Spring in my steps

 

 

 

 

Now that spring is here (sort of) I’ve been taking myself and my dodgy knees for a ramble or two in the sunshine. After all, isn’t fresh air and exercise supposed to be the best remedy for depression? No, wait - that’s fluoxetine…

Anyway, fresh air and exercise works for me. My first outing took me to the Marais de Seiglières, a marsh situated at an altitude of 1150 metres, near St Martin d’Uriage. The spot was named after the seigle (rye) that was cultivated there in the thirteenth century and it is now classed as a conservation area.

 

This was not an arduous ramble – more of a gentle stroll through pine forests and across spongy marshland. I passed through the ruins of a hospital dating from the eleventh century, its walls now low, moss-covered banks. Whatever the hospital was built for – some say it was a leprosy hospital – it was certainly huge. I stood there for a few minutes, trying to imagine the place echoing with voices and footsteps - but all I could hear was the joyful singing of birds and the soft rustlings of the forest…

 

 

 

As I walked down towards the large pond in the middle of the marais, I had to keep an eye on my feet for fear of stepping on the numerous copulating toads that were strewn across my path. Spring, of course, is the season of love and new beginnings although the cynic in me says otherwise. I don’t believe in Fairy Tales. I once kissed a Handsome Prince you know, and guess what he turned into?

I went home at the end of the afternoon, refreshed in body and spirit and very slightly sunburnt.



My next walk was to Mont Jalla, the small peak that rises between the Bastille and the Mont Rachais. There are several tracks you can take and I took the easiest, because that’s the sort of person I am.

 

 

However, I had forgotten how noisy the place was. As well as the hordes of families with children and excited dogs, there was the constant drone of traffic rising up from the streets of Grenoble. And the closer I got to the top of the Bastille, the louder the rumblings from the bulles, the téléphérique that ferries people to and fro from the Jardin de Ville.


It was quieter when I finally reached the summit of Mont Jalla. I took a few minutes to wander around the Mémorial National des Troupes de Montagne, the war memorial built in the year 2000, and puzzle over some crumbling ruins perched on the cliff edge (the ruins were perched, not me). These turned out to be the remains of one of the world’s first industrial aerial tramways, used by the cement factory of the Porte de France to transport limestone mined from the mountain. What a shame. I had been hoping for something a little more romantic…

 

 

I took a different route down the mountain and sorely regretted it – the pun is intended. It was mostly stairs. Steep stairs. By the time I got to the Jardin des Dauphins at the bottom, I was hobbling. After a few minutes groaning on a bench, I decided to forego my principles and take the bus home. My poor, poor knees.

 

 

It is dreary today and the sky is dark with rain. But as soon as the sunshine returns and my knees have stopped creaking, I'll be off again - with a smile on my face and Spring in my steps...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kicking up a raquette

 

 

 

If you’ve read this post, you will know I am not a great fan of winter sports. However, I am an open-minded type of gal so when someone suggested I try snowshoeing, I gamely agreed. I imagined it to be a sedate activity with no chance of careering down a mountainside in a wildly out-of-control fashion, screaming, as I tend to do whilst skiing.

The French word for snowshoes is raquettes. If this conjures up a game of tennis, you wouldn’t be far wrong. When the French began to colonize the cold regions of North America in the seventeenth century, one of the ideas they adopted from the Amerindians was the ultimate in sensible shoes. They called them raquettes because they resembled the rachètes or racquets of the jeu de paume, the forerunner of modern tennis. This gave them a great advantage over the English who didn’t realize until a few years later that life doesn’t have to come to a standstill because of a bit of bad weather. Judging from recent newspaper reports, they seem to have forgotten again.

The French brought the raquettes back to France, adapting the shape to suit the steep and rugged slopes of the mountainous regions where they used them for practical purposes, like hunting or shepherding. It wasn’t until the end of the nineteenth century that snowshoeing was introduced as a leisure activity, by Henri Duhamel. Since the mid-twentieth century, the sport has grown in popularity.


 

So I set off one crisp, bright morning, to try it for myself. I was told that if I could walk, I could snowshoe. Well, yes, OK – I can walk but I don’t usually look like a constipated duck while I’m doing it. Nor do I keel over every time I want to turn around…so that premise is not strictly true.

Also, I hate being cold. Despite the layers of vests, fleeces, thick socks and two pairs of woolly tights, I was absolutely freezing. I just wished I’d smeared myself with lard and stuffed newspapers down my trousers like I said I would…

Once in the forest, however, these minor inconveniences melted away in the winter sunshine. The scenery was breathtaking: swathes of sparkling, untrodden snow billowed around me like a plump eiderdown; the air glittered with diamond dust and – oh! - it was so beautifully quiet. At any moment, I expected to see Mr Tumnus trotting towards me playing his flute…

 

 

                                  

And, yes. I did fall over, several times. But apparently, you are allowed to slide down slopes on your bottom, so I affected a convincing nonchalance whenever I did so. I think it worked…

I waddled home, still freezing, aching slightly but very happy indeed. There are magical places in this sorry world after all…

I’ve been invited to go cross-country skiing next.  I’m looking forward to it, I really am. I’ve already started stocking up on lard…

  

 

Interesting Angles

I am quite unable to resist the charm of the Pyrenees…

I used to think that if you’d seen one mountain, you’d seen them all – just some big pointy bits of rock covered in snow and blocking the view. But when I went walking last summer in the Pyrénées catalanes, I fell in love…

So I returned during the Toussaint holidays, not squished into a tiny caravan this time but installed in a cosy and horrendously over-furnished flat in Les Angles.  

Les Angles is a ski resort, apparently a very expensive one but frankly a bit of a dump in November when everything is closed. In fact, until the ski resort was created in 1964, it was a pretty grim place to live. Farmers had to contend with the unyielding earth and the harsh weather: I experienced for myself the biting wind called le carcanet which blows from the north and shrouds the village in a heavy, damp fog. In 1961, the population was a mere two hundred and fifty and the village was slowly dying.

Today, the old village still stands, surrounded now by restaurants, nightclubs and intimidating sportswear shops (well, they intimidate me). Here is the view from our balcony – behind the village church, you can just about spot the lac Matemale…and beyond, the glorious Pyrenees…

 

 

 

 

 

We walked for hours, through forests, around lakes…

 

 

 

 

 

…and to Les Iglesiettes and the ruined hamlet of Vallsera. The inhabitants were wiped out by the Black Death in the fourteenth century and all that is left now are lichen-covered boulders and dry-stone walls the colour of old bones…

 

 

Down the road from Les Angles is a parc animalier where you can see animals which live – or once lived – in mountainous areas. Fortunately, most of them were safely enclosed behind wire fencing…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…the marmottes, however, were already fast asleep.

A quick trip to Andorra, in the pouring rain, rounded off the holiday. I was rather disappointed – it appeared to be all banks and duty-free shops and people pushing trolleys full of booze and cigarettes. A bit like Boulogne, really, without the sea…

I’m back in Grenoble now, back in the Alps. Il n’y a plus de Pyrénées (to quote Louis XIV) but I know it won’t be long before I return…

The Happy Camper

 

I’ve just spent a wonderful week squished into a tiny caravan in the Pyrénées, at a lakeside campsite in Matemale.

It was perfect! Well...almost so...

We walked in the mountains in the mornings, fizzed in the Jacuzzi and sweated in the sauna in the afternoons and gazed at the stars at night.

We climbed high peaks, paddled in icy lakes, shivered in dark caves...

We saw forest fires...

whispered to wild horses...

and we searched our souls.

Ah, yes. It was perfect.

Well.  Almost so...

Revel

I have recently returned from the set of a Pagnol film.

At least, that’s what it felt like, although the accent was Dauphinois and everything was in colour, not in black and white.

I spent the day in Revel, a village perched in the Belledonne mountain range overlooking Grenoble. The morning sky was a brilliant, gentian blue and the grassy slopes were warm beneath the sun.

First stop was the two-hundred year old bakery to meet the boulanger, Philippe and La Femme du Boulanger, Geneviève. I watched as the baker weighed out flour, yeast and salt on a pair of scales that looked at least as old as the bakery itself, then tipped it into an ancient mixer the size of a hot tub.

When ready, the dough was put into a cold store to rise...all day. Fortunately, Philippe had prepared some kneaded dough for me to form. Easy peasy, I thought, but of course, it wasn’t. I was supposed to be rolling it into a long, thin sausage but by the time I’d finished, it looked more like a giant pork chop.

Philippe came to my rescue and showed me how to make a tresse, which he then popped into the wood-fired oven.

When he brought it out later, piping hot and golden, I couldn’t help but wish I wasn’t intolerant to gluten. But – hey – that’s life. Sometimes we have to do without the things we love...

Mild masochistic tendencies led me to visit l'huilerie - the walnut press - next, where that delicious walnut oil, which I can no longer tolerate, is extracted. It opened in 1928 and supplied the locals with oil for the next thirty years. It closed due to a decrease in demand but was reopened in 2003 by a voluntary association, l’A.P.P.A.R.. The machinery is strangely beautiful: solid, gleaming cast iron that has stood there for over eighty years, dormant in summer but cranking into action from December through to April.

Then a character straight out of Jean de Florette walked in, blue eyes twinkling beneath his beret, to offer us a drink from the spring on his land. Ah! L’eau des collines...

Finally, I visited an elderly couple who lived on a smallholding. The old man showed me his peacocks and his enormous rabbits then told me to take an egg from the henhouse. I did, marvelling at the unusual rubbery shell.

“That’s the dummy egg,” said the old man, bemused and slightly alarmed. Well, I was one of those queer folk, les gens d’en bas – it was only to be expected.

I arrived home, weary and contented: the experience had set me yearning for a simpler, slower existence. Yet I do realize that life in the mountains is no Pagnol film. It is a harsh way to earn a living, especially in winter.

Because, to quote Pagnol: Telle est la vie des hommes...

Paris in the spring

I have always dreamt of a romantic weekend in Paris, in the spring.

Well, I never got it but recently, I was able to experience the next best thing. It wasn’t romantic but it was in the spring.

One of my several jobs is as a classroom assistant in a CLIS, which stands for Classe pour Inclusion Scolaire. These primary school children have learning difficulties: dyslexia, dyspraxia, dysphasia and so on. It is a rewarding job and I’m fortunate to be working with a dynamic (perhaps hyper-active is a better term) and dedicated teacher called Isabelle.

Isabelle decided it would be fun to take the whole class to Paris, so we have spent much of the school year raising money for the trip.

My role was to make cakes with the children to sell. You’d think this would be quite a challenge, especially with dyspraxic children. In fact, the headmistress put a stop to this project after I nearly set the staff room table on fire. Please don’t ask...it’s a long story...

We received donations from various organizations and our local MP, Geneviève Fioraso, invited us to visit the Assemblée Nationale, one of the two assemblies which, with the Senate, constitute the French Parliament. She came to talk to us about it and our photo was in the paper. Hmmm. I never realized just how short I was until I saw myself standing next to a ten-year old...

We left Grenoble on Tuesday morning and arrived in Paris just in time for lunch, which we ate in the Jardin des Tuileries. This park was once an area occupied by workshops making roof tiles (tuiles). In 1564, Catherine de Medicis created her palace garden here and after the French Revolution, it became a public park. Frankly, though, I had more important things on my mind: I’d left my picnic in the fridge at home and I was really, really hungry, penniless and gluten-intolerant to boot...  

Nevertheless, I jogged along to our next rendez-vous: the National Assembly. This is housed in the Palais Bourbon, built at the beginning of the eighteenth century by Louise Françoise de Bourbon, the legitimized daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan. During the Empire period, the neighbouring Hôtel de Lassey was joined to the palace by a gallery.

It is sumptuous. That’s all I can say.

Next stop was the Eiffel Tower. The children had been looking forward to this for months and were terribly excited, although not as excited as a certain Erika Eiffel, an American woman who loved the tower so much, she married it in 2007. Well, I can see the attraction: tall, handsome, dependable and not likely to go wandering off when you’re least expecting it...

The following day, we went to the palace of Versailles. The children were impeccably behaved despite our uninspired guide who appeared to be visiting for the first time herself. The one anecdote I could relate to was the story of the Galerie des Glaces. Apparently, it was the first time people had seen themselves full-length in a mirror and some of the more sensitive ladies promptly fainted at the sight. As I said, I can sympathise, because I caught sight of myself a few times and felt distinctly queasy (well, I had had a sleepless night, having to deal with midnight pillow fights, homesickness and a broken bed which had been jumped on once too often).

  

We visited the gardens with their beautiful fountains and also the Hameau de la Reine, a hamlet and working farm where Marie-Antoinette dressed up as a peasant and milked cows and sheep as a hobby.

 

On the third day, we took in Notre Dame, the Pyramide du Louvre, the Stravinsky Fountain, the Arc de Triomphe - which was closed – and the tacky souvenir shops, which weren’t closed and which turned out to be the highlight of the trip. Fortunately, I didn’t have any money – because I am an absolute sucker for tacky souvenirs.

Ah, Paris in the spring! I may not have waltzed beneath the moon on a bateau-mouche or been kissed in the shadow of Sacré Coeur but I certainly brought back some wonderful memories and - oh all right, I admit it – just one teensy-weensy Eiffel Tower key ring...