in the stream.

 

The same village once a year holds a festival for a whole weekend; and last year with friends and relatives there were more than 200 people who sat down to the outdoors dinner on the Saturday night.  A feature of the event is the recommissioning each year of the freestanding baker’s oven and the cooking of the bread by one of the residents who was once the baker in Villemur-sur-Tarn.

 

After breakfast we went into Villemur [population 5000] and during a leisurely morning we saw the King’s granary - the granary built for the famous Henry IV.  [........not, though, famous with Australians, unless they’ve studied French history.  Henry IV lived 1553 to 1610.  He was king of Navarre from 1572 and doubled as king of France from 1589; and was very involved in the Protestant versus Catholic nonsense, initially as the leader of the Hugenots (the Protestants).  The encyclopaedias go on for a page with his religious wars, and his ultimate restoration of stability to France - after switching to Catholicism, his second back-flip.  He did, however, in 1598, proclaim religious freedom.  He is responsible for one of the all-time memorable quotes: “There should be a chicken in every peasant’s pot every Sunday.”  Columbia conclude their profile: “Numerous anecdotes and legends about Henry bear witness to his gallantry, his Gallic wit, and his concern for the common people, which have made him probably the most popular king among the French.”  He was assassinated by a Catholic fanatic. And what is the connection that Henri Carte had with Villemur?  And why the granary?  I haven't been able to find out!  German filmmaker, Joe Baier, is making a film of the life of Henri Carte (as of July 2004).]  And we saw the town hall, and the old mill - which contains a most impressive display of old photographs, and a large model of the town, and other items of interest.  Then up a nearby hill to take in the whole panorama of the town and of the river Tarn which, to a casual eye, looked significantly larger than the Lot where we’re staying.  [The Tarn, about 375 kilometres long, has a mean flow of 140 cubic metres per second.  The Lot is about 480 kilometres long; I have not been able to ascertain its mean flow.]

 

After lunch, farewell to Elysabeth and on our way back to the mill at Duravel.  Arrived back around 4.00 p.m. and then, later in the evening, out on the river canoeing.  Jerome Wittaveen [our host at the mill house] has said that the river is fine for swimming and certainly it’s not dangerous - it flows very, very slowly, but it smells somewhat and there’s a lot of weed and Anne would much prefer to swim in the pool at the house.

 

As I speak it’s about seven-fifteen in the evening of Wednesday the 17^th.  Faye and David are down on the grass on recliner lounges by the wall at the river’s edge, catching the last of the sun.  Anne is on the balcony; and the four of us are enjoying our pre-dinner drinks.  The day was spent in an all-day trip to St.-Cirq-Lapopie, an ancient and picturesque village an hour west through Cahors.  We had delicious salad lunches, so won’t be having a big meal this evening, and since our return we’ve been relaxing with Anne and Gary once again taking to the river for half an hour of gentle paddling.  A lot more practice needed.  It’s not that we can’t paddle, but we certainly can’t steer.

 St.-Cirq is a major tourist spot, being one of those villages in France that is categorised as “historic” and which has building restrictions requiring any alterations to be in keeping with the architecture and building materials of the town.  But it was very quiet.  Mostly French, the occasional English people - we even heard an Australian accent in the distance - but hardly any Americans.  In one shop we discovered a painter, an Australian painter, Nerida de Jong, who spends some months each year in St.-Cirq but lives mostly near Byron Bay.  While business has been good for her, she confirms that American-sourced tourism is much diminished from what it once was.

Jerome and his wife are away today, and yesterday evening he said “just leave everything open and feel free to light the candles on the stairs if you wish”.  This is a lovely touch.  Every night we go out to find that he’s lit these large candles, several of them up the staircase, the grand stone staircase leading to our apartments; and I’ll most certainly be lighting them later when it gets dark. 

Tape 2, side 1

 

We’ve just now returned from the Friday morning market in Prayssac.  [Cahors is the nearest major centre to Duravel.  Population 50000; due east.  Both are on the Lot River.  On the way upstream to Cahors we passed through Puy-l’Eveque, Prayssac and Castelfanc (and Luzech, if we wanted to cross to the south of the River).]  We’d gone to town for a bit of last minute shopping, and to post some postcards, and to our delight found that it was market day; and around the church and the square and a couple of adjoining streets the stalls were ranged on both sides of the roads. 

No fabrics this time, no bric-a-brac, nothing but food.  A couple of fishmongers doing very good business.  Delicatessen-type stalls.  Some vendors of nothing but cheese - when I say cheese I mean twenty or so varieties. 

Lots of fruit and vegetables, much of it grown locally, I’m sure.  Some breads, displays of spices, 

and an amazing stall with a dozen or so different types of olives.

Not much attention to keeping off the sun or the occasional fly, but clearly this is the way the local people do their serious food shopping.  Sure, there’s a local supermarket, plenty of packaged and bottled goods, but this is the serious food.  A couple of vendors selling live chooks, and among the meats in one stall we saw rabbits dressed but complete with head, and sold by the weight.

 

So here I am back in Duravel at the mill, in the shade, in the company of trees including an enormous cedar perhaps sixty, seventy, feet.  A perfect cloudless day and a wafting breeze.  We’re leading the lives of lotus-eaters, and I’m reminded of that by the marvellous book I bought yesterday at Monpazier

- a history of the first thirty-five years of Penguin Books, containing some wonderful exchanges of correspondence between the publishers and their authors and, in particular, those authors who were translating the ancient Greek and Latin writers.

 

Yesterday was a sentimental journey in a way because we traversed the country where we’d been previously, six years ago, in the valley of the Dordogne River.  Monpazier, although not on the River, was our first stop and a place we well remembered - a bastide - for the wonderful tablecloths and fabrics bought there last time.  Six years ago, although picturesque, Monpazier was a quiet town.  Most of the populace were in mourning and attending the funeral of a local lad.  This time it was market day and the place was alive.  In addition to all the food items the Monpazier market had a number of vendors of hardware, and local ceramics and pottery, and a couple of bookstalls - one of which sold nothing but English language books!  The first we’ve seen in France other than the art books at galleries.  There I bought the Penguin book, and the others too restocked for the next couple of weeks.  And the fabric shop of six years ago was still there with the same lady, and both Anne and Faye bought some tablecloth material.

 

On to the Dordogne, and strolls through Belves and St.-Cyprien, and then La Roque Gageac, that spectacular village clinging to the cliff above the River.  At La Roque there were large numbers of people, certainly the biggest crowd we’ve seen anywhere in the provinces, and maybe the tourist trade is not so moribund as we thought.  The tourist boats, the bateaux, seemed to be filled and there were lots of canoes on the river.

A leisurely drive home, and we finished the day once again with a few hands of Rickety Kate.

 

It’s exactly four weeks since we left home and the last two weeks, first in the Valley of the Rhone and then in the Valley of the Lot, have been leisurely and restful with weather to die for.  The first week in Barcelona the weather was fine - somewhat hotter - but very steamy, and a little less comfortable for us given our hectic tourist pace.  Actually, we felt it most on the day of departure because we were wearing jackets and I was in long pants and had on the backpack, and we were lugging the cases.  It wasn’t so bad the day we arrived because we were caseless!  Throughout the week it was certainly shorts and casual gear.  Once the cases arrived on that first Saturday Anne and Judy were out doing some supermarket shopping - we needed provisions - and then later Anne and Gary walked around the neighbourhood and Parc Joan Miro.  Miro, an important twentieth century painter and sculptor, was a native Catalonian and the nearby park had been named for him.  It contains a huge skittle-shaped statue covered in mosaic tiles [A Miro work from 1983 named Donna i Ocell (Woman and Bird)] - sad to say looking very tired with a number of the tiles having flaked off, and rather in need of some restoration. [This recent photograph suggests that that restoration may have occurred.]

The park itself is not a conventional garden park but one on a couple of levels with gravelled walks and formal pitches for basketball and other more confined games.  The park in fact seems to be having a bit of a makeover because they’re constructing an extensive underground carpark and doing it by open cut.  The park that’s put back on top could be quite different from what was there before.

 

After dinner we walked to the nearby Placa d’Espanya.  A very large square-cum-roundabout with the centre island occupied by a massive ornamental statue and fountain, crowned about a hundred feet up with a flaming cauldron, not lit all the time but lit at night-time a couple of nights of the week.

  But the main sight that greeted us was the virtual avenue of fountains leading up a sharp incline, the Avinguda Maria Cristina, to the Montjuic hill - and at the top the National Museum of Catalonian Art.  Flanking this view are two curved buildings, exhibition centres, and between them, and on either side of the avenue, two tall brick towers, copies of the Campanile - the bell tower - in St. Mark’s Square, Venice.

 

All of this - the Placa d’Espanya, the imposing fountain in the centre with the three sculptures representing trade, industry and shipping, the exhibition centres (there are more of them further up the Avenue), the Venetian towers, and the palace at the top of the hill that houses the art exhibition - all of this was built for the 1929 International Exhibition, a massive expression of self-confidence by the city.  The fountains exist at several terrace levels up the Avenue and, like the flame atop the square, operate only at nights, and only weekends, I think.  The principal fountain - circular - is really a series of fountains and the patterns change continually, and the lighting effects change continually.  A most spectacular experience, and a great discovery for our first night.

 

We were at the Placa d’Espanya again on the Tuesday morning for our first day on the tourist bus, and our first stop, just up the Montjuic hill, was the Poble Espanyol.  This is a quote authentic Spanish town unquote with dozens of buildings built in the styles of different regions and different eras of Spanish history - and this too was built specially for the 1929 International Exhibition.  It wasn’t clear whether people actually live in the upper storeys of the houses, but the lower floors were certainly occupied, each of them being a shop of some sort, or more likely an artist’s studio.  A most interesting complex, and fortunately for us we were there early in the day and had the place virtually to ourselves.

 

We next alighted from the bus at the Olympic Stadium.  Barcelona hosted the 1992 Olympics and this main arena is a fine example of sports architecture.  Along one side there’s an imposing façade that the guide books tell us was built for the 1936 “alternative” Olympics, an event that never occurred because of the onset of the Spanish Civil War that year.

 

The swimming stadium was further down the hill and, although open for business, was not open for tourist inspection.  And further up the hill was the diving pool with the pool built on the hillside and the diving boards and platforms seeming to stick out into space.  And who can forget the signature images of the 1992 Olympics with the divers suspended in air,  with the city of Barcelona down below?

A nice picture of the Montjuic area near where we were staying is obtained from the Eyewitness Guide to Barcelona and Catalonia:  The hill of Montjuic, rising to 213 metres (699 feet) above the commercial port on the south side of the city, is Barcelona’s biggest recreation area.  Its museums, art galleries, gardens and nightclubs, make it a popular place in the evenings as well as during the day.  There was probably a Celtiberian settlement here before the Romans built a temple to Jupiter on their Mons Jovis, which may have given Montjuic its name - though another theory suggests that a Jewish cemetery on the hill inspired the name Mount of the Jews.  The absence of a water supply meant that there were few buildings on Montjuic until the castle was erected on the top in 1640.  The hill finally came into its own as the site of the 1929 International Fair.  With great energy and flair, buildings were erected all over the north side, with the grand Avinguda de la Reina Maria Cristina, lined with huge exhibition halls, leading into it from the Plaça de’Espanya.  In the middle of the avenue is the Font Mágica (Magic Fountain), which is regularly illuminated in colour.  Above it is the Palau Nacional, home of the city’s historic art collections.  The Poble Espanyol is a crafts centre housed in copies of buildings from all over Spain.  The last great surge of building on Montjuic was for the 1992 Olympic Games, which left Barcelona with international-class sports facilities.

 

 

Next, down from Montjuic hill to sea level and to the Monument a Colom.

This is the dominating monument to Christopher Columbus.  It’s sixty metres high, cast iron on a stone plinth, and it’s possible - although we didn’t tackle it - to climb inside to the top.  The Colom was built for another universal exhibition, the one of 1888, and apparently at that time the Catalans considered Columbus to be a Catalan rather an Italian. Regardless, the Colom has a most important commemorative purpose: it marks the spot where Columbus stepped ashore in 1493 after returning from his discovery of America.  [I actually dictated 1893, which would have made Columbus’ round trip a journey of Flying Dutchman proportions.]

At the side of the square is the maritime museum, housed in buildings that were once the shipyards where the great galleys were built - the galleys that made Barcelona an important seafaring power.  Judy relaxed while Anne and Gary toured the museum for an hour or so.  This is one of the most impressive museums I’ve seen, and I could have spent further hours there, and this despite the fact that none of the signage is in English.  There’s a detailed history of seafaring in these parts; there’s a rebuilt war galley;

 there are displays of the history of trade, particularly in the 19^th century; there’s a display on the history of lighthouses; and so on.  Very, very impressive.

The Columbus column is at one end of Barcelona’s most famous street, La Rambla.  We’d already seen the column and walked La Rambla on the Sunday night.  That had been at about ten o’clock.  We’d caught the Metro to the station at the top end of La Rambla, at Placa de Catalunya, and walked the length to the column and the waterfront.  This was late Sunday night and La Rambla was throbbing.  Thousands of people.  Street artists, entertainers, food, drink, young people, old people, and exciting indeed.

Earlier in the evening we’d walked from home to the area near the Parc de l’Espanya Industrial where there was a local festival.  Street stalls and a lot of eating in the streets; and we had a meal there.  But the festival part of proceedings seemed to be mostly finished, so our timing wasn’t quite right.

 

To be continued.........

Gary Andrews