Where does inspiration live when you’re in a hurry?
Happy birthday to Eileen! Well, it was Auntie Eileen’s birthday on June 28th, so we have made it Eileen The Campervan’s official birthday too and she is all of fourteen today. Her birthday started with a drive across the flat lands of the southern end of the Tarn. We passed fields of corn, potatoes, wheat, early sunflowers, large round bales of hay, farms and small villages on route to Castres. Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony swirled out of the CD player and it felt like he could have had this scenery in mind, when he wrote his sixth symphony. Castres looked like it could be a place worth visiting, but we wanted to spend a day in Albi; so we pushed on further north.
We managed to get one of the few remaining spots in the campervan car-park quite close to the Cathedral; that is, when we managed to find said car park. When we walked in to the massive Cathédrale Saint Cecile, a Sunday morning service was taking place, so we stayed while the choir sang one hymn and then quietly stepped back out in to the hot sunshine. We definitely needed to go back later after the service, to take a closer look. We picked up a map from the tourist office and ambled around the old historic heart of the city. It is becoming harder and harder to believe there are so many mediaeval buildings still standing in France, still lived in, still used and it makes England thoroughly modern in comparison.
After a nice lunch with a good view across the Place Saint Cécile at La Berbie, we crossed the square to Le Palais de la Berbie. The palace now houses the Museum of Henri Toulouse Lautrec, who was born to a very rich family in Albi. Look, it’s been a while since we had a fix of an art gallery, and this one contains over a thousand pieces of artworks, though not all by Mr Lautrec. But it does hold the largest body of his work and considering he died at the age of 37 from syphilis and alcoholism, he was certainly a prolific painter. It was also lovely to be able to wander around inside a lot of the palace, with its views of the cathedral and the gardens through the many windows.
Before returning to the cathedral we walked the Pont Vieux across the River Tarn for a view back on the cathedral and palace and then meandered through endless streets of ancient buildings. The cathedral itself is most unusual and absolutely splendid. The exterior looks like an enormous fortress, or a castle and it is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world that is constructed in bricks. The interior is an amazing contrast; a team of 16th C Italian artists covered every surface, walls, ceilings, pillars, etc. with patterns and religious scenes. On the west wall is a massive organ which has 3,500 pipes and below it is a mural depicting punishments for the seven deadly sins. There are naked people being tortured and thrown in to the fires of hell, it’s rather a horrific thing to be looking at in a church, but of course it is fascinating.
Late in the afternoon, we drove on towards Cordes sur Ciel and parked between a daschund and an alsatian at camping Le Moulin de Julien. Haven’t spotted a windmill yet, or Julien, but the swimming pool was again a welcome relief after a day tramping the streets of a mediaeval city in France, in temps +30C. Now we just have to work out how to get the daschund to shut up…….
Cordes sur Ciel, the ‘Roped in the Sky’, was yet another mediaeval village and not one that anybody, old, infirm, disabled, or sick could live in. It was a killer climb, on giant, uneven cobbled passageways in 30°C heat, to reach the tourist information centre at the very top. Goodness knows why they put it up there; we needed the map on the way up! When we tottered and slipped back downhill just after midday, most of the people going up were very red in the face and looked like they would never make it to the peak. But it was marked as a Michelin ‘three-star village’, so you can’t just drive past these places, they have to be visited.
Heading north and west we searched for a good picnic spot, but didn’t manage to find one until we reached the car park beside the Aveyron River at St Antonin-Noble-Val, a curiously named village, but very pretty and definitely worth visiting, despite having only one Michelin star. We feel it was harshly judged; it is far more amenably placed next to the river, no ridiculous heart stopping hike required here. There were still cobbled streets to reconnoitre and incredibly ancient looking buildings to gaze at, but it was a far more pleasant amble. Being a Monday, most of the little art galleries, the church and lots of cafes and shops were closed, but it still seemed a bit more livelier. Perhaps the locals are happier living without daily climbs….?
At 4pm the heat of the day was still increasing and when we checked in to Camping De Bois Redon in Septfonds the thermometer had risen to 34°C inside and outside Eileen. With this continuing heatwave, we are ensuring every campsite we stay at has a swimming pool and we don’t care if it’s heated or not. We threw ourselves straight into the cooling water and then snoozed for an hour in the shade. Neither of us could face cooking and we certainly didn’t need the cooker turned on, so it was a salad outside, an evening spent outside and the fan on all night inside, to enable us to sleep.
On Tuesday with the thermometer creeping up to 37°C the only sensible things to do seemed to be getting the washing done and all dry in an hour, swim in the pool, and blob around under the awning trying to keep cool. We had hoped that Wednesday would be a bit cooler, but it looks like being just as hot for the next bit of our journey north, eeks!
