Oct. 9, 2008
Sur le Pont d'Avignon,
On y danse, on y danse
Sur le Pont D'Avignon
On y danse, tout l'heurant
We have based ourselves in the Provencal town of Avignon, and our campground is on an island in the River Rhone, right across form the walls of the old town and with a splendid view of the fabled "Pont D'Avignon" made famous by the French nursery rhyme. From this delightful spot, we have been perfectly placed to day trip to all sorts of interesting places, none more than 20 km away, and each one unique and absorbing. Every day brings another amazing 'field trip' -- we're all learning so much, and then every night we come home to the lights of the Pont twinkling across at us.
Pont de Gard
Another bridge, this one is on a stature the little fabled one can never match. In our day of disposable everything, you only have to look at this huge structure to feel ashamed. This is merely a portion of a 200 km aqua-duct that the Romans built to move water through this part of the Empire. Pont de Gard was under construction as Jesus was teaching the word and dying on a cross. It is absolutely immense; three tiers of soaring arches high across a gorge. The river below is now sluggish and only half the width it clearly used to be -- but what an amazing place to kayak, or in warmer weather, to dive and swim. (The signs forbid diving within 200 metres of the site -- as Mitch said, they don't want blood on the bridge!)
The walls of the arches alongside where we could walk were at least free of the spray-paint that so many other historic sites in Europe sport, but what tickled the kids was the ancient graffiti carved into the huge blocks. The dates we could read were from the 1700 and 1800's -- but I am sure there have been 2000 years of messages and love notes scrawled into its supports.
The Roman Theatre at Orange
Wow -- this place has seen the drama of many lifetimes and incredible history played out on it's proscenium -- literally. Every Roman town on the outposts had a triumph arch, a marketplace, and a theatre for entertainments. At the height of the Empire, there were 300 entertainment days set aside every calendar year -- 200 of those were dedicated to theatrical events! Actors must have been better paid then -- and there was certainly less time spent selling shoes or waiting tables and more on stage!! Women were accepted as performers as well... but then as the Empire declined, theatre became more and more about spectacle rather than literary celebrations, and women's role on-stage became more and more tawdry. Eventually, theatrical exhibitions were pretty much porn, the art form was disbanded, and the theatres deserted. (Hmmm... this kind of makes a person wonder about the state of the American Empire if we think about the content of 'modern' culture in terms of television, film, and computer games these days... we're no longer a culture that values literaure, either...)
The theatre in Orange became an army garrison and prison... till the Goths invaded and totally sacked the place. The ripped out all the tile and statury, and stole or broke everything of value. The remains of the theatre would probably have gone the way of all the others in the area, except that when the Religious wars started, they used the 30 meter stage wall as a fortress, eventually building their houses right up against it, all the way to the top. You can see the holes they gouged to drive beams for floor supports in -- it's pretty amazing. So the drama of real life preserved the dramatic venue; when they decided to restore it in the 1800's, they had to rip out over 40 buildings till they uncovered the wall itself. The amphitheatre was only a shell, so it is a restoration (of course, that 'new' work was carried out about the time the Father's of Confederation were forming the country of Canada!). The theatre wall remains intact -- the only surviving Roman proscenium wall in Europe -- and they use it to stage theatrical and operatic works every summer. The bones of the place simply vibrate with drama... it has been witness to the joy and tragedy of mankind through the ages in reality as well as fiction.
The Barry Troglodyte Ruins
What a word: 'troglodyte'. I like to say it over and over... it just rolls off the tongue. Although the troglodytes weren't trolls or orcs or other spooky creatures, as we approached the troglodyte village, with soaring rockfaces looming on either side, it was easy to imagine a club yielding ogre lurking behind every tree. 'Troglodyte' means simply 'cave-dweller'. There is evidence that this area and it's caves had been occupied for over 4000 years. 4000 years!!! It's impossible to fathom that much time.
This particular village had been vastly improved upon... the natural caves which would have been a haven for prehistoric man had been enlarged over the years, with little sleeping benches carved out of 'rooms' at the back, and fireplaces and chimneys created in many. We even found a primitive toilet! (SOme things haven't changed too much over the years!) Eventually they built house fronts upon the caves, so they were a strange mixture of columns and arches -- in an odd way, it reminded me of the false second-storey fronts you sometimes see on shops along Main Streets in small town Canada.
Of course the children had an amazing time running from one 'house' to the next -- there were dozens of caves in the settlement, and they had obviously not been vacant for too many years, as some of the chimneys were still black with soot. It felt so primitive and other worldly that it was almost like a physical slap when I crested the hill they were built into and saw below a huge nuclear energy station spread across the valley below and filling the hills with belches of steam. There it was -- man's acheivments through the ages, in a bizarre juxtaposition right in front of me. I wondered if thousands of years from now someone would stand in the same spot and marvel at the ingenuity of present-day man -- or if the decaying nuclear plant will have dissolved all that exists around it. It was a chilling thought, and I was happy to go and find my family playing in the caves below... they seemed warm and cosy in contrast with the sterile chill of the nuclear plant.
Lavendar Fields
Provence is famous for it's lavendar, and I would have dearly loved to see fields of it in bloom... but we would have had to visited much earlier in the year. I was still keen to see the fields, but no one seemed to be able to tell us exactly where to go to find them. We went to the "Musee de Lavande", and while it was very interesting, with its large copper vats they use to distill the oil from the flowers, it was not fields!
A little disappointed, we travelled up the road to visit an Abbey that was in the neighborhood. That road was enough to curl anyone's hair! It wound it's way up a gorge through hillsides dense with trees and rocks, so we were surprised to turn a (rather sharp!) corner and see that along the valley fields had been hacked out of the forest. We were speculating on what they could be -- they didn't quite look like vineyards -- when the sun peeked out through the clouds again, and we saw the silvery purple shade of the plants. "Lavendar," we all exclaimed at once. Although the flowers have finished blooming this late in the year, the plants still give off a lovely smell and aroma, and even from a distance they were beautiful. The proceeds from the crops fund the Abbey, which houses an order of contemplative monks. Of course the monks of the contemplative order don't actually do menial work -- they spend most of their time in their little rooms, writing and reflecting -- and I wonder if there are still lower orders of 'worken monks" to tend the fields, or if these days the labor is carried out by hired hands. There were signs posted about asking for silence in many languages... and it did seem almost sacriligious to even speak around the beautifully simple old stone buildings, or even in the fields further away. I felt more contemplative and a much greater sense of God there that I had felt at any of the big famous churches we have seen along the way... and my little brood were scandalised when the silence was suddenly broken by laughter and chattering, and we saw a tour group obviously made up of high school students come milling out of a building, destroying the serenity of the moment . Some things are hard to teach... .
Chateau des Baux
I don't know what exactly I expected from Provence, but the fantastic rock formation and small mountains have been a delightful shock. One minute we're in rolling pastoral wonderland, with olive groves and vineyards and unexpected fields of pumpkins or sunflowers, and the next we're clinging to the edges of our seats as Mitch maneuvers the car up hairpin switchbacks and steep road punctuated with roundabouts. It's crazy and marvelous!!
With our little 5-seater van and a great driver like Mitch, we can go pretty much anywhere these winding roads take us. When we invited the Candian family we met in Avignon to go with us to see the Chateau des Baux, we had no idea how hairy the roads would be. Fortunatley, they are from BC and used to mountains, so even though they were driving a large camper, Robert managed to navigate the roads without much difficulty.
Perched on top of a mountain ridge, the drive alone up to les Baux de Provence was worth it. How the settlers of the town ever got up there, let alone built a settlement, a castle, and fought wars, all without the aid of modern machinery is baffling!! The ruins of the old Chateau still cling precariously to the cliff tops -- as we went out onto the site there were signs everywhere warning of danger in high winds; it would be easy to be blown right off!
Legend -- with some historical backing -- attributes the formation of the castle to Balthazar, one of the Magi, and the crest for Les Baux contains a large star. All these tangible links to Christ seem to stir my faith in unsettling but positive ways... and it was difficult to not believe in God as I stood there on the top of that windswept mountain with the beautiful south of France and the sea beyond stretched out below.
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