Tag Archives: gaul

Saturday 4th June 2016 – THAT WAS DEFINITELY THE CORRECT DECISION …

… to come here and find the quietest room in the hotel, without a doubt. Although it took me ages to drop off to sleep (I remember seeing 01:00 come up on the clock) I was absolutely, completely and utterly stark out when the alarm went off at 07:45. I didn’t feel a thing. I didn’t even have to go for a stroll on the parapet either. It was the best night’s sleep that I have had for months and my only regret was that there wasn’t more of it because I could have slept for a week.

I’d been on my travels too – to the garage at British Salt (the right way round too this time, not a mirror-image like the last time that we visited it) at Middlewich where I was repairing, of all things, a huge pile of amplifiers, speakers and the like. I’d gone into work early when there was no-one about and because of there being no-one about, I cracked on and by the time everyone came in, I’d done most of the stuff. My father came in, saw the pile of work and started to say why each appliance was difficult to do, and how each problem was insurmountable, to which my reply at each instance was “it’s fixed already”. After all, anyone can do a much better job when there are no interruptions and no negative vibrations floating around the place, as we all know.

I had a couple of cups of coffee this morning at breakfast too – the first time that I’ve had coffee for well over a week. I’ve steered clear of it because of my … errr … upset stomach but that has settled down for the last few days and so I wanted to give it a try. I would have had mint tea but there was none of that available at breakfast, so coffee it was. And it wasn’t really a good idea because I’d tell you what happened except that you are probably eating right now.

hotel premiere classe soissons aisne franceAfter I’d spent some time doing some work, I packed up and left to continue on with my journey. Now that I’ve been reunited with my telephone I can show you where I stayed the night – and the night two weeks or so ago.

My room is the one that has the open door on the top right – right at the end of the corridor at the highest part of the building. As I said, it really was quiet in there and I’ll have that room again.

By setting the SatNav to “shortest route”, I went a very merry and mazy way through some beautiful by-roads where I was suddenly decanted into the town of Guise.

chateau fort de guise aisne franceThis is the entrance to the magnificent castle of Guise and those of you with long memories and have read reams and reams of this rubbish will know exactly why this is the only photo of the place that is appearing on these pages.

The answer is that, quite simply, as you might expect, I arrived bang on the stroke of midday, just as they were closing the place up for lunch. Everyone knows that the lunch break is sacred in France – so much so that when Marshall Petain (whose grave we visited on the Ile d’Yeu in 2013, you might remember) was appointed as Generalissimo of the Allied Armies in the middle of the desperate retreat of 1918, he is reputed to have asked for just two things to save the Allies from disaster – a free hand with the army and two hours off for lunch.

Many of you will have heard of Guise, of course. Mary of Guise was the wife of James V of Scotland and mother of Mary, Queen of Scots.

diesel shunter guise aisne franceThat wasn’t the only thing that was interesting about the town. On the by-pass on the edge of the town was this magnificent diesel locomotive – a shunter by the look of it, parked up on the site, one assumes, of a couple of demolished houses which have been fitted out to make a raiway setting.

I liked the artwork on the wall of the house in the background. It was superb.

I wish however that there had been a plaque to tell me what was the significance of the display. I hate being left in the dark.

military cemetery commonwealth war grave lieutenant awdry etreux aisne franceNext stop, seeing as I’m in the vicinity, is the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in Etreux. This is where scores of members of the Royal Munster Regiment are buried following a spirited rearguard action at the crossroads by a battalion of the regiment on 27th August 1914, to hold up the German advance while the main body of the British Army slipped away.

The claim to fame of the cemetery is that it is the burial place of Lieutenant CEV Awdry, said to be the half-brother of the Reverend W Awdry of “Thomas the Tank Engine” fame.

gallo roman ruins forum bavay nord franceLeaving the Aisne behind us, we cross into the Nord and arrive at our destination, the town of Bavay, or, to be more precise, Bavay la Romaine.

And it deserves its name too because it was formerly the Gallo-Roman (you must never say “Roman” in France. The French do not accept that the Romans brought civilisation to the French, insisting that Gaul was already civilised long before the Romans arrived. It’s “Gallo-Roman” and I’ve seen some impressive uproar when people forget) city of Bagacum.

gallo roman ruins forum bavay nord franceThe city is situated at a major crossroads of routes in the northern part of the Roman road system and is home to some of the most impressive Roman … "Gallo-Roman" – ed … ruins in Gaul.

What we are looking at here is part of the Forum – the central market place of any Roman … "Gallo-Roman" – ed … city and impressive it certainly is. It’s always been known that there are Gallo-Roman remains here – stuff has been dug up for centuries – but someone digging in a cellar in the 18th Century found himself decanted into the subterranean crypt of the temple and this started everything off.

gallo roman ruins temple forum bavay nord franceGerman shelling of the town in 1940 uncovered many more remains and once the war was over, excavations started in earnest.

Our cellar-digger painted a picture of what he saw and it shows a beautiful Gallo-Roman crepi with painted designs, but all of that has long-since been washed away over 250 years of exposure to the weather, which is a shame because it really did look quite magnificent.

gallo roman ruins temple forum bavay nord franceI spent all afternoon here having a prowl around, totally immersed in everything that was going on all around. It really was €3:00 well-spent (yes, I’m not ashamed to claim the Senior Citizens’ discount now that I qualify for it).

No-one was more surprised than me to notice that the time had suddenly advanced to 16:30 in the blinking of an eyelid and I hadn’t even noticed. I shall have to get a wiggle on.

alberet steam roller compactor rouleau compressor nord franceBack on the road, I didn’t travel very far before coming to another screeching halt. Despite all self-propelled road compactors (or rouleau compressor as they are called over here) being called “steam rollers” in the vernacular, this really IS a steam roller.

It’s an Alberet, works number 1012, from the factory in Rantigny in the Oise and I don’t think that I’ve ever encountered one of this make before. It’s here parked on the edge of a haulage yard by the side of the road, inviting a photo-opportunity.

It’s not really an old car but we’ll class it as that seeing as how we don’t have a more suitable category.

So now I’m holed up in another Premiere Classe in Feignies, just outside Maubeuge. No internet (thank heavens for the mobile phone) and disinterested staff, which is a shame.

But it’s much better than a standard “Premiere Classe” that’s for sure. it has all inside rooms rather than outside rooms for a start and they are 3 times bigger than standard.

I’m having my money’s worth here tonight.

0

Wednesday 25th July 2012 – TODAY STARTED OFF …

… really well. Gorgeous bright blue skies with not a cloud in sight.

I was up … well, not as early as I might have been but still early enough, and while I was breakfasting, I had the fan working, so hot that it was up here.

Terry rang up and so I met him down the lane and we went off to the quarry for some melange and a pile of sand, and I ended up with about half a ton of the stuff – that will keep me out of mischief for a while, rebuilding the lean-to wall.

new potatoes les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter computing for a while I attacked the raised bed where the early spuds were hanging about. Now was the time to dig them up.

But I have to say that I was quite disappointed. There’s not even half a bucket full here. I’ve no idea where they all went to. And after all of the effort that I – and Rosemary – had put into everything too!

But I was so engrossed with digging over the bed that I failed to notice the time – 15:24. I had to be in Pionsat meeting Marianne at 15:30 and there I was, all covered in soil and so on

But never mind. Can’t be helped. I flew into Pionsat just as I was.

That’s hardly a good advert for anything,

caliburn st maigner puy de dome franceAs well as the Sunday expositions that we have been doing, we’ve also been doing the Wednesday walks around the various communes of the Canton of Pionsat, and you’ve already been on quite a few of them with us.

Today, it’s the turn of St Maigner to receive us. That’s out on the road to Espinasse and must be the commune the furthest south in the Canton. And despite the rush that we had had to get here, we were bang on time to start the walk, which can’t be bad

st maigner puy de dome franceSt Maigner is a very exciting place and proudly announces that the population in the comunne has grown by 17.4% in the last 10 years.

Not sure about how they worked that out, though. The 1999 population was 174 and the 2011 population was 197 – that makes a 13.2% increase in my book. And, regrettably, that’s still a far cry from 1836 and the 990 people who lived here.

This population growth is typical of quite a few small villages in the Auvergne, where most of the population growth is due to all of the foreigners who have come to live here.

Rural France has not been slow in pointing out to the Brits and the Dutch living a stressed-out existence in a tiny box-like villa with a postage-stamp garden and neighbours overlooking your hedge that here are wide-open spaces with room to move about, grow your own crops and be totally stress-free.

And all at a price that you would never even imagine back home.

And the Government is grateful too.

st maigner puy de dome franceThink about it.

  • The average foreigner who sells up and comes over here brings with him – say €200,000 – from the sale of his property back home.
  • He buys a ruin (of which there are many) from a local French farmer for €30,000, saving the French farmer from bankruptcy
  • He goes to Brico Depot or Point P or the sawmill for all of his renovation material, creating jobs for the locals
  • His kids go to the local village school, keeping the schools open
  • He uses the village Post Office and the boulangerie, keeping them open for the locals
  • Many of the nouvel arrivants are pensioners – they will be having their foreign pensions paid in France and spending the money over here

Just look at all of this money coming flooding into the rural French economy. And it’s all new money too. Not from anywhere else in France, not from the French treasury, but from abroad.

The French must be laughing their heads off.

I was at one meeting many years ago when Brice Hortefeux, a French Government Minister stood up and said to the audience “you should be grateful that we have all of these foreigners here. It’s thanks to them that you still have your schools, your Post Offices, your boulangerie.”

And he’s dead right.

st maigner puy de dome franceWe saw the church in one of the photos above. It was a dependence of the Abbey of Ebreuil and although the first mention of the village isn’t until the mid 13th Century, the church would seem to be considerably older.

You can tell that by looking at the Roman-style doorway here. Despite all of the renovations that the church has undergone (and we all know what that means) this doorway cannot be anything but original.

I’ve seen many a church doorway in this style, and all available records point to them being well before the 13th Century. I would be very surprised if this doorway were much later than 11th-Century.

fontaine de st loup st maigner puy de dome franceHaving had a good explore around the bourg, we went for a nice long walk out into the countryside, as far as the Fontaine de St Loup.

This is a beautiful, well-restored spring, of which there are many here in the region as you know. But this particular one has a very well-known claim to fame in that during the 7th Century, a very well-attested miracle took place here.

So well-attested and so well known that I can’t remember what it was now. In fact, had I remembered, that would have been a miracle.

villeromain st maigner puy de dome franceRound the back of the Fontaine is the lieu-dit or hamlet of Villeromain.

And this is a very controversial place, if you are a French historian.

Wherever you see a French place-name beginning with ville, it almost certainly (although there are some exceptions in modern times) signifies the site of a Gallo-Roman villa.

I’ve told you before that one is not allowed in France to use the term “Roman” on its own. French history does not accept the principle that the Romans colonised and settled the country.

It insists that the Gauls were already civilised and that the presence of villas and other contemporary buildings were due to the combined efforts of both the Romans and the Gauls.

However, the reason for the controversy about Villeromain is because of the inclusion of the very definite Roman in the name. That would seem to suggest to some people that this settlement was entirely Roman and had no input from the Gauls.

And that opinion does not go down very well with others.

So back home, and the temperature in the solar water heater looked really inviting. This called for a nice, hot shower this evening bearing in mind how dirty I was after today’s gardening session.

And then up here to the furnace. It’s roasting up here and the fan is doing almost nothing.

Summer seems to have arrived – but for how long?

-7

Wednesday 27th June 2012 – 28 DEGREES CELSIUS …

… it was this evening at 19:15. So you can see what the weather has been like all day.

After having several days of mediocre weather, cool, wet and windy, too. So you can tell that there was something afoot.

chateau sur cher puy de dome franceAs indeed there was. We had another one of our walks. Bound to be a heatwave (or a torrential downpour) today.

You may remember from a couple of weeks ago that Marianne and I went off to do a recce of Chateau-sur-Cher. In her capacity as approved tourist guide for the area she is doing a programme of walks around rhe various villages.

It’s the kind of thing that interests me deeply as you know, so I’ve gone along as Minder. And here we are today in Chateau-sur-Cher

church chateau sur cher river cher allier creuse puy de dome franceI have said, on many occasions and at great length too, that here in rural France, the situation of many old churches gives reason to believe that they are sited on old historic fortress sites.

The mounds and the sometimes stunning defensive positions of the buildings underlines this – for example, look at the view that you have from the site where the church at Chateau-sur-Cher is situated.

Any nobleman bent on maintaining his power in the region (and many were as bent as they come) would have had a fortress up here in a flash as soon as he were to see the excellent position

church chateau sur cher river cher allier creuse puy de dome franceAnything passing on the road down there would be under his immediate surveillance and he would soon pounce in a twinkling of an eye to launch an attack or to exact a toll.

The valley in the middle is the River Cher, to the left is the département of the Creuse and to the right is the département of the Allier. We ourselves ae in the département of the Puy-de-Dôme.

In the days before the unification of France, these were all independent Provinces and with the only bridge over the River Cher for miles being situated just down there at the foot of the hill, he would be in a magnificent position to control the trade, and his fortress would have been pretty-much impregnible to a surprise attack from another province

church chateau sur cher puy de dome franceHow this would have all come to pass would have been that the nobleman back in the days prior to the arrival of the Romans would have stuck his oppidum up here straight away.

Christianity slowly came to the area and when it took hold, he would have himself been amongst the first to be converted, and he would have provided a little place somewhere in his oppidum for worship to be held.

During the passage of time as the region settled into more peaceful ways (remember we are long before the period of the 100 Years War which devastated this region) the need for a fort grew less and the population expanded.

church chateau sur cher puy de dome franceHence the need for a bigger church, and much less need for a fort. And in the end, the fort would fall into decay.

And that’s exactly what has happened here in Chateau-sur-Cher because during some archaeological excavations in the past, they did actually find some evidence to suggest this was indeed a fortified oppidum occupied by the Gauls.

chateau sur cher puy de dome franceBut the key to the village was the fort. And why the fort was there was because of the key position that the promontory held – over looking the only practical crossing of the River Cher for many miles either upstream or downstream.

A packhorse train of goods or a herd of cattle crossing over the bridge from the Creuse into the Allier or the Puy-de-Dôme and our noble could swoop on it like a hawk and exact an appropriate amount of tribute.

chateau sur cher puy de dome franceThat estaminet there would have been an exciting lively place 150 years ago in the days of pack horses, drovers and horse-drawn waggons, everyone stopping for refreshment after a long arduous travel through the mountains

Today though, the estaminet is long-since closed and the village is pretty-much abandoned. From a heyday of well-over 700 people living here 150 years ago, the number of inhabitants now totals a miserable 78.

The sites of many abandoned buildings that have crumbled away into nothing are quite evident, and many other buildings are lying abandoned, likewise to suffer a similar fate.

The exodus to the urban regions of France from little communities like this is tragic. As you know, on my own property I have the remains of half a dozen houses.

machinery moulin de chambon chateau sur cher puy de dome franceWe ended up going for a walk along the bank of the river heading northwards, because there was something important to see here, at least from my point of view.

There’s a mill – the Moulin de Chambon – down here and although it’s long-since ceased to function and its machinery is all dismantled today, it’s nevertheless quite an interesting place to be

moulin de chambon chateau sur cher puy de dome franceInteresting for several reasons too.

  • the water arrives via a system of weirs and locks, rather than the more usual millrace.
  • it’s a hybrid mill, in that the water powers a system of pulleys and that other machinery – not just a corn-grinding wheel – was operated here. There was even talk of a sawmill in one of the sheds.
  • it’s an undershot wheel ie where the water passes underneath, not an overshot wheel where the water passes over the top

. It’s such a shame that I couldn’t have a better view of it.

moulin de chambon river cher chateau sur cher puy de dome franceIt was a shame that there were so few of us out for our walk today. It was a really beautiful afternoon and this was, from my own point of view, probably the most interesting walk that we have undertaken since we started doing them.

We were ready for a drink after all of this and so Marianne and I headed back to Pionsat and refreshment. Nothing of course available here.

And this was when I noticed the temperature.

I nipped back home quickly where the water in the solar shower was still 36°C, and had a nice warm shower. I needed it too.

This evening, while watching one of the most boring football matches that I have ever seen, I sorted out a pile of paperwork. That’s not like me. I must be feeling the heat.

You’re probably thinking “what an exciting day” but I’ve not told you the half of it yet.

This morning I was up and about long before the alarm went off. Before 08:00 in fact, and that’s not something that happens every day.

I worked for a few hours on my web pages and then went outside for some more tidying up and throwing of stuff down at the dechetterie. That’s all gone now and I can move about comfortably in the barn where the Ebro is.

And it’s been a few years since I’ve been able to do that.

>Tomorrow I need to measure up for the stuff that I need for the next stage of renovations, and to do some washing if the weather stays fine.

I’m also planning some more shelves in the barn now that I have the space to stick them up.

Watch this space.

-3

Thursday 7th June 2012 – YOU MAY REMEMBER …

vinegar water weedkiller les guis virlet puy de dome france… that we discussed weedkiller the other day.

Joy suggested a 50-50 mix of vinegar and water and so I tried it. And you can see the result.

A pile of burnt and scorched grass. And so there’s clearly some mileage in that idea,

Thanks, Joy, but I shudder to think about how much vinegar I’m going to need.

This morning it was work as usual on the website but I didn’t get much done due to a couple of lengthy and complicated phone calls that led to a lengthy form-filling session.

All of that made me late for my trip with Marianne and while Liz was wishing me all the best for the afternoon and me saying something like “knowing my luck it will pour down with rain” we suddenly had the most terrific thunderstorm and cloudburst.

Right on cue, you might say.

church chateau sur cher puy de dome franceAnd so I picked up Marianne and off we went for a good wander around Chateau-sur-Cher.

The village is so named because the remains of a Gallo-Roman fort were discovered on the promontory overlooking the River Cher, on the spot where the church sits today.

It’s certainly an impressive site for a defensive fortification – surrounded on three sides by a very steep climb and I can understand why the Gauls would have chosen it

lime burner chateau sur cher puy de dome francenot only were there some interesting sights to see around the village and around the river, but that we were also directed to an intact chalk-oven and to an outcrop of a coal seam somewhere out off the beaten track on the way back to St Hilaire-près-Pionsat.

The chalk oven took some finding and that’s hardly a surprise. You can see that the chimney is all overgrown with all kinds of everything and you really did have to know where it was before you could see it properly

lime burner chateau sur cher puy de dome franceBut it was totally fascinating, as a good exploration confirmed once I’d been able to hack my way through the vegetation into it.

It seems to have been built from a kit or something like that, because the fire bars are noted with Roman numerals – presumably indicating the position and order in which they should be assembled.

I’ve never seen that before.

coal seam outcrop chateau sur cher puy de dome franceApparently the coal seam that we visited 2 years ago and about which I posted on here breaks out in a few other places in the Combrailles.

We had a good scratch around in the vicinity and, sure enough, we found some evidence. Not worth coming here with a mechanical shovel though – the Highways Department’s sign erectors would have been here a long time ago had it been worth the effort.

There are even some mining remains where someone had a go at trying to exploit it, but they are all overgrown apparently (as if the chimney was not) and so we need to wait for winter to hunt for those.

cadillac deville chateau sur cher puy de dome franceHighlight, for me at least, has to be this beast sitting here abandoned inthe garden of an abandoned cottage in the village.

It’s a Cadillac DeVille, one of the “fourth generation” models from the early 1970s I reckon, and what is significant about it is that according to the maker’s plate under the bonnet it’s actually a “Bienne” – a Swiss model made in that town where general Motors had an assembly plant for 40 years until 1975.

But scrambling over vehicles like this brought back some very happy memories. How poor Nerina must have suffered.

Meanwhile, in other news, I’ve run out of black ink for the printer. I’ll have to see if Terry can order some more for me.

-1