New decade, new year, new day, new post. Same old me.
Posted by mofembot Sat, 02 Jan 2010 10:28:00 GMT
As with 2009, I’m off to a roaring start with my resolution to blog more often. I think the few people (family members) who follow my blogging should start a pool right now about how many days I will manage to blog (a) in a row; (b) for this month, and/or (c) for 2010.
Yesterday we (Mr Mo, Middle Daughter and I) spent a little time driving out a bit past Montmeyan toward La Mouchotte in a vain effort to find a tumulus (well, a pair of tumuli) — that is, two human-made mounds (but not tombs) from the neolithic period. We were impeded by a road that was impassable by car and by weather that was anything but conducive to walking the remaining ~kilometer to where we think one or both mounds are located. (I personally wanted to go to Salernes’ Tholos Lauve — another neolithic site featuring a well-defined round stone foundation, a bit reminiscent of some of the Anasazi ruins in Arizona, only here the rock is limestone, rather than sandstone, but by the time we made up our minds to do anything, going much farther than Montmeyan in the fading light seemed… impractical.) Though the outing was fruitless from a paleontological point of view, I now have two more great Scrabble words at my disposal. So not a total waste.
Today we are going to see “Vieux Bras,” a hilltop collection of mostly ruined houses overlooking the Asse River. (This is my favorite river in all of France, and yes, that’s the scatological streak coming out in full force here. Bizarrely, however, the short little Asse doesn’t even figure on what I think is France’s official hydrology maps, even though there are several towns — Bras d’Asse, St Julien d’Asse, for example — that have been situated along this legitimate river flowing down from the Alpine foothills as a feeder to the much-larger La Durance since the Middle Ages or earlier.) The two central structures in Vieux Bras are a château and a church, both of which have been largely restored (or very much well underway as of the last time I stopped by sometime last year).
I am curious to see if the Belgian couple who owns much of the property there have made more progress on their overall project: not to restore all of the houses and structures on the hillside under the château and church, but simply to clear away the brambles and under- and overgrowth to allow (potential) tourists to stroll around the alleys of the old village. This hilltop location was abandoned around the turn of the XIXth/XXth centuries for Bras d’Asse down below on the river and for La Bégude Blanche (the “blanche” part is new to me, visible on google maps but not on the entry/exit signs on the main road) across the Asse. The Belgian couple (whom Oldest and I met in the chapel last year) said that the abandoned village was used for artillery target practice sometime before World War I.
We are getting ready now to go, stopping first in Riez for lunch. Thence to the ruins, thence perhaps to some tiny villages (via a most circuitous route back to Riez and its Intermarché), then home again. I am a bit interested in seeing St Jurs: it is easy to think of Quinson, with its 350 residents as a tiny village (which it is), but St Jurs has only 80 permanent residents (swelling to ~150 or so in la belle saison). Now that is truly tiny. I’ll be surprised if there’s a bar or a bread depot or anything (beyond, perhaps, a few closed-up artists’ galleries and the obligatory church/château). St Jurs once had 500+ residents at its height in the XIXth century, while its 5 gypsum mines (for plaster manufacture) were in full flower. The mines and mills are shut down and in ruins. I personally would like to find a nice chunk of alabaster there, assuming we go. As Middle Daughter is prone to carsickness, and as the roads are windy (as they always must be in Upper Provence), the odds are not good that we’ll make this detour. But we’ll see.
En avant, les gars!