Of Rivers, Baguettes and Billabongs. Reg Egan
forever? There were grand early nineteenth century houses beautifully set in the valley on one side of the main street and precariously and expensively moulded into the rocks and cliff on the other side. All were empty and many were à vendre-for sale.
We turned around and walked back down to the rather sad but once grand and opulent village. There was a hotel which appeared to have no customers at all, houses, no…mansions, but again most were for sale and the agents’ boards were tired, rusty and flapping in the breeze. There were two little bistros or cafés still doing reasonable luncheon business at this rather late hour. The specialities on the blackboards were tripe at one and pigs trotters at the other. I didn’t regret our picnic lunch.
We drove up past the Casino and took the road to the haut Saint-Nectaire. Ah, this was better, simpler. Real houses, gardens and shops, and there on the hill dominating the faithful and saluting God was the famous Romanesque church built over the grave of the local saint, Saint-Nectaire. I say it is Romanesque but in the style of the region with more than a hint of “Moorish” or perhaps with memories of what the Crusaders may have seen on their somewhat murderous travels to the Middle East.
The Auvergne, and specifically Clermont Ferrand, had a big hand in the First Crusade of the eleventh century. It was at the capital in 1095 that the former monk of Cluny, the Frenchman Pope Urban 11 made what was said to be some of the “most moving orations recorded in history”. He spoke to the crowd in the open, for not even the largest building could accommodate the multitude which came to heed his words. It is said that even the pope was surprised by the response. It was like the war cry of the American Indians or the Maoris of New Zealand. He had set in motion a force of bigotry, politics and plunder that lasted for more than a hundred years.
Don’t think of Tournus and its Romanesque cathedral, for example, when you think of the Auvergne and its old churches. There are similarities in construction but you might easily come to the conclusion that Notre Dame du Port at Clermont Ferrand, the Basilica at Orcival, the Saint-Nectaire church and a few others had been designed by the one architect and had the same builder. Of course they are all built of the dark volcanic rock of the area, and the face of the rock is in all cases relatively smooth, almost as if it had been sawn. In addition each church has a decorative mosaic which is beautifully done, but somehow to me, looks cold and fussy. Orcival is my favourite, partly because of its situation. It is softened by the valley, the trees and the nearby buildings. Saint-Nectaire dominates.
I always have a great affection for abbeys which, by necessity, I suppose are built in valleys near a source of water, but there is friendliness and humility in most abbeys, and their cloisters are very special. I like their background of the forest, the river and the seclusion. Vézelay is classified as an abbey cathedral, Conques has its delightful, exquisite abbey church, and Mont St. Michael is said to be an abbey complex, but one of my first abbeys to fit the description I’ve just given was Flaran, in the Gers, on the road from Auch to Condom and by the Baize River. It has been extensively restored over the last twenty or so years, but is still friendly and humble. You could spend your life there — perhaps.
You leave Saint-Nectaire and journey on towards Murol with its decaying but spendidly impressive fort or chateau away on the hill to your right and then you go through some of the loveliest grazing land populated by red Salers cattle and stubby, sturdy horses. The houses are few and far between but away off on the sides of the hills and in the valleys you can see these little stone farm buildings. They have great charm, nestling into the hillsides. They are of the same dark grey and black stone, and often have roofs of phondite, or split stone, yet nonetheless they blend into the countryside just as easily as the limestone houses in the lower Dordogne.
We took the Route du Fromage, which was probably designed to service the farms, villages and towns of the area, but which proves to be a scenic road along the ridges. The views of puys, mountains, valleys, drifts of snow and forests continue, and every now and again a mountain horse gazes at you or a herd of red milking cows raises numerous enquiring heads. Good country.
You come across Chambon-sur-Lac almost in surprise. It is quite beautiful, framed by mountains with their peaks still partly covered by slow drifting cloud. We stopped for coffee at a family run place which had dealt with its luncheon guests and was now satisfying its own hunger. The coffee was good.
By the time we got to Le Mont Dore, the afternoon was closing in and we took the cul-de-sac to Puy de Sancy. The mountain peak is spectacular but because you are already half way up the group of mountains it belies its height. It was very cold, painfully cold almost, but we managed to explore the hut near the terminus of the chair lift and to speak to a small mob of goats standing nearby. The hut housed a memorial (or perhaps a tomb) to two men of the Resistance who were killed in September 1944 in this remote and beautiful spot. What were they doing here? Why would the Germans have pursued them half way up this mountain?
How tragic it was that the maquis and its members of the Resistance the maquisards moved to combat the German occupying force as soon as they did. They were besotted, no doubt, with the euphoria of D-day, 6 June 1944, and overestimated their strength and grossly underestimated the wounded but still powerful German forces.
The town of Tulle is on the Corrèze river, a tributary of the Dordogne, and is just to the west of the Auvergne. The Resistance determined to seize Tulle and to defend it as one of the first French outposts of the “unoccupied” south. It was surrounded by hills, dear to the maquis, and had a small armaments industry. On 8 June the Resistance duly overpowered the German garrison and killed some fifty Germans in the process; they took a further sixty prisoners and executed ten of those on the basis that they were members of the Gestapo and had been responsible for atrocities. They then flew the French flag over the town and basked in their glorious actions.
Unfortunately for the residents of Tulle, a heavily armoured troupe of the notorious SS Division, Das Reich, was nearby, on its way to the Normandy front. It was instructed to deal with the situation. The maquisards saw that they were heavily outgunned and withdrew to the hills. The SS Division re-established control over the town and the following day the Germans arbitrarily selected ninety-nine local men and hanged them from balconies in the centre of the town.
Reprisals and monuments to innocent civilians, men, women and children are all over France, especially in the south. The first one that we saw was years ago at Frayssinet-le-Gélat (between Fumel and Gourdon) where fifteen women and men selected at random were shot. You stand in front of the monument outside the church of this lovely village and you gaze at the unusual church with its massive tower and a small tower and pepperpot clinging to it, and you curse all weapons and all wars, and you feel sad for the victims and even for the perpetrators. How could they and how can we? And yet even today it happens, and not only in the “third world” countries: killings, rape, and (and democracies should bow their heads) torture, and worse almost, tacit complicity by other democracies in that torture.
CHAPTER FIVE
My early morning walk is of great importance and on the way to our hotel I had noted that there was a forest of beeches half way down the mountain towards the town. Before breakfast then I put on every jumper, jacket and scarf I could lay my hands on and set out.
Once in the forest it seemed warmer and I followed what appeared to be a roughly formed fire track. Copper beeches! You cannot overstate their beauty whether in their lime green of spring or their bronze of autumn. I went deeply into the forest and around the side of the hill, and finally I was warm enough to rest with my foot on an old log. It was so quiet. Not even a bird call.
I had known a boy once and I thought of that boy as I rested. The first thing he recalls, is lying in bed and looking at the branches of a laurel tree which came right up to the window. As that boy watched the tree he saw the leaves form a picture of a dog: there was its face, its muzzle, its ears and its eyes. It was a perfect dog and jumping from the bed he ran outside to look at it more closely. It had disappeared. He searched and searched but it had gone. He went back to the bedroom and climbed into bed. There it was! He darted