europe | Martyn K Jones

No, this is not about my writing being overlooked, that’s a given, but a town in the Dordogne known as Albi. As far as traditional towns in the South of France, it is quite the unsung story. In the English speaking world it is more overlooked than looked over. At least in the circles I move in.

We were lucky to have a rare, warm February day for our visit. Despite negotiating a funfair taking over the streets which played merry hell with our satellite navigation. Didn’t pay attention to the dates posted at the time, but apparently it runs from 15th – 23rd February. Every year. So much for being out of season. Despite that, we navigated our way into the Cathedral car park, which formed the beginning of our visit. straight into St Cecile cathedral.

The cathedral of Albi, to not put too fine a point on it, is stunning. An epic story in brick and stone, displaying the apogee of any gothic stonemasons skill. Delicate stone fretwork at the very limit that limestone can be dressed to. Painted walls surpassing even the famous St Chapelle in Paris. In short, the high church magnificat. Saved from the iconoclasm of French revolutionary zeal by one man, an engineer, who had the foresight to squirrel the finest carvings away from the revolutionaries before it was all destroyed in a fit of anti-catholic pique.

While the institution of religion, whatever form it takes, can prove toxic to the greater mass of humanity, some of the values it teaches will always remain worthy. Respect and tolerance for those not quite like us. Respect for those giants upon whose shoulders we all stand while knowing that we will benefit all the more by adding, rather than subtracting from their legacies of knowledge. Using that understanding to weather any storms that might afflict us in our lifetimes. Because storms there will be. That is a fact of life.

The weather has been warm and sunny

Of late I have found myself leaning on cemetery walls, reading the names on French war monuments, and coming to the conclusion that these memorials are not an act of mindless worship, a love of monuments and corrupted institutions, but more of a deep love and respect for those who have gone before. Love for those whose lives, small grains of sand, laid the foundation of our futures, so that those future people, like us, have no need to re-invent society from the ground up at every generation. Understanding this simple truism, we can find stability, a sense of belonging from our forefathers and reasons to keep the march of the generations going. Not to be frightened all the time. To discover love and happiness on our own account, subsequently passing on the baton before our own brief candles are snuffed.

As we visit the hilltop villages of southern France, with their eclectic histories, wonderful scenery and patchwork architecture, grown organically down the centuries, I cannot help but reinforce my view that we have to embrace our pasts to produce a worthwhile and wonderful future, and perhaps that is what being human is all about.

One of the things to like in off season France is the big covered markets. Most reasonable size towns have one, with a range of wines, meat and cheeses on offer is almost dizzying in scope. Even the Bull Ring indoor market in Birmingham UK, where any good quality foodstuff known to the English can be found, struggles to keep up with the French.

Nestled into the historic medieval centre of Tours, the famous Les Halles indoor market, even off season, is worth a visit for any food interested person. And despite a tortuous one way system (Something shared with central Birmingham), is well worth a visit. From several butchers and three significant Fromageries, each with a range of at least fifty types of cheese, to wine merchants and suppliers of all manner of cooked and uncooked produce, I found it of wallet-depleting interest.

One of the benefits of visiting off season is the lack of crowds. The ability to pause, take stock and just drink it all in, without being bumped and bored by people trying simply to get past we gawking tourists.

Getting here by car was another matter. We got off the ferry from Rosslare at Cherbourg at around half past one in the afternoon on Monday and arrived in the middle of rush hour. A timing that was to cause us, or rather me, significant anxiety as Angie was still groggy from the Dramamine she needs to survive the nausea ferries always give her and therefore not fit to drive.

My good lady does not travel well, which is rather ironic because she and I love travelling and have covered several tens of thousands of miles by car and ferries alone. From driving the Trans Canada (Twice. There and back), across twenty four states of the USA (Victoria BC to Jacksonville, Florida), along the Princes Highway (Melbourne to Sydney) in Australia and all manner of shorter road trips in the past twenty plus years. That is without extensive air travel, which she also does not tolerate well, from the UK to Canada, the USA and Australia.

For my part I find air travel tiresome because I like my personal space and as Jean-Paul Satre once pithily observed; “L’Enfer, c’est les autres.” Hell is other people, especially if flying Economy. The ennui inducing hours flying across either the Pacific or Atlantic is best spent asleep. Drugs have sometimes proven very useful. Even two paracetamol have been enough to help survive the enforced inactivity from rotate to touchdown. But that is something I rarely do, especially if driving any distance within an hour of negotiating baggage claim, immigration and customs.

We found the hotel we’d booked into well enough. Dropping Angie and the most of our luggage off at our hotel I set off to find the off-site parking. However, a fog had risen, making trying to negotiate Tours unfamiliar one way system and narrow streets a minor nightmare Near collisions with buses and other vehicles in the cloying darkness were only averted by sheer luck on my part. Indeed it took me the best part of an hour to find the parking, find a place, lock up securely and wend my overstressed and jangling nerves back to our accommodation on foot.

Or as Angie said to me when we were safely sitting in our room, glasses of a half decent Cabernet Sauvignon in hand; “We must stop having these adventures.”

To which I replied; “You’d only get bored if we did.”