Le Belle Italiani 17 August

The original purpose of my journey has been achieved.

 Yesterday I climbed half-way to the Refuge des Merveilles and discovered I had dropped something of great significance on the path. I asked if I could leave my heavy rucksack at a tiny, rustic cottage where lively group of Italians were laying out table cloths and chopping wood.

 Fortunately my lost object was only a few meters down the path as I wasn't enchanted by the idea of retracing so many of my hard earned steps.

 

The Italians, so pleased with my success, invited me for coffee, pastis, then bruschetta made with organically grown tomatoes and olive oil from Silvio's garden, wine, chunks of Parmesan, more coffee and Danish biscuits. I was shown photos of Silvio with his prize trout, invited to draw pictures for the guest book and told I must borrow the key to stay whenever I liked.

After a couple hours of convoluted tales of love and life conveyed in a kind of Anglo-Franco-Italian charades, we climbed  another 1 1/2 hours to the Refuge where we exchanged addresses, kisses and heart shaped stones.

St John Baptist's Reliquary

Peak Ice Cream

My "date" has stood me up, although she did ring the cafe and pass on her regrets.
After waiting 20 minutes: editing photos, smiling at babies and instinctively looking up at every passing motorbike, I could hardly leave without ordering something. Several times today I remembered that my original plan upon waking and before the "date" had been arranged, was to take the bus down the mountain to the coast. I wanted go to Ventimiglia solely to eat Italian ice cream, so I ordered the smallest ice cream on the menu. Within minutes my very obliging waitress placed in front of me a glass of water containing a long handled spoon and a tall sundae glass filled with ice cream crowned with a huge peak of tinned whipped cream which temporarily supported one of those long tubular biscuits.

I'm not an aficionado of whipped cream in any form, so I excavated around it, careful not to offend the young woman who had constructed it. The chocolate ice cream was delightfully rich, the coffee contained crunchy roasted beans and I choked noisily on the biscuit. After waving to an Italian baby and watching two older women, who were probably my age, light up as their lemon sorbets with vodka and a frilly red metallic pompon arrived at their table, the whipped cream had de-aerated and was a tiny pool of white at the bottom of my glass.




 

Everywhere is the rushing sound of water: the river beside the campsite, tactfully creating a drone over the intimacies of life, the lavoirs, fountains and open grilled drains. My ears have tuned into this siren's call as I wander through the narrow passages which smell of  garlic sauces, echo with cluttering with pans and draped with washing.

 

This instinctive commune with nature's abundance and generosity: drinking from cupped hands, placing leaves to spin in the current, splashing water over a sun-parched face, watering plants, bathing dogs, the maiden voyage of a red plastic sailboat, this is the life of water tamed and channeled into public spaces. Here it is overt: friend and ally, functional and aesthetic, meeting place, workplace, playground, source of life.

 

Lavoir in Le Place du Trois Fountaines

Barjols, has a strong pull for me and I always plan my journeys to include a visit. Originally a town with many convents, these were later replaced by leather factories, which are now either long walls of smashed windows or unpretentiously funky blocks of artists' studio-residences.

The requisite water requirements of the industry were easily met as Barjols meekly acknowledges 30 fountains. Le Place du Trois Fountaines, with its locals' cafes shaded under plane trees, is true to its name with three fountains and a lavoir within a 40 metre space.

                                                        In Le Place du Trois Fountaines

This was not how I was expecting it to be.... The lack of wifi access.
But I am here in the Tourist office at Entrevaux, another medieval town with towers and ramparts and ice cream. This is not to sound sarcastic or judgmental in any way. The French can do medieval very well. They aren't adverse to leaving shutters unpainted, walls unplastered, windows broken because the important things are in place. The patina remains and reveals the true history.

 I am really on my way to my next destination and I am procrastinating as the road will be tight hair- pin bends and I am a meandering sort of rider.

I stopped here simply because I wanted to walk across the 11th century stone drawbridge over the river Var. My stop was rewarded further when I visited an unpretentious 17th century church where I found the relics of St. John the Baptist encased in a golden, life size portrait bust.

Earlier today, I was in Le Moustier Ste. Marie, another delightful medieval village which precariously clung to a rock face. It had a church, initially founded in the 10th century, dedicated to the Virgin Mary perched even higher on a chunk of rocky outcrop. It was approximately 200 steps, but some of them were very long steps, to the top. A service is held here on the birthday of the Virgin, 8th of September, celebrating her miracles. Parents would bring their mort-nes, their still- born babies, to be baptised which enabled them to be buried in sanctified ground. News got around that sometimes this ceremony would bring them back to life which started a new pilgrimage destination.

The numerous fountains generously poured out sweet cold water. One fountain, Le Diane, was where the musicians of the village would meet for a week before the birthday. They would tease the town's people and play the same music over and over again. Then lead the march up the mountain in the dark for the birthday Mass that started at 4 am.

Alas the tourist office is shutting.

Brothers at the fountain in Lafare

Generally, I don't do emotional partings. 1st August. Malaucene

Generally I don't do emotional partings. However, in anticipation, I dragged out my packing and postponed my departure by several hours by chatting with my campsite neighbours. Some conversations were in English, like with the stone mason from the Lake District, who can't look at the landscape without eyeing up each stone and assessing its qualities with a practical aim in mind.  Which, in this rocky area, he admits is exhausting.

I also spoke excellent English with the half Turkish/ half German psychotherapist who specialises in trauma release. Some of her clients, sadly, but not surprisingly, come to process their well buried, and toxic, experiences from WW2. Coincidentally her husband is a professional juggler and they are off, after a quick cycle up Ventoux, to the International Juggling Convention in Toulouse. The coincidence being, this is where my daughter and her boyfriend were cycling to when our paths crossed last week in a Butlins style campsite south of Nantes.

I also passed some time in French with the keen Belgian cyclists who speak very slowly for me and the older Frenchman who once owned a vintage motorbike and made animated references to Brigit Bardot.

Nevertheless it was very emotional because this landscape looks, feels, sounds, and smells like "home".

Only a few km from the campsite I called in at the Abbaye de Madeleine to buy bread made by the monks and sit in their church to shed a few tears for the sheer tender beauty of life.  Then filled my water bottle and set off.

In theory my route was a tangle of tiny winding roads, which if I kept re-aligning north west would eventually get me to Le Puy en Valey. The Abbaye de Madeleine is pressed up between the Dentilles, which I "translated" to mean teeth because the valley did look a bit like the inside of a giant's mouth.
 I stopped to unfold my map and get my bearings. Up the road by the fountain was a raucous clamor. A crowd of what looked like Boy Scouts in fancy dress were chasing about, laughing and splashing water over each other.

It transpired that they were monks from the monastery I had just visited. Four times a year they walk from 8am to 8pm up the Dentilles singing in churches along the way. The rocks looked a challenge, one which might have been compounded by the fact that the monks wake at 3 am to say their morning prayers. Or maybe this made it easier.

I chatted with Brother Francois de Salles
about "Le Triumph!" : how many cylinders did Louise have? how many cc? did she handle well on corners with so much baggage?

And when I asked how long he had been a brother he answered, after considerable hesitation, 30 years.

" But you look so young ",  I replied.

" In the monastery,  there is no time."

He laughed and Brother Edmund and Brother John the Beloved joined him.

One of the brothers up the road shouted out "allons-y" and led the way with a small group.
The rest of the brothers reluctantly moved away from the fountain taking advantage of their final opportunity to squirt water before refilling their bottles for the last time. As they passed me, one brother closed his eyes and shook his head, " ils sont juste de grands enfants!"

                                                           the monks at the fountain