Getting the right kind of traveller

I've just been reading Mike Harding's Footloose in the Himalayas. It's an interesting book, and both livelier and more observant than I'd expected - Harding has a great eye for detail and a feel for the mot juste. (He also knows how to operate a running gag over twenty or thirty pages, which enlivens things no end.)

Meeting local people half way up the road to the Shingo La, he mentions his uneasiness about taking photographs; treating people as 'sights' feels wrong. That leads to thoughts about the difference between travellers and tourists, which, in the end, he puts down to this; the traveller lives with the people he meets, for however long he's there, while the tourist surrounds himself with comfort and privilege. (Of course Harding, though wanting to be a 'traveller', does have certain comforts and privileges, a cook and a ponyman, for instance... but his point is a valid one.)

Mass tourism can be a curse. It puts pressure on local resources, it falsifies human relationships, it poisons everything. It can remodel entire villages as Backpacker Central, where nothing is available but the 'planned experience' and the generic hippy market selling sandalwood incense, Shiva shirts and leggings with elephants on.

Some countries and cities deal with this by a financial bar. Most overt is Bhutan's spending barrier of $200 or more a day. That's meant to discourange "the wrong kind of tourist". Other countries develop only higher-class accommodation, barring anyone who can't afford to stay in a four star hotel for two weeks.

Actually, they haven't necessarily got the right kind of tourist. They've just made sure they make more money out of the ones they get.

Let me suggest another option. Have a special class of visa for long term travellers: a compulsory three month visa. In other words, a visa only for travellers who are going to stay a full three months. (Obviously you'd need get-out clauses for such events as a death in the family, or serious illness.)

That gets rid of all the 'Spring Break' element. It gets rid of most of the package-tour people who only do day trips. The people who are going to spend three months in a single country (okay, with the exception of India, which is half a world in itself) are those who will become a temporary part of the local scene: people who are going to settle in a bit. People who may not be wealthy, but who have time.

People who aren't going to rush from World Heritage Site to World Heritage Site, but are going to spend some time staying in small towns, looking at out-of-the-way temples, doing the little hikes that most people don't bother with. People who are going to learn how to play karrom, or help cook in a Buddhist monastery, or spend six hours on the back of a motorbike to get somewhere they really want to go.

And probably, over those three months, they'll spend about what your $200 a day tourist does in a couple of weeks. But that isn't really the point.

"Destination" hotels

I read a travel piece in one of the Sunday papers recently. It told me all about a destination. The best hotels. The best budget hotels, indeed, except that when I say 'budget' I mean 300 rupees a night (about £3) and they mean £150 and up. The best cafes and bars. The best restaurants. The best shops.

No museums. Nowhere to walk. No gardens, no churches, no monuments, no history. I ended the piece wondering why on earth I would go there. Just for shopping, eating, and drinking coffee? (Even if it was a damn fine cup of coffee...)

The "destination hotel" is perhaps my worst nightmare. Going to a place just in order to sit in a room. Admittedly I've stayed in and used some lovely hotels in my time. One favourite: The Crillon, Paris, for the amazing waiter service; a table of five is served, all the plates covered by silver lids - and hey presto! all at once, all five covers are lifted to expose the magic of the cuisine. A masterclass in how seriously the French take their food. Another: The UN Plaza (as was), New York. Nowhere else have I been able to swim and look down 30 floors on to the gridded streets of the city; surreal, wonderful, and very Manhattan.

But I go somewhere because of its flavour. I go to see the landscape, to see the crowd, to see the history. A recent walk beside the Gironde delivered tiny fossils in the chalk, fishermens' cabins on stilts, a lonely Romanesque church on a headland over the grey waters. Yes, we also stayed in a lovely B&B, but that wasn't the point.

I travel to find surprises. A fossilised leaf in the rock at my feet, just exposed by the low tide. Or in Bangkok, a while ago, a group of graffiti artists working on a commission to jolly up a food kiosk and its alleyway, or ladies cooking the monks' breakfast at a local temple. The hammer dulcimer class I was invited to join in Chiangmai. My first taste of vin de noix in a little hotel in Conques, on the way to Santiago de Compostela (years later, I've found the recipe, and make six litres, religiously, every year). A "destination hotel" doesn't deliver surprises.

So, why destination hotels? How cynical do I want to be? First, because travel sections of newspapers now aim to deliver nice easy experiences that everyone can have. (Well, everyone with a rather large amount of money to spend, anyway.) "Our readers don't want to have their minds opened. They don't want to know about the challenges of farming in the high altitude deserts of Ladakh, or the aesthetics of Japanese calligraphy. They want to know where to spend £500 for a weekend break. They don't want surprises. They want two good meals a day, a nightclub that's edgy, and a room that's guaranteed to be on-trend."

And secondly... because I suppose some people really do want to play it safe.

There is nothing there at all

I'm a great lover of nothing. The wonderful nothing that you get in the middle of the Fens, when all there is to see is the immense sky with its moods, its shifting or scudding clouds, bright blue in the sun, or with the chiaroscuro of a rainstorm's black massif set off by slanting rays of light. Or the nothing of Wahiba Sands, nothing and nothing and nothing but rolling dunes as far as you can see, which from the top of a dune is a long way, and from the bottom, only a hundred yards.

"Move along there now, nothing to see here! nothing to see here!" - as soon as someone says that you instantly think: hang on, there's something interesting here!

All this by way of introduction to a piece of sheer poetry on the Vagabonding blog. The red heart of Australia, where there really is. Nothing. At. All. To. See.

Chambres d'hotes in France

The choice between hotels and bed and breakfast used to be a simple one: hotels were expensive, B&Bs were cheap.

That's not the case any more. On my recent trip in the Auvergne and Pyrenees, I found that prices for chambres d'hote (French B&B) varied from 56 to 90 euros - above what we could have got from some of the cheaper hotels, whether never-refurbished 1950s hotels by the station, or new Ibis Budget and similar chain hotels.

However, we got more for our money. Chambres d'hote almost always include breakfast as part of the bargain; most hotels don't. And while those breakfasts can be cursory - though never, in my experience, less than a big cafetiere full of coffee, hot milk, a big tranche of baguette, butter and jam - they can also be absolutely exceptional. Kudos to Anna at La Talamo in Talmont, on the Gironde, who provided us with the first two autumn figs from the fig tree in the courtyard, a taste of Portuguese ewe's milk cheese with quince paste, four different really marvellous jams, and even an apres-breakfast espresso to pick us up before we started the big drive home.

For the same price level, chambres d'hote offer better and sometimes quirkier furnishings. I've stayed in medieval buildings, including the medieval pilgrims' hostel in Vezelay; mountain cabins with pine everywhere and delightful handmade pomanders; rooms full of antique French furniture, with the handles on desk drawers and the seats of chairs rubbed smooth by generations of hands, and that patina that comes with being loved and used and waxed and polished regularly. By comparison, many hotels at the same budget have furnishings that were all the rage in the 1970s (though I haven't yet found a complete avocado bathroom suite), and haven't been touched since. Or else they offer corporate grey or corporate beige, which may deliver cleanliness on budget but is, if over-indulged in, destructive to the soul.

And we got some memorable visits. A little chambre d'hote at La Sacoume, near Saint-Bertrand de Comminges, included in its charms a friendly rabbit, naughty pony, and laconic donkey, and a landlady who told us more about village life in the Pyrenees than you'd ever have found out from a book. With her delightful menagerie (not to forget the chickens), it was no surprise that she had a picture of the animal-loving Saint Francis of Assisi on the wall. In Saint-Saturnin, we were treated to an impromptu melodeon recital with our breakfast ("I've only really learned one tune," our host apologised, but he had learned it pretty well).

Another advantage; you'll find there's a chambre d'hote in many small villages that don't have a hotel. Getting out for a walk before breakfast you get to see the place before the day-trippers arrive. You get to see the pattern of local life. I remember one stubbly gent carrying, very delicately, a pink-wrapped, ribbon-trailing box of patisseries; a bearded bloke carting a load of baguettes up a steep cobbled street; two old farmers drinking a nip of cognac in the local bar at eight in the morning; an elegant lady on a bicycle with her dog trotting beside, and her basket slung over the handlebars.

The downside? Chambres d'hote service isn't as seamless as you'd expect in a hotel; the owner may have popped out to do some shopping or you may have to stick your head round the garden gate when there's no answer at the front door. You may not get free wifi or a coffee machine. And in quite a lot of places you'll need to speak French, at least to a basic level - though it's surprising how many owners are keen to practise their English. But if you're travelling France on a less than four-star budget, I would recommend staying in chambres d'hote.

The value of a really good guided tour.. and a film: Clermont Ferrand

I generally avoid guided tours. I'd far rather discover a place on my own. And so often, the guided tour turns out to be someone repeating what they've read in Lonely Planet.

But a really good guide? That's different.

We were lucky enough to make it into the cathedral at Clermont-Ferrand half an hour before a free guided tour. Even more fortunate to encounter one of the cathedral staff who was trying to gather together a quorum for the tour. As so often, very few of the many visitors could be bothered to join up, even though it was free. But we did.

The first five minutes were not inspiring. I'd already guessed the west end was Viollet-le-Duc, dated the architecture of the choir, got a rough feel for the architecture. Lots of dates. Lots of dates in French, and I was stumbling because he said quatorze cent quatre vingt neuf instead of mille quatre cent quatre vingt neuf, and my brain flashed up blue screen of death for a second before I worked it out.

But then this distinguished looking gentleman told us to follow him; and it was like going through an attic with someone who could open every box, pull reams of fabric out of the old wardrobes, find the tiny jewel boxes under the old Scrabble boards and Lego sets. Had I noticed the stained glass? - Yes, but I hadn't identified the subjects, which he explained, taking time (and this was important) to make sure that everyone had found the right tiny medallion - two along, three up. You could hear the slight 'ah' as people found it, see the little hint of a smile. (I knew nothing about Saint Austremoine - a distinctively Auvergnat saint, the first bishop of Clermont, whose relics are now at Mozat. I knew about his companion Saint Nectaire, but only, I'm afraid, because of the cheese.)

We learned that the First Crusade was first preached here at Clermont - though not in this church, which is much later. We learned how the black volcanic stone of which the cathedral is made oxidises with time, becoming grey. We were told how the founder of the new work, Bishop Hugues de la Tour, was inspired by the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, a marvellous, luminous Rayonnant work in which the stained glass almost seems to elbow out the stonework. And we learned that this church, ancient as it is, had no fewer than three predecessors; the second destroyed by Saracens and Vikings.

Those castle keeps that ornament the stained glass are those of Blanche of Castile; I'd recognised those from Chartres cathedral, where she dedicated one of the great rose windows. What I didn't know was that Louis IX not only donated the windows, but held the wedding of his son Philippe and Isabella of Aragon here - and that there's a nineteenth century stained glass window showing the wedding.

Along the way, several myths were expounded and then demolished. Our guide turned out to be one of those people who doesn't take things on trust. "Some people say," he would start, and would take his genteel but ruthless scalpel to the story. No urban myths, no romantic notions. We would get unvarnished truth.

All this in forty-five leisurely minutes. We weren't rushed; everyone got a good look at the points of interest.We saw how the mouldings of the arches and pillars changed ever so slightly at the point where the original architect, Jean Deschamps, handed over to his son Pierre (that was something I hadn't noticed). We saw fine mural paintings from the fourteenth century.

At the end of the tour, I walked out on to the steps that fall away from the west front to the old streets of Clermont, and looked at the plain of Limagne in the distance. The day was overcast, but the grey light still made me blink, after the dim, awesome spaces of the black cathedral.

***
I hadn't expected to spend an hour inside the tourist office. But I didn't know about the film.

Let me explain. A little while ago, a visionary mayor, a local film maker, and a few other people had a bright idea. Rather than just writing a brochure showing the five great Auvergnat Romanesque churches (Saint-Saturnin, Saint-Nectaire, Issoire, Orcival, and Notre-Dame-du-Port in Clermont), they'd make a film about them. And this film would also be provided with a magnificent cinema in the basement of the tourist office, with plush wood and leather benches and a huge door that pivoted softly closed, and a massive screen filling one wall.

We enquired. When was the film showing? Right now. Instantly. Just for the two of us? Well, why not?

And so we were enthroned in splendour, just the two of us, to watch the film.

I was looking forward to enjoying forty-five minutes or so of my favourite game, recognising churches I'd already visited. "That's Bessuéjouls!" - on the pilgrim path to Compostela - "and that's Autun!" - Gislebertus' instantly recognisable carving of the three Magi asleep - "and that's Conques!"

But a few minutes in, it dawned on me that this was actually a very good film, too. For instance, it used illustrations from manuscripts to demonstrate ideas about cosmology, proportion and geometry, and then overlaid them on to photographs of the churches to show how, for instance, the spaces of the choir and transept can be inscribed into a square and a circle, and how that fits ideas about the physical universe (which is square, and in which four is the major number - four elements, four cardinal directions, four humours) and heaven (which is circular, and perfect).

There were cross-sections of the churches, plans, and elevations, showing how the Auvergnat churches are built with quarter-circle vaults over the aisles to take the weight of the stone roofs, and how the central towers are supported by a massive rectangular structure from which the apse and the radiating chapels gradually fall away, giving a distinctive pyramidal massing quite different from Romanesque churches elsewhere.

The camerawork was superb. There were shots of tiny rural chapels, as well as the great abbey churches; there was a sequence of simple shots showing just the texture of the Auvergnat stone used in the building, from rusty red to grimy black Volvic stone, through all the colours of cream and sand and ochre.

In short; you can tour all five of the great churches in two and a half days. Or you can watch the film, in forty-five minutes. Or you can do both; which we did.

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.

Unexpected delights

The car broke down. Again. The problem a mechanic had incompetently fixed a bit north of Clermont-Ferrand stopped us completely a bit south of Aurillac.

We pulled up, ironically outside a Renault garage that had closed down, called the insurance company, and were told we'd have to wait an hour. We walked into Montsalvy for lunch.

Montsalvy is a sweet little town, once you get through the fortified gate, with a single main street lined by low stone houses. Nothing much in the way of attractions, just an old church, a monks' refectory that now serves as exhibition space, and a few bars and restaurants.

And one marvellous, unexpected delight; a treasury in the local church.

Here were fine liturgical vestments, chalices, monstrances, curiosities. A monstrance with tiny cherubs peeping between sharp shards of sunburst; another with angel-heads in entrail-fat clouds. A crocheted surplice that used to belong to a Colombian priest, and on his death was left to the priest here in Montsalvy who had once worked with him. All displayed in a tall, light, vaulted room, just off the south aisle.

It was a little like the town. Nothing would rate two asterisks in the Blue Guide; no Romanesque candelabras, no priceless medieval textiles or Limoges enamel, no Byzantine ivories. Just a collection of interesting and sometimes beautiful things, which neatly occupied a few minutes while we waited for the mechanic to arrive.

And then we had to go all the way back to Aurillac to get the car fixed, through a horrendous traffic jam in the narrow one way street at the end of which the garage was located. And then we were told it would take a few hours to fix. And then we discovered there was a street theatre festival in Aurillac.

There were white-faced, rouge-cheeked ladies in huge white satin crinolines. Pirates roaming the streets. Jugglers and bubble-blowers, prestidigitators and propagandists. There were Duos Habet, two men in stridently plasticky suits - one lugubrious, one glib - who present magic as a means of mass manipulation and neatly puncture their own mysteries with sardonic cynicism, and there was an incredible Italian clown who spoke a language entirely his own invention and threatened members of the audience with immense streams of cross babbling if they dared to sit in the wrong place, and flirted outrageously and still wordlessly with a woman who took his photograph, and ...more silliness, like this.

And then Jacques' mobile rang, and the car was ready, and we were actually, after the unexpected and uproarious fun of the afternoon, just a little bit annoyed.



Aurillac