A white Christmas

Not the snowy kind - this is just frost, but it's pretty in the sunshine. Not as much fun as snow, but also, I suspect, not as cold and wet. It was sunny too, clear blue skies forever.



Here's the Christmas tree, before the present-opening frenzy. We had a great day, just the three of us, playing French monopoly and 'SOS Ouistiti', which is balancing game involving sticks and monkeys. We got lots of lovely pressies - Al gave me a rosewood-handled Laguiole pocket knife engraved with my name and 'Aniane, Noel 2006' on the blade, PLUS a beautiful little gold Langedoc cross. I am very spoilt.

A couple of nights ago we did a Christmas dinner with some friends who were heading out for the holidays. There is a tradition here to have 13 desserts ... it sounded too good to miss, so here's our take on the tradition ...


We have, clockwise from left ... a buche de Noel (Yule log), fresh pineapple and orange slices, marzipan fruit, mendiants from the local chocolatier (these count as 5 - as well as the chocolate they contain two types of nut and two types of dried fruit), ginger snaps from Ikea, dates, almond and blueberry tart, and of course, pavlova!

Here is another local Christmas tradition...


The greenery is sprouted lentils. These came out onto our neighbour's windowsill about 3 weeks ago, and we wondered what they were for. Eventually another neighbour told me that sprouting lentil seeds like this ensures plenty of money for the year ahead - the red ribbon appeared on Christmas Eve, and the plate of greens would have decorated the Christmas table today.

Parking, Lyon style

We watched incredulously as a distinguished looking middle aged man parked his sparkling Peugeot in this tiny space between the red and yellow cars. It was done largely by touch - slowly move backwards until he nudged the yellow car then wheel hard right and forwards a few centimetres until he touched the red etc. Considerate though - before he left he did check that the other two cars had 'enough' room to manoevre themselves out ...

The lights of Lyon

Lyon was beautifully decked out for the season. A bustling Christmas market took care of those spare euros (the vin chaud - warm wine - was very popular!)


The shopping streets in Presqu'ile each had their own style, and many of the displays looked as good in the daytime as at night.
These orange and black creations adorned the exterior of the department store Printemps


These luxuriant metallic bouquets were strung up across one of the main streets


Someone has tied metal leaves onto all the trees lining the Rue de Republique - at night they were lit by small bulbs in the branches.



LOOK at this!!

Great Rivers of France #3 and #4

I've shown you the wild and mysterious Herault, you've seen the glistening Orb. Now, get ready for two watery heavyweights .... (unfortunately viewed through some pretty persistent fog, and yes, it was very cold!)

The Saone


... and the Rhone



The two great rivers of Lyon, the Saone, sourced in Eastern France and the Rhone, flowing from the glaciers of Switzerland, meet and merge in Lyon, and proceed from there to the Mediterranean. They, along with the Fourviere hill, which was ideal for fortification, were probably why people have found the area attractive since before Roman times. The Roman town of Lugdunum was situated on the Fourviere Hill, and there's a park on the hill containing two Roman amphitheatres, along with the remains of the surrounding town.

There's also a Gallo-Roman museum built into the hill, and E and I set out to see all this while Al visited his work colleagues. Unfortunately the day was REALLY foggy, and the fog didn't really lift until well after lunchtime, making it a very cold day. It also meant we couldn't see very far ...

This is the entrance to the park


We went back on Friday with Al to have another look - there was still fog, but not so bad.




The museum was very interesting, with lots of archaeological finds from the immediate area (eg, potters kiln, found at 25 Rue de Riviere, and brought in one piece to the museum). We were really there to see 'Par Toutatis!, the religion of the Gauls' and we weren't disappointed. Lots of gruesome stuff for E - skulls of dead enemies hanging from horses and then annointed in cedar oil and kept in a box, to be taken out and shown to strangers with the boast that they had been offered their own weight in gold for the skull, but had not accepted it (proving a 'nobility of soul', according to the Roman Diodorus Siculus), and dead warriors propped up so that their bones can be picked clean by vultures, who will carry the warriors' souls to heaven; and beautiful and unusual jewellery and ornaments and myths for me to look at.

Un greve and a surprise trip to Lyon

A note came home from school yesterday - E's teacher is going to be on strike on thursday, something about pay rates for substitute teachers I think. We had been pretty careful about her not missing school - they have been so brilliant, taking a scared-witless non-French-speaking child from New Zealand and within less than 4 months, turning her into the confident, happy person I watched walking down the storm drain surrounded by friends to the rugby tournament this morning - but Al is going to Lyon for a couple of days this week and it just seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. With Maitresse (that is what they call the teacher) away on thursday, E would only miss friday school, and she (and I) will be able to briefly visit France's third largest city (after Paris and Marseilles). We're going tomorrow afternoon on the train and coming back on friday, so it's just 48 hours. We hope to see the Christmas market, of course, and the Musee de civilisation Gallo-romaine. One of my neighbours told me that Lyon was the capital of Gaul, so it should be interesting. I will be taking the camera of course, and will hopefully have some pictures to post when we get back.

Randonnee #3 - Bedarieux

Another sunny (but chilly) Sunday, another randonnee ...this one followed a path down the river Orb, in Bedarieux, then climbed a very gentle wooded slope and returned via a decommissioned railway track - including a tunnel! Bedarieux itself was quite an ordinary French town, with lots of big box stores marring the landscape. Unlike Sete and Beziers where the locals were actively friendly, engaging us in conversation, the people we passed in Bedarieux didn't even return our 'bonjour'. Oh well, we came to see the river, and here it is ...


It's amazing we found the walk at all really - all we had in the way of instructions in the randonnee book was 'park in front of the Campotel'. Uh ... what's a campotel? So we drove into Bedarieux and suddenly there was a sign - Campotel! We found it, parked in front of it, and there, clearly marked, was the trail. Each randonnee is marked with coloured strips painted onto posts, walls, and even trees. Where there is a crossroads, there is a cross in your colour indicating where not to go. Yellow seems to be the colour of choice for the shorter walks. In addition there are numbers stencilled above some of the markers. This usually indicates that there is something to see, or you need to take another path, or something like that. I think this is all done by the randonnee association, who also publish books detailing the walks (and the numbers, and what you should be able to see, and what colour your stripe is, etc).

We stopped for lunch at a tiny chapel that is supposed to have a water source, a spring I guess, that will miraculously cure your eye troubles. Unfortunately for my eyes it was closed, I'll have to keep wearing the glasses I suppose. Flicking through the book as I ate I noticed that a torch was listed as essential equipment for this walk. Uh, honey, did you bring a torch? What? No .... Hmm, I started to worry about that railway tunnel....


Luckily the tunnel was short enough that you could see light at one end or the other wherever you were. It did get pretty dark in the middle, and E kept her (and our) spirits up by loudly singing Christmas carols..

On the hills around Bedarieux were these interesting looking retaining walls. From what we could decipher from the interpretive panel (it was in French of course but we were glad to have it - most of the others had been torn apart by vandals), the walls contain no mortar to stick the stones together. The small stone shelters, built in the same way presumably, looked charming as well, although were probably full of spiders and scorpions. And snakes.


Here is one of the locals we met enjoying the sunshine. He didn't return our 'bonjour' either...

Sete

Sete is a port and holiday town on the Mediterranean coast, not far from Montpellier. In the middle of Sete is a hill, Mont St Clair. There was a short walk (an hour or so) listed in the Randonnee book and Al suggested we give it a try. Well! Al only suggests a walk once or twice a year, so when he does, you have to do it! Off we went on a cloudy but otherwise not too bad day last weekend.


This is Bouzigues, which is famous for its oysters. It is situated on the Bassin de Thau, which is a lagoon full of oyster farms by the coast.


In Sete, we found a park by the canal and set off. Well, that hill did look rather steep but we were all up for it. I have to say there was a fair amount of complaining as during the walk, but we were well supplied with snacks and with a couple of rest stops we made it up through the steep city streets, then up the stairs to the lookout. Here is the view from the lookout down to the oyster farms in the Bassin de Thau. It's a bit hard to see all the detail in the photo - visibility was not good that day.


Here's a view looking back down to the canal


Flush with the satisfaction of having made it this far, Al agreed to walk on to the end of the randonnee - along the ridge to the Pierres Blanches. This is a headland park, with white rocks, as you would expect, and a small forest. You'd get great views all around if it wasn't for the trees. But you know I love trees, I'd rather see the trees ... and here they are ...

A winter day in Aniane

It's cold today, and the sun is struggling to get through a thick layer of cloud.


The world looks a bit dull...(this is the Chapel de Notre Dame de Regagnas)


Not many people about, just a dog having a drink from the Corbieres creek on a walk down the storm drain ...

The wheel

So I've been doing these pottery classes for a few weeks now and I've made a few things. My pinch pot and slab box look like they were made by an enthusiastic four year old with adventurous colour sense. I glazed one of my coil pots today, sticking with a classic blue after my first garish creations, and then I had a go on the wheel. Well! How fun was that! Lots, that's how! Clay went everywhere, all over my shoes, up my sleeves, into all the nooks and crannies of my watch strap and probably, if I'm honest, all over my face and everything else within a metre of the danger zone. Once the clay was nicely wet, the texture was like a thick chocolate sauce - I kept wanting to lick my fingers. It was hard to get the clay centred on the wheel, and hard to get it to stay centred. I did make a couple of very wonky looking pot-ish things. I'm not sure how I am going to get all these fragile creations back home ... perhaps I will give them as presents to my French friends before I leave ...