Picture: Stone table, St. Antonin and market
June 19, 2011 Dimanche
A Very Happy Wedding Day to Eliza and Erik Saturday! We thought of you two a lot, your families, and your friends. We wish you many many happy years together.
I wanted to get the 6 saucisson for 10 euros deal so we went back to St Antonin-Noble-Val by the scenic route. Ha. It’s all scenic. This took us by the standing stones near Vouer: six or eight very big narrow stones set on edge in a square and two even bigger thicker stones laid flat across. The total thing is about 5’ high and the size of three big picnic tables. JP thinks the table top was once one stone but sometime in the intervening 20,000 years, it cracked. Mind you, we don’t know any of this, but it is set right on top of a broad open space and has a tremendous view off west and north, it looks Very Old, and there are said to be standing stones in the area. So why not? I’ll try to find out and issue a correction later. We drove through beautiful land, past some recently sheared sheep and suddenly came out on a precipice. And there was the only guard rail I’ve seen in France: a solid stone edging about 2’ high. Beyond it and way, way down was the Aveyron river. Farm fields crept part of the way up the far slope. The road hugged the cliffs we were going down and you just know there are many as yet undiscovered caves around there, undoubtedly filled with wonderful paintings. This landscape must go straight up through Lascaux, about 80 miles north.
When we arrived, we needed a bathroom, naturally. JP found one unmarked near the Marie (Town Hall). The first room had a wall for men with an electric eye that sprayed a film of water on the wall when you backed away. He found this quite satisfactory. The stall beyond had a porcelain bowl set flush (so to speak) in the cement floor with a place for your feet. I am not as young as I was when I last saw this style.
We found the sausage table but not the seller. On the second or third return, I saw two women talking at another table and distinctly heard, “Oh, my god”. Thus we met Sarah, an English woman from Bath who has been living here for 20 years making beer with her husband. We needed to leave so she said she’d take the money for her friend who had gone off for morning coffee with his friends. We picked out the sausages and additionally ended up with 6 bottles of genuine British stout with those porcelain snap plunger tops. Her kids are defending their title in some big race going on today, on their way to being in the Olympics, she hopes. On our way back to the car, we got two kinds of Pate, cherries, plums, and a rice and saffron with sausage hot dish for lunch, and 2 croissants, a baguette, three bags of olives, a map and a birdwhistle for the kids. Light hearts, empty pockets and home we went.
In Tonnac we looked for Gite (pronounced Jeet.: housekeeping holiday cabins.) There are some but we couldn’t find where. Check the internet, we were told.
This would be a good time to rectify my snarkiness about Cordes. It is the walled town on the top of a hill further down the valley and is visible from many points around. It is straight out of the Tres Riches Heures of The Duc Du Barry, a medieval manuscript illuminated with the months of the year, the fairytale illustrator’s dream and inspiration. I would have swooned in a heap if I had seen it when I was 11. It is a big draw for the French too. Busloads of people come each weekend, and the car parking spots are often full. It was built in 1222 as the first bastide. Bastides were new cities/towns planned by the landowners to concentrate the dispersed families into units easier to administer, (read “tax”). They didn’t want the high born because they would refuse to pay, or the serfs because they were already being ground down. But the people in the middle were enticed to come. Normally the concept was used on flat ground where grids were laid out, and the value of available property maximized. Each person was given a bit of land outside the town “sufficient to ‘light a fire’- that is, to support a family.” Cordes was a combination of this and a walled defensive position. There was religious ferment at the time. The Cathars from the south were making big inroads with rich and poor alike. They were dualists who believed in the good God in heaven who dealt with the invisible and spiritual and the wicked God, on earth who created visible matter. So they had no truck with the incarnation of God in Christ, the Old Testament, the worship of the cross and sacraments or, for that matter, the Roman Catholic church. Well, you can just imagine! Hence the Albigensian Crusade coming down like a ton of bricks from the north, raping, pillaging and burning in the name of the True Christ. In Cordes three inquisitors from the north were tossed down the well in response to the burning of one of their number. Now, the well in Cordes is up on the top in the old covered market. Dry in recent centuries, it has been studied a few times in the last hundred or more years, each time with better and better measuring devices and machinery. It now appears that this well was originally 114 meters deep, around 350 feet? That puts it below the local water table and insures that there was a reserve of water, “…modest but reliable, in times of siege..” (quotes are all from the wonderful guide book for Southwest France) I guess collapsed rubble from the inside facing may have filled it in above the water line later on. Nevertheless, it is one of those engineering marvels that makes us all scratch our heads in wonder. How on earth did they accomplish such a feat 900 years ago? And more, what lamebrain would toss three fellows into such a water supply? But promoters repeat the story and so have I. In Cordes’ recent reincarnation, artists have moved in and striven valiantly to revitalize it with its twisting alleys, many gardens, and hugely appealing architecture. Go Google it. Cordes sur Ciel. The first listing will be images and you can see I have not exaggerated its charm. If you are anywhere near here ever, you should come see for yourself.
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