Tarascon and Laon

As we’ve been to Provence pretty often, we’ve visited most of the tourist hot spots. But we’d never been to Tarascon. So we decided to go and investigate.

It’s about an hour’s drive from where we were staying, on the Rhone, which is a very substantial and very industrial river, with the castles of medieval robber barons perched on rocky hills all along it. Tarascon was the favourite residence of Rene of Anjou, who was something more than a robber baron – he had land all over the Mediterranean. He had various elaborate festivities here though, and the castle was really good. Loads to see - there were fascinating graffiti in the dungeons, some showing Mediterranean galleys.

Tarascon castle

The town has lots of old mansions and a very unusual Roman style arcaded street, but is quite down at heel. I don’t quite know why towns with apparently less going for them are slickly, smoothly touristy, and this one isn’t.

The Tarasque

They even have a legend, of the Tarasque, a monster which crept out of the river and ate people.  Like the Lambton Worm – but instead of being vanquished by “brave and bold Sir John”, who kept the bairns from harm by making halves of the famous Lambton worm, the monster was prayed over by St Marthe, which, you have to admit, is less satisfying as a story.

On the journey home, we stopped overnight at Laon, and spent the following morning looking round. (If we had anticipated the dreadfulness of the M1, we might have set off earlier, but that’s another story.)

We’ve seen Laon perched on its hill every time we go along the autoroute, and it really was worth stopping. There is a brilliant little cable car, a sort of funicular, but tiny, to take you up into the old town, which was fun in itself.

The "Poma" - the cable car

Laon was the Carolingian capital, and very important. The cathedral is large and bare, early Gothic – completed in 1230, with a spectacular nave and towers. It also has a lot of thirteenth century stained glass remaining. It was behind the German lines in the First World War, and was used by the Germans as a military hospital, so it wasn’t shelled.

The great west doors of Laon cathedral.

The thirteenth century glass

There’s also a twelfth century pilgrim’s hospital, a huge thirteenth century Bishop’s Palace, and many ancient houses for the churchmen associated with the important medieval university. Abelard studied here. And there’s a twelfth century octagonal chapel for the Knights Templar.

Ninth century font in the cathedral

Chapel of the Templars

Bishop's Palace

It’s all just a bit seedy, although we definitely felt it’s going up in the world. The Bishop’s Palace houses the law courts, and the old houses are mostly occupied by lawyers and such things as victim support and the probation service, so there were some pretty dodgy characters hanging around, but also some very tempting and smart restaurants. So a really very interesting place to break the journey, and a success.

Marseilles

Our appointment at the consulate was at 9.45 a.m., so we had to get up and creep out of the gite very early. The drive was fine until we got to the city, when it was rush hour and the traffic was dreadfully slow. We almost abandoned our plan of parking near the Vieux Port, but thought better of it, and did get into a underground car park with half an hour to go to the appointment. 

Vieux Port

We thought that using the metro for the first time under time stress was not a brilliant idea, so took a taxi and arrived just in time to swig a coffee before the appointment. The interview was very brief (we look thoroughly honest, I hope, and certainly British) and were given a flimsy, white passport each. So we are no longer sans papier, thank goodness. It only lasts until the day of our tunnel booking, so we have to apply for new passports, and of course I still have no bag, no purse, no cash, no credit cards, no Nottingham City card, no driving licence, and no phone, so there’s still a lot of hassle to be gone through.

The metro is very easy to work, and we returned to the Vieux Port only to find that there were no boats to Chateau D’If. The sea was allegedly too rough. All I can say is it looked OK to us, and I’m sure that in those conditions, no Northumberland sailor would have even considered cancelling a trip to the Farne Islands.  It’s only in the harbour, for goodness sake.  I’m almost more fed up about that than about having the passports nicked.

The Hotel de Ville. King Alexander of Yugoslavia was assassinated in front
of the building, in 1934

Anyway, we toured the old town. Marseilles was the European city of culture last year and there are some impressive looking new buildings which are museums and gallery spaces. But we chose to go round the older museum of the history of Marseilles, and it was very interesting. A number of ancient boats have been found, including Roman era dredgers, with winches to haul up buckets of mud through a hatch right through the middle of the deck.

The remains of the Greek dock

We also enjoyed Fort St Jean – so called because it was manned by the Order of St John of Jerusalem – and the poor house, which was vast.

The counterpart fort to Fort St Jean. There was a chain between them.

The Poorhouse (Vielle Charite)

Chapel of Vielle Charite

There were a lot of deportations and destruction during the war, and a number of monuments to those who died.

One thing we noticed is that the population is very mixed and seems, to the outsider, to be well integrated. We saw white grandparents with clearly mixed race grandchildren, and I’ve only ever seen that in Britain before now. It’s something that gives you hope for us all. 

I think we’d like to go back, as the coast is pretty dramatic, and we liked the atmosphere. I know Marseilles has a reputation, and the gendarmes to whom we reported the theft unanimously warned us to be careful there, but it’s not nearly as threatening as Naples or Barcelona. 

France

Last weekend we went to the wedding of our friends’ son, in Pornichet, which runs into La Baule. I don’t want to talk about the wedding;  although I’m sure the young couple will have posted picture comments and descriptions on Facebook and all sorts of other social media, I feel that it would be wrong. It’s their wedding and their choice.

 It’s very strange. Young people seem to have very different ideas about what is private and what isn’t. Parents post loads of pictures of their children, who haven’t given permission even if they were old enough to do so, and might be troubled by the posts in the future, and at the same time I know young people who won’t have supermarket loyalty cards because “they” will know what you’re buying.

Anyway, La Baule / Pornichet is smashing. Miles of beautiful golden sandy beaches, gently shelving for safe swimming, and warm(ish) seawater, even though it’s the Atlantic.  I had a couple of lovely swims. There seems to be plenty going on there, too. The only problem was that it’s a bit of a palaver getting there from Nottingham. We ended up flying to Paris and then taking a train, which was less of a TGV, more of a TSV, train sans vitesse. It took ages trundling round corners and through tens of stations, and going to La Baule, it was dark, so quite boring. The journey was cheered by the chef du train, who was probably bored too, and came to practice his English. He was quite an interesting bloke, a scrabble champion and member of a re-enactment society, so we enjoyed talking to him. On the way back we could watch the world go by, and decided we should go back to the Loire valley sometime.

The next week we set off to visit the bridegroom’s parents in Provence. It was simpler to return to England and start again. We had decided to drive, as whenever we fly, we keep hankering after wine which we can’t have. Phil had booked the tunnel, which I’m not at all keen on. The ferry is quite fun and gives the opportunity for a walk around and fresh air. On longer routes we used to have a meal, so we could drive straight on when we disembarked and the children used to look forward to the mini adventure.  Of course, we have had a few grim crossings when the weather was bad, when we have had to fix our eyes on the horizon and the crew spend their time hoovering up vomit. One time, Will came out of the gents after an extremely rash visit to announce that he thought someone was dead in there. Phil went to investigate and found a young man alive, but totally incapacitated by seasickness, to the extent of lying full length on the less than clean floor of the gents. My worst journey was not actually a rough one – it was a Scandinavian ferry which served an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord, with at least two dozen sorts of pickled herring. I felt obliged to taste them all, and then had to spend the rest of the journey on deck, breathing deeply and fighting to control my stomach, and with a raging thirst.

Maybe the tunnel has advantages in winter, but otherwise you don’t get a break. You can only get out to stand beside your car, there’s obviously nothing to see, and this time, they had over booked, or more likely, cancelled trains. We weren’t allowed on an earlier train, and then were bumped off the train we actually were booked on, and had another half hour’s wait. So next time it’s the ferry.

While we were hanging about, because of course we had set off allowing loads of time in case of traffic problems round London, we went to Hythe for a walk and some fresh air. It’s one of the Cinque Ports and has a lovely promenade along the sea. The weather was glorious, the sea a deep greeny turquoise, so it was very pleasant. We did feel young as almost everyone seemed to be well past retirement. The café served us a mug of instant coffee to the recorded strains of Mrs Mills on the piano. It was like going back to the sixties.

So we drove down to Troyes to spend the night, and then the next day on to past Lyons and into Provence. Unfortunately just before we reached our destination we stopped at a service station to use the loo and change drivers. When we returned to the car, I unlocked it and got into the driver’s seat, and before Phil could get into the passenger seat he was accosted by a young man who immediately began asking weird questions in a rather aggressive manner. Almost immediately, we were suspicious and Phil got into the car and I moved off – but only a couple of feet, because then Phil said, “Where’s your handbag?”  And of course it had gone. While we were looking at the bloke on the passenger side, someone on the driver’s side had opened the back door of the car and taken my bag. We were furious with ourselves, but the problem is that the thieves are practised and we are not. So then we had to go to the gendarmerie. The gendarmes were as helpful as possible, and it emerged that the same thing had just happened to some Germans.

 Now, I am sans papier. Phil at least has his driving licence but his passport was in my bag too. The gendarmes provided us with the address and phone number of the British consulate in Marseilles (the nearest), and we have an appointment there on Wednesday. I can’t say we are thoroughly thrilled to have to drive to Marseilles, but I would like to go to the Chateau D’If.  Also we don’t want a row at the tunnel, and I most definitely don’t want to end up camping out at Sangatte and trying to climb into a lorry.

The Gite - a beautifully restored Provencal mas.

Grounds of the gite - there are about 170 olive trees.

The good thing is that our friends have arrived safely and the gite and the weather are both lovely. We’ve had a day out in Vaison-la-Romain, where an excellent market was going on. It covers everything – fruits and veg, sausages and hams, cheeses, olive oil and all its derivatives, lavender, herbs, honey, tablecloths, and for the locals, hi vis underwear. French markets all seem to stock bras in fluorescent colours. Goodness knows who buys them, but a lot of people must do so. I bought a lovely pair of sandals, prompting my friend to remark “No passport, no credit cards and she still buys shoes.” I have never thought of myself as frivolous before.