Vendee to Carcassone - a road trip

We again adopted the strategy of wandering between visiting family in Vendee and our planned stay in Carcassone, choosing where to stay and what to do as the wind blew us.  That works most of the time, but we hit Cahors planning to stay two days only to find a Blues Festival filling up most of the town. We survived, and ended up in a nicer (read more expensive) hotel than usual.

The region that we traversed is quite different from the rest of France, and this shows up in the food, the wine, the architecture and the scenery.  So it is like discovering a new country.

We found some very pleasant places.

Angoulême

45.6484° N, 0.1562° E

Angoulême is famous for one thing.  Any time you see a publication or a TV program on Romanesque Architecture, the cathedral in Angoulême is the star attraction. And rightly so.  The façade is not only a fine example of the period, but in beautiful condition.  Inside, not so interesting, but the combination of cylindrical and square towers is apparently unique.

The Façade 

The Towers

Angoulême has not rested on its laurels, living off one building.  It is a particularly rich area, and has been for some time. The rich history is recorded in the many fine buildings, and the current opulence is reflected in the many fine banks we observed in town.

There is a well located statue to the honour of a long gone French President, President Carnot. The statue set up the former president as a hero with an angel at his feet.  A little lower we see someone else, unnamed. I can imagine it is his wife, with such a resigned look wondering what all the fuss is about.

Some time in the 70s there was a BD (Bande dessinée - comics for adults) conference held here. It has been repeated every year since, and Angoulême has responded by painting famous scenes from BDs around town, and opening a museum where there is a formidable display of works including the famous Astrix the Gladiator.

Angoulême had one more surprise for us.  There was a free concert in the Hotel du Ville (actually in the internal courtyard).  A harpist (whose name we could not catch) who had performed for Radio France, performed with her two daughters - violin and cello - a range of Spanish tunes.  Imagine Spanish guitar played on a harp and a few tangos thrown in for fun.  A really great evening, free and unexpected.

Cahors

44.4475° N, 1.4420° E

Cahors, like Angoulême has one thing going for it, in this case a bridge. The bridge is the Pont Valentré over the Lot River, and we managed to find ourselves in a hotel room with a view over it.  Hence we took many photos like these.

Night time, obviously

Day time view.

As bridges go, it is a little narrow, not very useful, it took 70 years to build,  and required extensive renovation less than 100 years later. So I was unimpressed.  I preferred the much overlooked 19th century rail bridge just down the river.

Much nicer, isn't it?

Can't beat a bit of steel in a bridge.

I must admit, however, to being rather partial to the weir downstream of the bridge which fed the water mill.

Bridge obviously over powered by its poorer cousin the weir.

Cahors also has the advantage of sitting in the middle of a high quality wine producing area. The locals claim that the only reason Bordeaux is more famous for its wine is that they controlled the river downstream and would not let the exports from the Lot Valley pass to the wide world.  The wine is made of 100% Malbec grape and the samples the waiter chose for us were as good as anything else I have had.  In particular, the waiter (expert in local wines) chose a slightly sweet rose for me to have with my dessert, and it was a great match.

The other part of Cahors which is worth seeing is the Cathedral of Saint Stephen and the attached cloister.  The Cathedral has an impressive set of stain glass windows and a unique domed roof decoration.  The cloister has a lovely garden and interesting decoration.

The stained glass - it looks better in real life.

Domed roof from below.

Cloister garden and towers

Some of the Cloister decoration

Surprisingly, at lunch a day or so later I looked up at the TV expecting to see another replay of the goals from the world cup final, only to find a replay of the Parramatta Eels v Canterbury Bulldogs rugby league game from the night before.  Who said it wasn't an international game?

Saint-Cirq-Lapopie

44.4647° N, 1.6690° E

A short, but difficult, drive from Cahors finds one in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie one of "Les Plus Beaux Villages de France" (yes there is an official list).  This town is on the top of a cliff around 100 metres above the Lot River.  The population is made up almost entirely of restaurateurs and resident artists.  The visitors spend most of their time climbing up to the top of the cliff to see the view.  We also turned around to see the buildings, which seem old, but are probably just average for the area!
 

The whole of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie :  Not particularly large,

Lot River Valley from St CLP

And in the other direction

This is the wall everyone climbs to see the valley and work up an appetite.

Albi

43.9251° N, 2.1486° E

Albi, the centre of the Cathar Heresy, has been blessed with a strong Catholic Church presence since all the heretics met a sticky end.  The result is an imposing Cathedral with the largest "Last Judgement" anywhere (so the claim goes). That did not stop the guardians of the artwork from cutting a hole in it to extend a chapel.  As a result, the largest last judgement does not have a judge, just plenty of naked people getting trashed in hell or looking relieved on the way to eternal life.

It is a very impressive building. Looks like a fortress, and not surprising given the history, but several kings ransoms have been spent to fit out the inside.

The fortress cathedral

Judgement without a judge

Naked people going to heaven and hell

Some of the stone work

No expense spared

The other must see in Albi is the Toulouse-Lautrec museum.  Albi is his birthplace and there is a very good selection of his works there, including many examples of sketches working up to final output.  This is just one of them.

One of the Many sketch to Final presentations at the TLM

There are more pictures of Albi here.

We will go back to Albi.

Utrecht, Amsterdam and Surrounds

We spent a few days in Utrecht and Amsterdam as a base for exploring some "unknown places" in the region.

This is what we found.

Kinderdijk

51°52′57″N 4°38′58″E

Ask anyone who has seen Kinderdijk, or looked at a photo or even heard about it and they will say that it is a World Heritage Listed site with Windmills.  Ask the guide in the museum or listen to the commentary on the introductory film and you will find out that it is really a water management project which carefully balances the water in the canals with the water in the river to avoid both flooding of the former swamp and sinking of the recovered farmland due to drying out.  The windmills are, apparently, only a tool. In fact only some of them are operational today, with the bulk of the work being done by diesel powered pumps.  

Sad really.  But the windmills still look good, and attract quite a few visitors to look at the windmills.  Only former water engineers look at the channels and consider the hydraulics.

This one was moving

This one was still

The blades are curved and adjustable

and they catch the sun as well as the wind.

You find more than just windmills, there are bikes, clogs, and Dutch apple pie.

We really have a lot to thank the Dutch for.

On the way home, we had our first ride on a Dutch car ferry - which had more bikes than cars - saw some Gouda Cheese, at Gooda, and found some Dutch Peanut Butter.  Quite a successful day at going native.

Helen and Anton Kröller-Müller Park and Museum

52°05′44″N 5°49′01″E

On the other side of Utrecht we found the Kröller-Müller park and museum. It seems that Helen Kröller inherited a very successful metals business from her father, married Anton, helped him turn it into an international success and then retired to develop a house, a park and a museum to house the extensive art collection she had amassed. She had a particular liking for the work of Vincent van Gogh, so her museum now has the second largest collection of his works, including some you may recognise.

Starry, Starry Night ..

This is a hidden wonder, and for us an unknown place which we stumbled upon.

Utrecht

52.0907° N, 5.1214° E

On the third day, we visited Utrecht.  We found bells, churches, towers to climb and bikes, bikes, bikes, bikes and the odd canal.

The bells are found in the bell tower of St Martin's Cathedral, and they rate from several hundred years old to less than 50 years old.  During the second world war, the Germans requisitioned all the iron from bells to use in the war effort. The Dutch, practical as ever, classified all the bells in the country in a range from highly valuable for historic reasons to not valuable at all.  They started by delivering the low value bells, and never needed to pass over the best ones. These bells are over six hundred years old and weigh 32 tonnes.  You only have to walk up half of the reported 465 steps (I counted more!) in the bell tower to see them.

If you walk up the rest of the steps, you find an expansive view of the city and surrounds, including the Cathedral itself.  The Cathedral is no longer connected to the bell tower, as the nave was destroyed by a high wind in 1674.  This creates a place for a nice public space and an interesting statue shown in the linked photos.

From the top of the 465 (or some other number of) steps, it is possible to access a viewing platform and to see the sculpture at the very top of the tower.

but you can't really see it from the ground!

Yes we climbed it (up the inside stairs)

Utrecht is undergoing an urban rejuvenation which includes a complete replacement of the buildings around the station to create a major shopping centre, a large square and a transport hub.  The project included the removal of a road, and the opening up of a canal which had been covered in some time ago. It also includes major parking stations for bikes, although I don't know how you find your bike when you go back to get it, unless it is yellow of course.

This easy parking, plenty of bike paths and a relatively flat landscape makes Utrecht a bike paradise.  Everyone, from the very youngest to the oldest rides every day.  So they become very comfortable on their bikes, to the extend that they can ride and text at the same time.  I even saw one young woman texting with both hands while riding, which impressed me because I still can't take my hands of the handle bars let alone find my phone.

look where you are going!

One of several bike parking stations

This is why you buy a yellow bike.

Canals and bikes

Urban renewal, and bikes!

In spite of the urban renewal, there remains a large area of the central city which dates back to the beginning of time, or maybe just after.  There are quite a few canals, and what better place to leave you bike.

Amsterdam

52.3702° N, 4.8952° E

We only spent one night in Amsterdam on the way to the train to Paris.  After getting lost on the way from the station to the hotel (450m according to Google Maps and when I asked someone the way he suggested I follow the blue line in the app. It worked.), we spend most of the rest of the day watching Semi Finals of the World Cup in an Irish pub.  Had some really good Irish rissoles!  

Sunday brought a trip to the Rijksmuseum, where my first observation was that I could identify exactly where my pocket was picked in 1979.  I survived unscathed this time.

The Rijks App with a range of tours built in was a great help, although it flattened my battery and so many hours later in Paris, I did not have a map to find the hotel! The app led me, of course, to the Nightwatch, but also to a wide range of other works including some very early wood carvings from the region and the library, which I also visited in 1979.  Looks the same except that people are using laptops now.

Wood carvings in the Rijksmuseum

Yes, the Nightwatch

and the library, only two people there - what happened to committed students?

We spent the afternoon riding on canals (in a boat), looking at old bridges and generally waiting for the train.

Five Canal Bridges in a row

Then it was off to Paris to head to Mamers for the Triple Crown.

All my photos from Kinderdijk are here.
All the others are here.