From the mouth of the lion - Saint-Bertrand de Comminges

Some towns, some cathedrals, some palaces, grew over time. They have a lived-in feel. Generations of different patrons, architects, craftspeople, DIYers and repairers, have left their mark on them. They're works of cooperation, of adjustment, of agglomeration and compromise.
Other places are the work of one visionary. Versailles - though its kernel is in fact a Louis XIII hunting lodge, which survives at the centre of the larger, later work like a small jewel set in a much bigger and more exuberant monstrance - can't be seen without the figure of Louis XIV, bestriding the scene in his curly long wig and gold embroidered frock coat. St Petersburg, though many of its buildings are later, has at its heart the great urban plan of its founder, Peter the Great; and quite literally, almost at its geographical centre, his original wooden cabin, predecessor of all the imperial palaces.
The cathedral of Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges is one of those works. Even though the Romanesque cloister and narthex and the Gothic choir were the work of others, it's the work of bishop Jean de Mauleon that gives the church its character - the warmth of the woodwork, the fantasy of the carvers, the richness of the decoration, are all his work. Most choir stalls simply fill a space in the east end of the church - these stalls dominate the cathedral, thrusting out into the nave, leaving pilgrims and parishioners (excluded from the choir in the Middle Ages) almost nowhere to go. They're complemented by the organ - unusually, neither set up in the west end, nor as a 'swallow's nest' hanging from the wall of the nave, but straddling the north-west angle of the nave.
Jean de Mauleon was a bishop brought up in a humanist age, and something of a scholar. The work he commissioned shows that dual nature; there are busts of Dante and the Medicis, and the organ shows the Labours of Hercules, as well as a number of musicians including a fetching little bagpipe player. The busts of the Nine Worthies show the pagan heroes Hector, Alexander, and Julius Caesar, in the company of Joshua, King David, and Judas Maccabeus, and the Christian heroes Charlemagne, Arthur, and Godfrey of Boulogne. In the stalls, the dorsals show not just prophets and saints, but the Twelve Sibyls, pagan prophetesses (also found in the choir stalls at Auch, which just happens to be where Jean de Mauleon was consecrated bishop).
His humanism shows through too in the triumphal arches which form part of the concept, an appropriate symbol in this ancient Roman town (there are numerous remains of the Roman forum and theatre in the plain below). The entrance to the choir is through one such triumphal arch, and another is shown, facing it, in the east window.
And then there are lions everywhere. There's a wonderful pair of crouching lions in the choir stalls, their haunches curved with tension as they wait to spring, full of suppressed energy. There's a lion painted high above on the stone of the vault. You might think they are just symbols of strength, like the Romanesque lions which flank the entrances to so many Italian cathedrals; or lions of St Mark. But they are also the bad lion, the Mauvais Lion, Mau-Leon, the heraldic badge of Jean de Mauleon. He's put his mark on the woodwork.

There are numerous St Johns, too. There is a lovely young John the Evangelist with his eagle, carved in the round. There is a John the Baptist whose camel skin garment actually shows a camel's head hanging down beside the fringe- a little like figures of Hercules wearing the skin of the lion. Both of them are shown, together with St Bertrand, in marquetry, above the clergy seats in the choir. And there's a John the Baptist on the bishop's throne; with a rampant lion on a shield below, just in case you had missed the allusion.
Again, not unusual to find either or both of the Sainted Johns in a cathedral, though perhaps less usual to find them so prominent in a cathedral that's dedicated (as this one is) to the Virgin. But then think that of course they were both Jean de Mauleon's patron saints, and again you see how the free-spending bishop signed his work to show off his patronage.
By the lion in the vault the initials EHN (for Jehan, the older spelling of the bishop's name) can be seen - easy enough to work out. The initials OAT are a bit more obscure, but his contemporaries would have known; Omnis Amor Tecum, all love be with you - Jean de Mauleon's motto. The OAT logograph is found elsewhere, on the woodwork on the outside of the choir.
It's not ridiculously overt, like the portcullises and roses in King's College Chapel, or the crescent moon symbols of Diane de Poitiers at Anet, or the Sun of the roi soleil at Versailles. It's rather subtle, worked into a rich tapestry of fantasy and symbolism. Saint John the Baptist mixes sociably with the Company of Saints, the Evangelist and his eagle join Mark with his lion (a significant pairing?), and the lions romp with mermaids, wodwoses, nickering horses, and chained pet monkeys.
The most subtle touch is yet to come. Right at the bottom of one of the east windows, and (consequently) almost invisible from inside the choir, is a little kneeling figure of a priest. Almost always, in medieval art, the little kneeling figure is that of a donor, praying to his patron, or to the Virgin, or kneeling in admiration of the whole sacred scene playing out in the window above. Here, in a surprisingly humble position, if my supposition is right, we find Jean de Mauleon himself.

Spirituality: how not to. And, maybe, how to.

I hate Strasbourg cathedral.

I love the outside. A spider-thin network of lacy stone mouldings covers the entire facade, glowing orange at sunset, or blood-red on a snowy, overcast day. The ambitious openwork of the one finished spire, with its turrets and open staircases.

The interior is disappointing compared to that; a large parish church, rather than a cathedral, it seems to stop short after the nave, with just a stump of a choir.True, there's some fine stained glass, and some marvellous late Gothic work - a good pulpit, a rather ordinary 'Mount of Olives', and a well carved font - and there's the strange pillar of angels, with figures of the Evangelists.

Oh, and the Astronomical Clock. A very disappointing clock, really; none of its little mechanisms are particularly spectacular, though I like the little cock that crows at the end of the chime.

But that's not why I hate Strasbourg cathedral. What I really hate is the way it's been presented.

• Every ten minutes or so there's a bingy-bongy chime like you hear in railway stations, and a sanctimonious railway announcer voice tells you this is a PLACE OF WORSHIP and you must BE RESPECTFUL and BE SILENT and NOT SHOUT. Bing-bong. "The next mass will be leaving at eighteen-twenty, calling at hymns number thirty-two and one-oh-four."


• There's a huge TV screen next to the pulpit. Does it tell us something useful about the art? Does it tell us anything about the pulpit and what it means? No. It just says LA CHAIRE and then flips to THE PULPIT, perpetually cycling the two words. And it gets in the way of your actually seeing the pulpit.


• The TV screens telling us THE PULPIT or THE CHOIR or THE MOUNT OF OLIVES must have a massive carbon footprint, and they must have cost a bomb - they are massive flatscreens. But if you want to see any of the things in the cathedral lit up, you'll have to pay for it. The cathedral has after all spent its entire electricity budget on the televisions.


• There's no information on the art historical, or historical, aspects of the cathedral at all. There's loads of 'spiritual' stuff though. I couldn't work out who it was addressed to at all - it told you things anyone brought up in a Christian environment would surely know ('Christians worship Jesus', and there's also a hypothesis that bears defecate in afforested areas; 'the pulpit is used for delivering sermons'), but equally its affirmation of faith would offend any visiting Hindu, Muslim or Jew, who might need to know what a font is for...


• Except that the font, which I think most Christians would agree is one of the most important places in any church, has no label at all on it. Odd - since its spiritual importance as the site of baptism is equalled in this case by the artistic merits of the Gothic sculpture.


• And this SPIRITUAL place we are meant to RESPECT, in capitals since that is how the loudspeaker delivers those words, has a bloody great shop set up opposite the astronomical clock - not neatly hidden in a cloister or side chapel, but right in the middle of the place.  I can't help thinking: Matthew 21: 12-13 -  "My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves", in this case with the addition of modern electronic devices.

Ugh. It all left a nasty taste in the mouth. As did the fact that the cathedral is closed every day at 1130, not for mass, but for paying audiences to see a film about the clock, followed by the clock striking twelves. Den of thieves indeed. Sorry, but if what you see is a money-making machine, administrators of the cathedral, then what I see is not deep spirituality, and I am not inclined to respect it.

(Chartres cathedral, my local one, makes a good contrast. Nearly every ancient stained glass window has a board explaining the narratives and images in detail. And it's not sectioned off with little barriers, either. And... sorry to say it, but it is ten times a better cathedral anyway.)

I was happy, later on, to visit Saint Pierre le Jeune (Protestante) - that's the official title; there's a Saint Pierre le Jeune (Catholique) as well for an organ recital. It was an interesting recital, on a Silbermann organ, taking as its theme the Lord's Prayer, and featuring arrangments of 'Vater unser in Himmelreich' by Praetorius, Buxtehude and Bach. In between there were readings that took the Lord's Prayer as a starting point - but what was fascinating was that they could have been written by (and admired by) agnostics or even atheists; they deconstructed the prayer, questioned it, questioned even the existence of God. So that in a prayerful setting, we ended up not worshipping, or being invited to 'respect' a place of worship, but being invited to think. And to enjoy the good music, too (there was a cracking piece of Bach neither of us knew - and when your partner is an organist, that's definitely not usual).

Oh yes; the collection that was taken went not to the church, but to a charity fighting against torture. And when we wanted to take a look at the architecture afterwards, we were warmly invited to wander around. We actually felt welcome - something we hadn't in the cathedral.

 

A secret at Chartres

I've known Chartres cathedral for five or six years now, visiting it several times a year, in all seasons, early and late. And it still surprises me, from time to time.

It can be just a trick of the light throwing a new accent on to a moulding, or illuminating a window I've not seen so clearly before. It can be a different approach, a slight angle that shows something new.

Yesterday, it was a real secret though.

The North Porch is supported on columns which are ornamented with tiny scenes - David and Goliath, Jubal and his lyre, the Ark of the Covenant. Supporting the columns are lovely plinths carved with fresh springtime leaves; except for one column, which rests on a polygonal foot pierced with little holes. Look inside these holes, and you can see a marvellous bestiary - including this little toad or frog.

Safari chez soi; the Vallée des Cailles

Sometimes strangeness awaits you through a door you've always passed by on the way to work, a little byway whose name you always knew but that you'd never taken.

We pass through Boncourt every time we drive to Anet. We've known about the Vallé des Cailles - a local nature reserve - for ages, but never bothered to explore. Then last week, the sun finally came out after days of lowering gray skies, and we decided to go for a walk.

The other side of Rouvres, where we've often walked, there are chalk downs with extensive views, long lazy slopes above the valley of the Avre and its villages. Everywhere you see the slate spires of village churches or isolated chapels.

But from the moment we entered the ghost orchard, a raised platform of dead apple trees, barkless and whitened by time, we realised the Vallée des Cailles was different. From the moment we turned a corner, and we could no longer see that acute junction where the road from Bu and the road from Rouvres join, we were in one of those hidden folds of the landscape that seems to take you away from all the places you know - from which you can't hear the noise of the traffic, or see the familiar landmarks.

The Vallée des Cailles is so called from the 'cailles', the flint nodules that are found in the fertile land of the valley bottom. The word might come from 'caillou', a pebble, or from the fact that the stones cluster as thickly as quails (cailles).  In the ploughed land, I found a perfect fossilised sea urchin; when I got it home and cleaned it up, I could see fine details, the base of its spines, even the reticulations of its shell, their impression caught in the hard flint.

As soon as we'd turned the corner from the ghost orchard, we found ourselves walking the fringe of the forest; tall, straight oaks on one side, the fields of the valley bottom on the other. On the whitened slopes of the opposite side of the valley fell the long shadows of the forest trees, bristling grey patterns on the frosted furrows. Below, the bare thistledown on the creepers that edged the fields caught the sunlight, glowing white.

Further up the valley, you enter the forest, with its long, straight forest drives, and sudden steep ascents and descents. Each sector of forest seems different; one part with young coppices, slender branches rising straight up or fanned out gently from a single trunk. Here the light was crisp, the forest opening and welcoming. Later on, older trees darkened the forest floor, their trunks massive, their heads gnarled, and huge brambles reared arches across the path.

It was almost silent in the forest; but whenever we stopped, we could hear rustling around us, little scurries and sudden starts.

Coming back, we took the bottom of the valley; another world entirely it seemed, long and level and open, the ruts in the track filled with icy puddles, the forest black and forbidding on one side, gentle and welcoming on the other.  And yet you couldn't see out of the valley - couldn't see the houses of Boncourt, or the road, or a hill beyond the immediate crest of the slope. It was a perfectly enclosed world, silent with frost in the pale light of winter sun.

Finally, as we were coming back to the village, we saw the first walkers we'd passed all day; two French ladies out with their three tiny terriers, smart little creatures I suppose before they'd started their walk, but now bedraggled, wet, and filthy with mud. The smallest had to be picked up and towelled dry.

I've done a lot of walking around Eure-et-Loir, but this is a special walk. It's not in the guides, it's not on a GR route (though it's an optional extra on the GR22 from Paris to Mont Saint Michel), even the local tourist office won't tell you much about it. But if you're a hiker, and you're anywhere nearby, the Vallée des Cailles is a rather special seven or eight kilometres.

Reaching the Vallée des Cailles: Coming into Boncourt from the direction of Rouvres, take the road that forks back and left about a hundred yards after the village sign. (You can park along here - alternatively, there's a car park in the village opposite the church; park there and walk back, it's not far.) Keep along the track till you find a sign for the 'boucle', a 4 km loop. The walk can easily be extended into the forest, and if you care to walk a much larger circle, you can walk all the way round, through Anet and then back up the Eure valley.

Two fine cheeses

One of the lovely things about France is that it's so very big - so much bigger than the Blue Guide ever lets on.

For instance; French cheese. Off the top of my head, I can think of: Camembert and Brie of course, Roquefort with its blue veins, Chavignol, Cabécou, Selles-sur-Cher goat's cheese, Saint-Nectaire, Cantal and Comté, Salers, Mont d'Or, Emmenthal, Tomme de Savoie, Reblochon, and Morbier... but everywhere we go, we seem to find a new cheese.

Take for instance Leclerc in Boulogne-sur-Mer, not best known as a tourist haunt. Taking the ferry back from Norwich beer festival to Les Basses Lisieres, we thought we'd get our shopping done at the port instead of waiting till the next day and going to our local supermarket.

Cue the cheese counter. Remember, this is northern France, no longer Normandy, so things are a bit different - lots of ch'ti cheeses. Maroilles, stinky and soft; mimolette, with its grey outside and bright orange inside, a deeply boring cheese at a month old, very interesting indeed once it's aged for a year and a half.

And Vieux Lille. This is a cheese you could wrap several times in clingfilm, put in a zip-lock bag, heat-seal into a plastic box, and lock in a safe, and you'd still be able to smell it at a hundred yards.

I actually couldn't take it. Me, defeated by a cheese! This simply does not happen.

Then my other half suggested the way to cope. You simply use quite a lot of butter on your bread, then add the cheese. The butter seems to damp down the acrid notes of the cheese while bringing out the more rounded flavours. (As usual, the French have not only wonderful food, but all the little tips and tricks on how to use it.)

Then we found a cheese we had never seen before - Pavé de l'Aa. This might not make it into the top ten French classics, but it was a delightful experience; creamy, slightly hard texture, with fresh nutty smell and slightly lemony taste, all within a soft, white-furred, orange rind.

(The Aa by the way is a little river whose name means 'water' in old Dutch, and is renowned as 'the first river in France' - in the dictionary if nowhere else.)

 

A baby sister for Chartres cathedral

We didn't mean to find a cathedral. We were only looking for an ATM.  Jacques had run out of money, and we needed a bank.

But as we drove into Gallardon we realised we had found rather more than just a branch of Credit Agricole. A fine Gothic choir and a marvellously high spire, and a strange, huge, relic of upthrust wall crowning the hill, gave this town a striking silhouette against the low spring sun.

As soon as we saw the apse of the cathedral I knew where I'd seen it before. The flying buttresses, simple buttresses like semi-circles drawn with a child's compass; the simple, wide lancet windows, without tracery; it was exactly like Chartres cathedral.

The silhouette of the church is as striking as that of the town. The choir is gloriously high; the spire, at its north west corner, soars up to heaven. But the whole thing seems to be cut short. Then you realise the nave is there, after all, but it's so low its roofline is hardly visible above the houses of the town.

We went in, of course; after all, the church was next to the bank.

Even with that hint of Chartres cathedral I wasn't prepared for what I saw inside. Beyond the long, wide, rather low nave, steps led up towards the glowing light of the choir; the bleached white of fine, porous limestone. It was like a path of revelation; through darkness to light. I had to raise my head to look at the choir; the whole church is laid out on the slope of the hill,  rising and rising again towards the east. It is an amazing place.

Of course, the effect would have been rather different had any of the original stained glass been left in the choir windows. The clear glass floods the apse; it was almost as if the light had become tangible, so strong did it seem.

And a baby sister for Chartres? Well believe it or not, I was right.  It was built around the same time, and even the stone used to build the choir may have come from the same quarry, according to a note in the church.

Hide and seek in the museum

There's a report that the Quai Branly museum is playing games with its visitors.

The museum possesses a 'Mayan' crystal skull. Actually, it's a fake - made in Germany, probably, as the quartz it's made of comes from the Alps, not from South America.

As the new Indiana Jones film, which stars one of these crystal skulls, opens, the curators of Quai Branly have decided to hide the skull. It's only about ten centimetres high, so that should be easy.

If visitors want to see the skull, they'll have to follow a treasure hunt through the museum.

I love the elements of play, game, hide-and-seek. Okay, this is really intended for younger visitors - but why should adults be excluded from the ludic elements of life? I shall definitely follow the treasure hunt!

The skull will be on exhibition from May 20th to September this year, and if you can read French there's an interesting pdf about the skull and the exhibition on the Museum website.

Damson gin

Regular readers know I have a sideline in home made liqueurs.

We just opened the 2007 damson gin. Like sloe gin, only made with damsons. Three ingredients; damsons, sugar, gin. Leave to macerate for six months. Stir the sugar every day till it's dissolved and then just leave it.

We poured it through a funnel into a bottle. We got half a litre, and then two glasses for drinking now. And lots of really tasty, gin-pickled damsons for eating. (I'm going to stone a few of them and make chocolate tiffin cake with them. Should be fun).

Rich red, sweet, plummy liqueur. The big surprise: it doesn't taste of gin at all. And it's very aromatic. Highly recommended. Give it a try!

Next year, we're making five litres.

Distinctive locality

I've written before about local distinctiveness - what makes a region or a city special, what gives it that certain almost indefinable flavour that distinguishes it from anywhere else.

Such distinctiveness is of course under threat. Chain stores, the spread of 'one size fits all' architecture, a certain feeling that local traditions are uncool or plebeian, all tend to impose homogeneity on our townscapes and landscapes. Agricultural colleges teach a single 'best practice' for all countryside - no respect for the distinctive feel of terroir there.

So it's nice to celebrate a couple of organisations which are fighting to preserve this specialness.

First, Maisons Paysannes de France, an organisation which promotes authenticity in the way older French houses are restored. It's a truism in the UK property press that 'only Brits buy old French houses, the French like them new'; but fortunately there are many French owners of old houses who do care about their local vernacular building traditions.

Maisons Paysannes offers links to conservation orientated building professionals, as well as publicising good restorations of period houses. In France, where you'll often see a period house that would be grade II* listed in the UK with modern double glazing and a PVC conservatory stuck on the end, they're fighting a tough fight.   Good luck to them.

Common Ground is a UK based charity that focuses on the ways people can celebrate their local distinctiveness.

One of the threats they identify is abstraction. In a recent Guardian interview Common Ground founder Sue Clifford picked out some particularly nasty ones; 'sites' for streets or fields, 'the public' for people, 'natural resources' for woods and streams. Even the word 'environment' makes her suspicious. Abstract words blind us to real distinctiveness.

(What she didn't go on to elaborate is that local words are another component of 'real place'. What would Norfolk be without bishybarnabees - ladybirds - or dodmen - snails? And we have lokes, where northerners have ginnels and York has snickelways - though the latter is a fairly recent coinage.)

Common Ground's web site suggests ways that people can celebrate the distinctiveness of their own place - ABCs of differences, photographs, parish maps. These maps are not 'objective' (regular readers know I have difficulty with the idea of any map being really objective; the very assertion of 'objectivity' displays a biased idea of what mapping is about). Instead, wilful subjectivity rules - the maps are written, painted, knitted, embroidered; they include dialect words, pictures of wildlife, old stories and legends.

It's back to the 1960s in a way for Common Ground. 'Think globally, act locally' has been replaced by 'think locally! act locally! buy locally!'

Things vs Experiences

The opening of France's new Immigration Museum last month was well noted in the press - less so by the great and the good, with Sarkozy and his immigration minister deciding not to attend.

What I find interesting is that this is a museum which tries to address concepts and experiences. The whole concept of 'being French', for instance. France has always had a strong centralising, classicising culture; a strong tradition of linguistic correctness, style, a canon of work. (Braudel, a historian whose work I find particularly interesting, comments that this can be set against a very strong regional and local trend - the 'terroir' - so it's not only immigration that challenges this centralised Frenchness, it's the tendency of individual French people to identify as Savoyards, Provencals, Bretons, or Burgundians... but I digreess.)

So immigration challenges the core of French culture; the unified, single-language, single-system, statist view of culture. The view that says whatever your origins, you are 'French' - where in England we say 'black Briton', 'British Muslim', in French the phrase is 'd'origine Martiniquaise', 'd'origine Algérienne'. You are only of that nationality by origin - you are French by essence.

Now how does a museum go about addressing these issues? Museums are truly great at showing you things. One of my favourites; a study room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art entirely full of ushabtis (tiny Egyptian tomb figures). Another; the cases of Tanagra figurines in the British Museum.  You learn something about that country and that period by seeing them, but the focus is on the things themselves.  The same with art galleries; you might actually get some good ideas about Van Gogh by, for instance, lining up one of his pictures with photographs of the landscape, or of contemporary interiors in real life, but what the gallery is about is showing you things. You're then in charge of the experience.

Now the museum of immigration can certainly put together a number of things. At danger of stereotyping; a kora for Senegal, tea glasses for North Africa, Chopin's piano for the French Poles, a Torah for the Jewish community (though whether you can call French or English Jews 'immigrants' - or indeed whether you can spot a 'typical' Jewish experience when Sephardi and Ashkenazi communities had such different histories). Things.

But actually those things don't tell you anything about the immigrant experience. Perhaps it's only art work that can do that. An installation of insidious voices for instance. Accounts of their lives, taken from immigrants of different generations and origins.  (To its credit, this museum has tried to do that by engraving their words on the glass of some of the cases.)

So I suspect this museum, for all its honesty and integrity, rather fails.  Because it's difficult to square the requirement for scholarly integrity - which has always been based on showing things -with the need to admit experiences.

Rugby World Cup page

I've just loaded a tourist guide to the Rugby World Cup venues in France to my Podtours site:

 http://www.podtours.co.uk/rugby-world-cup-tourism.html

Of course you can use it to find out about Montpellier, Lens, Toulouse, and so on even if you're not 'un rugbyman'. (Does the French language contain a noun for female rugby fans, I wonder? and if so, what is it? une rugbymanne? rugbyfemme?)

Chartres by night

We had an evening out yesterday in Chartres. First to hear the organ concert, then to see 'Chartres en lumière', the illuminated city by night.

To my amazement the cathedral is open till 10 - officially; actually there were still people inside at 1030 and no one seemed to be making any great attempt to push them out. There was also an extra free concert, 'Musique et silence', with a violin and cello duo playing; during which you were quite free to wander around, or sit and listen.

I know Chartres cathedral pretty well but coming to it in the late evening showed me another side to the building. When we got to it at four thirty, the sun outside was bright, and the glass shone out as I've never seen it before - the whole cathedral was bathed in blue and red from the stained glass. And suddenly I noticed something I'd never seen before - how the great north rose breaks with the prevailing blue of the rest of the cathedral, and instead creates a fanfare of red and orange - a blast of colour.

The lights weren't put on till nearly half past nine, so the cathedral gradually dimmed as the sun declined; at one point the only light, practically, was the west window blazing in the sunset, a symphony of blue. And the whole place felt different; quieter, more meditative. Just before they put the lights on, all you could see in the ambulatory was a smear of colour from the stained glass, almost extinguished, and the banks of candles in front of t Virgin of the Pillar.

The light show came on at 1030. It's not just the cathedral that is lit up; quite a few of the other buildings in the city are also illuminated, including the church of Saint Pierre  lit both from the inside (to show its wonderful stained glass) and from outside, with pictures from medieval manuscripts. But the cathedral facade is the tour de force; a five minute show drops architectural elements into place, with pictures of builders from the stained glass, and finally the whole facade is covered with a projection of the Virgin and Child from the window of the 'Vierge de la Belle Verriere'.

My favourite though was the north porch, where the lighting is used to colour in the statues. A fascinating, ephemeral  view of the medieval sculpture in bright colour - the way it might originally have been, before wind and rain stripped the paint from the creamy stone.  And the bridges on the river, illuminated with lettering around the arches to tell the story of the city.

The strange thing was how few people were chasing the lights. Perhaps because it was a Sunday evening; if we'd gone on Saturday it might have been busier.  So rather than what we'd expected, which was a busy experience like the Versailles night opening, what we got was a rather quiet, meditative mosey around a deserted French town. Highly recommended for a very different night out.

Also highly recommended; 'Le Mughal' in Rue de la Clouterie . EUR 20 each gets you a three course meal with fish tikka, chicken tandoori, and a choice of curries (or you can select from the vegetarian menu).

Versailles Grands eaux nocturnes

We visited the gardens of Versailles for the Grands Eaux Nocturnes this Saturday. It turned out to be rather different from what I'd expected.

First of all, the attendance. About ten thousand at a guess. The closest experience I've had to it in five years was the great anti-war march in London back in 2003; it was that packed. And yet, if you strolled just off the main pathways, you could find yourself almost alone.

Secondly, the sheer size of the gardens. Each of the individual 'bosquets' is a good sized garden in itself. We had two hours, and we still left five or six gardens unvisited.

Thirdly, garden mind games. Now this was definitely encouraged by the scenario of the lighting and effects (whispers coming from the bushes, strange flashes of light in the trees, overheard conversations), but it's there in the design of the gardens. Look at the map, and you think the grid layout is clear; enter one of the bosquets, and you find that the entrances have been angled cleverly so that when you get to the centre, you can't actually see any of the ways out; or find that there's no direct approach, you have to go at an angle.  Quickly, despite your conviction that the grid pattern will keep you on the square, you're lost. It's not a formal maze, a maze that says it's a maze, like Hampton Court; it's worse, a maze you thought was a formal grid, a maze that suddenly arrives with its ambiguity and threat like a flashback in a Buñuel film.

Then there's the inside/outside mind game.  Is the centre of the Bosquet inside or out? It's outside - a clearing, an open space, unroofed - and yet at the same time it's inside - a drawing room, a salon, a defined space. And then there's the forest, contained within green trellis walls - the forest creates the wall; is that an inside or an outside? You actually never see the forest, unless you peer through the trellis; but it's there, an indefinable presence. You're never quite sure where you are, once you wander off the main axis of the Grand Canal and chateau.

Of course that main axis is everything I had expected; formality, grandeur, that you could have anywhere - a German Archbishop's residence, an Italian villa, a Russian palace. But it was the informal spaces that were the real surprise for me.

The Grands eaux nocturnes is not a cheap experience; tickets cost 17 euros. But it's impressively worked out, with audio visuals including a recreation of a project for a globe floating on one of the fountains, which was never built; baroque dancers; amazing glitterballs throwing light on to one of the clearings; and some charming baroque music; as well as one glade devoted to the sense of smell, which, unfortunately, we didn't get round to. The whole thing is just balanced nicely on the edge where French art excels - so nearly pretentious, but not quite.

And you get a first class fireworks display at the end. Not lots of big bangers and garish colours, but a well paced display of shimmering silver and green rains, interlaced trails of golden fire, and a little surprise at the end, which I won't spoil.

Town planning of the Renaissance

Medieval cities were often somewhat impromptu in their structure. They grew semi-spontaneously, despite attempts to regularise them - for instance the bastides, grid-based towns around a central square, in southern France. (Winchelsea, a town founded by Edward I of England, is also a bastide, though it's almost a ghost town - it began to shrink once the sea receded and its port trade disappeared.)

But the Renaissance brought new ideas of architecture and in particular, the idea that towns and cities should be planned to create harmonious and functional spaces where citizens could function. The square was no longer just an area without buildings, and the street no longer simply a thoroughfare; components were given meaning and dignity.

So we see, for instance, the Place des Vosges and Place Royal in Paris being created; Michelangelo refocusing the scattered medieval buildings of the Capitoline Hill into a centralised, symmetrical composition and planning a pavement which would integrate the whole into a geometrical and, perhaps, cosmological pattern. We see the creation of huge straight streets giving immense vistas in Baroque Rome. (Even London got St James's Square, but the City remained resistant to the new trends and still has most of its medieval street network.)

But there's a feeling that most of this town planning was done for the wealthy, or for the commune as a whole. It didn't touch the lives of the working class or even the middle classes, much.

Well in Nuremberg, it did.  The 'Sieben Zeilen' were built for weavers in 1489, timber framed houses arranged on what looks like seven rungs of a ladder between two diverging streets. It's an early town planning grid and though the houses look vernacular medieval - you can imagine them in any medieval town - the placement is typically Renaissance.

And these are lovely, big houses, with plenty of light (important for weavers, of course) and space around them.

It reminds me a little of the weavers' houses in London's Spitalfields, tall Georgian houses with huge penthouse windows at the top to let in light for the looms.  Here too the weavers weren't poor workers - they were moderately wealthy entrepreneurs.

Visits by candle light

Having enjoyed the Nuit des Musées in Versailles - open from 7 in the evening till half past midnight - I decided to look up what other nocturnal attractions might exist.

There aren't as many as you might think, though many museums now have one late opening every week. The National Gallery, in London, is open every Wednesday till 9 pm, with live music from jazz to Renaissance lute solos. And the Louvre is open late on Wednesday and Friday evenings - which are often much less crowded than during the day.

I was overjoyed to find that one of the rather special nocturnal events is quite close to us - so we will be heading there probably at the weekend. Vaux-le-Vicomte, the chateau which inspired the better known Versailles, has candelight openings every evening in summer. Even better, one ticket will last from 2 in the afternoon - so you can see the fine formal gardens - until midnight. Then, your coach will presumably turn into a pumpkin drawn by frogs unless you hop it smartly.

The chateau of Valençay also offers candlelit visits, which can be combined with dinner from EUR 26 (the basic ticket, assuming you're not hungry, or take a picnic, is EUR 10).

These are aristocratic palaces just made for seeing by the light of the fine chandeliers. But a more down to earth experience is provided by Monday evening visits at the Dennis Severs House in London's east end.  You'll need to book via the web site for this, as times vary depending on the time of year. This fine Georgian house is presented in eighteenth century style, just as if the occupants have left - even their dinner plates are ready on the table. It's a little spooky, and intriguing, and you can go for a curry in Brick Lane afterwards.

Fun and games

Medieval sport seems to have resembled a battle - rough, unlimited in time, and pretty vague in its rules.  I don't think they did penalty shoot-outs in the Middle Ages.

What's fun for us is that quite a few of these medieval sports remain. There are tantalising suggestions in the art of the time - for instance in Gloucester Cathedral there's a 'bandyball' player shown in the east window. Apparently the dean of Gloucester challenged another couple of clergymen to a re-enactment game. I can't find out who won, though.

But if you're really interested there are some fine medieval games still being played. For instance in Siena the Palio horse race round the main Piazza still takes place, twice a year. In Florence, there's 'Calcio storico', traditional football, with a ridiculously large number of players on each side. In Pisa, the Gioco del Ponte justifies a glorious military parade - but it's a violent game between the two parts of the city, Tramontana and Mezzogiorno, with twenty men at a time trying to push their opponents off  the bridge.

In Germany, Mainz has its own tradition, rather a damp one - on St John's Eve, in midsummer, the boatmen have a joust on the Rhine, using long poles to try to tip their opponents into the water.

Getting people wet is always fun. One of my friends has his own game - not a 'tradition' that the local tourist board would recognise, I suspect, but known to a good few - of organising a water-pistol siege of his house on the August bank holiday.

And here Spain and France turn out to have some really oozing, slurpy, disgustingly wet games. For instance in Prats-de-Mollo in the Pyrenees you'll find the 'bears' - villagers liberally covered with soot and oil and sheepskin, set up for the other guys to chase. They may well relate to the Jack-in-the-Green, the May Day king, but they've gone in a different direction - fun and games rather than pageantry.

There's just no excuse for the Tomato festival in Bunol, in the Spanish province of Valencia. It starts with another good game - climbing a greasy pole to get at a leg of ham. But the fun really begins when they start throwing the tomatoes.

Two views of the Orient

The crypt of the cathedral in Boulogne is not really worth visiting. It's damp, full of bad nineteenth century plaster saints, and chilly.

But I was intrigued by one of the monuments. Sir John B Hearsey, "the hero of Seetabuldee", with a fine feathered hat and sabre. What is he doing here?

He was a general who had campaigned in India in the early nineteenth century - days of huge expansion for the British. But it seems he retired to Boulogne in later life; it was a cheap place for British pensioners.

Under the magnificent ramparts is a pyramid shaped monument to another man who had spent time in the east - Mariette Pacha.  He was born in Boulogne, but before he was thirty he had headed out to Egypt - and he never returned (though he worked at the Louvre for a while before entering the Egyptian Khedive's employment).

Now you might think that Mariette, as an Egyptologist, is a less swashbuckling figure than the "hero of Sitabuldee". But you'd be wrong. These were the days when archaeologists competed to find the most valuable artefacts - when the way to open a sarcophagus was to put gunpowder under the lid and light it with your cigar, as Mariette is said to have done.

The strange thing is that both these  figures are commemorated in Boulogne - half fish processing centre, half seaside town. It's like finding a monument to Richard Burton or Mungo Park in Frinton on Sea.  I wonder what other intriguing stories the town might hide?

Mariette Pacha - French scholar and archaeologist, - the man who wrote the plot for Verdi's Aida -

Two precious wall paintings - a disappearing heritage?

Frecoes are, for most of us, an Italian thing. Painting on walls just isn't something we think artists did in medieval France and England.

But that's got more to do with centuries of damp than it has to do with medieval artists' work. Every so often you come across a wall painting that startles you with its vividness - and makes you realise how much we have probably lost.

Amiens Cathedral for instance has a lovely painting of the Sibyls; fashionable fifteenth century ladies, in lovely springtime colours - living green, sweet pink, golden yellows. But look more closely, and you'll see the paint is actually flaking off the wall; how much longer will they be there?

I was amazed recently to find a stunning wall painting in my own city. I never knew it was there. Yet it's of such fine quality that if it were in Florence or Venice, it would be in all the guidebooks.

St Gregory, Pottergate, Norwich, was only open because there was a craft fair inside. Norwich has many fine Perpendicular churches, and at first sight this was just one more of the same style - whitewashed walls, most of the furnishings gone, cobwebs and damp.

Then I saw the painting at the back of the north aisle. St George and the dragon, against the  dreamlike parapets of a fantastic castle. Its colours seemed darkened by time but the lines of the painting were still clear.

Maybe it doesn't rank with Uccello. But it's an amazingly beautiful piece of work. It's also a testimony to the medieval culture of Norwich, where St George and the Dragon were part of the guild celebrations (a dragon still turns up to the mayor's procession), and the Guild of St George was one of the most powerful.

Yet this painting is unnoticed, unprotected, in a redundant church that's open a few times a year. And though it's in a better state than the Amiens Sibyls, I wonder how it will fare in future, in an empty church that's used a few times a year.

Poirette and peche de vigne

A nice surprise this week was finding a little local grocer's in Picardy with a fine selection of local spirits.  We counted fifteen in the window - and there were more inside.

First we tried the Poirette de Picardie. Pear juice is left for three years in oak barrels with 'eau de vie de cidre', cider spirit. (Basically, if it was made in Normandy it would be Calvados.) There's sweetness, a little tartness, a hint of pear taste. Picardy farmers also make Reinette, using apples instead of pears this way; I haven't tasted that. Yet.

Then we tried creme de peche de vigne. (Actually not the brand I've linked to, but a 'craft' product.) The peche de vigne is a particular type of peach tree that grows in vineyards - hence the name. Now I've had peach brandy before and found it usually far too sweet; but this is nice, with a delicate flavour, and fine aromas, and almost no sugary feeling at all. Just right for the long, light evenings we're beginning to get.

The friendly gargoyle

We went to Amiens last weekend to look at the cathedral.

It's fine, though I have to say my preference is for the earlier Gothic  of Bourges or Laon. But this is a majestic church - and a huge one; the first evidence of the French striving for height with its immense arcades and narrow, tall nave.

What made the visit really memorable, though, was our tour of the late Gothic choir stalls in the company of monsieur Jean Macrez - 'the last living gargoyle' as he jokingly calls himself.

He's spent years looking after the sculptures - dusting, waxing, polishing - and he clearly loves them. He pointed out the Bible stories - Joseph, Samson, Job, Jonah - but also the little figures of the tradesmen of the city. There's the scribe, the tanner, the mason, the carpenter, with a perfectly rendered little plane, the sculptor, the baker, even a laundrywoman with her tub and a man selling the famous duck paté of Amiens (still available today).

There's humour in the telling, too. The little carpenter has made it through five centuries untouched. The lithe young woman to his left, though, has had her features eroded by the strokes and caresses of the canons and choristers. Poor girl.No wonder then that a little further on, a woman is taking revenge for this chauvinism by beating up her husband!

Kneel on the floor, and you can see beneath the table of the wedding of Cana the feet of Jesus, and all the guests. Guess what - two of them are playing footsie (Jesus is not involved, for those of you who've read too much of the Da Vinci Code).  Then at one end of the stalls, go behind one of the scenes, and you can see why the four Evangelists appear at the top - they're standing on a bench to see over!

Too often, we submit to false professionalism with tour guides who tell us all the facts but have no passion for what they're showing. But here was a man who has not only mastered his subject (and written a couple of books, available in the cathedral shop), but has an abiding love for the cathedral and its art. You couldn't fail to be moved - and amused - by his presentation.

Monsieur 'Quasimodo's tour of the stalls was at half past three, Monday afternoon. He seems to do them most days - there's a little card at the choir entrance gate telling you when the next one is. Definitely worth waiting for.