Terry Marsh
The following articles are copyright to Terry Marsh, and may not be reproduced in any form without his consent in writing.
- Kent: A garden of stately views
- Western Picardy: To the sea
- Tropical Queensland
- Lost World: St Kilda
- Cycling around the Centre
- Chartres: the town beyond the towers
First published in Which Motorcaravan magazine, February 2006
In its legacy, history has been more than generous with Kent. The county is a treasure trove of past centuries, and boasts more buildings of architectural or historic interest than anywhere else in England, outside London. Yet, as with Southern Scotland, this south-eastern corner of England is a place most visitors simply pass through on the way to somewhere else; in this case, France. It is the ‘Gateway to Europe’, or the launch pad for snappy cross-Channel wine, beer and tobacco raids, depending on your view of things. It has always been a natural funnel for journeys between London and France, and almost every monarch since William the Conqueror has left his or her imprint on the county’s pages.
Eurostar whistles through here on its daily dashes to Lille or Paris, while car, van and lorry drivers hasten along two parallel motorways either side of the North Downs to the sea port at Dover, bound for Calais and the nether regions of northern France, or beyond. Ironically, since the times of the Romans and the landings of the Saxons, this part of England has always been the invaders’ way in; these day it’s just as much an escapists’ way out.
Yet stop and look around, and very soon you realise that were it not for Kent – arguably England’s greatest goalkeeper, fending off numerous invasion attempts (but, like all goalkeepers, letting in a few) – the history of Britain may well have been decidedly different. The landscape of the South East bears testimony to its defensive role in its castles, battlefields and historic places, like Leeds Castle, sometime palace of Henry VIII (who spent much time in Kent courting Anne Boleyn at Hever Castle), or ancient and venerable Canterbury, destination of Chaucer’s pilgrims, or Dover itself, seized by Oliver Cromwell, fortified during the Napoleonic Wars, and destined to fulfil a key role during the Second World War.
Inland, the countryside undulates across the North Downs sheltering homely hamlets huddled in hollows, flowing fields of rapeseed, orchards, oast houses and windmills, and waves of unfolding beauty that may well have been in Kipling’s mind when he wrote:
‘Our England is a garden that is full of stately views,
Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues…’
It is hardly surprising, to anyone who cares to stop and take note, that Kent has earned the epithet ‘The Garden of England’: sixty-seven per cent of the county is farmland, and almost twelve per cent woodland. But, to be fair, while so many folk dash through Kent and on into France, there is these days an equal and opposite caravan coming the other way, from France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, for Kent has always been tourist country. Since medieval times, pilgrims on embryonic ‘Cook’s Tours’ wove their weary way to Canterbury’s cathedral via the monastic houses that flanked their routes. Rich London courtiers, businessmen and merchants with new-found wealth, came to Kent in search of homes in which to invest the gains of their successes, moulding the county to their needs. And practically every coastal town from Dungeness to Gravesend felt the impact of tourism as first 18th- and 19th-century Londoners (including royalty) came by hoy, to be swiftly followed by middle-class adventurers who arrived by train or steamboat. Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens (who first came to Chatham in 1817 and later in adulthood to the Gadshill home in which he was to die), were drawn to the cultivated civility of Broadstairs and Ramsgate, while 'Eastenders' sought the sea, sand and shrimps of Gravesend and Margate. Between them they created a class distinction that remains to this day, though Ramsgate in particular, has a yesteryear look about it these days in spite of being the only 'Royal' Harbour in the United Kingdom, a distinction conferred in 1821 when George IV sailed from Ramsgate to Hanover and back. Apparently, he was so impressed by the hospitality given to him by the local people that he decreed Ramsgate Harbour should have the right to add 'Royal' to its name.
Along the northern edge of Kent, between the estuaries of the Thames and the Medway lies a moody place of creeks and marshes, tidal mud flats and drainage channels, a place where herons patrol, and redshanks, bar-tailed godwits, curlew and oystercatcher flock in to roost; this is the ancient Hundred of Hoo. As a child, when I first visited Kent in the early 1950s, I knew nothing of ‘hundreds’, those components of ancient counties, or of Charles Dickens. Nor later, as a lackadaisical student, as I wrestled with Dickensian prose, could I have known that this was the landscape that hugely fired his imagination. Only in recent times, has the realisation formed that the churchyard at Cooling, for example, was the setting in which, in the opening chapter of Great Expectations, Pip startles Magwitch, an escaped convict hiding among the gravestones. Or that the Bull Inn, where Mr Pickwick stayed, and the Blue Boar of Great Expectations, are one and the same: the Royal Victoria and Bull, a 400-year-old coaching inn at Rochester.
Further east along the coastal fringe Kent, the scenery is less austere, ‘…apples, cherries, hops, and women…’ as Mr Jingle describes in Pickwick Papers. But it was Broadstairs at North Foreland that Dickens used to walk along the sands at low tide ‘…from this place to Ramsgate…and [sit] upon the same at high-ditto till I have been flayed with cold.’ Dickens was by then twenty-five, famous for the Pickwick Papers, and in the full flow of Oliver Twist.
It is still possible to follow a route now taken by the Thanet Coastal Path from Broadstairs to the busy harbour at Ramsgate, and onward to Pegwell Bay and Ebbsfleet, traditionally the spot where St Augustine came ashore in AD597 on a mission to bring Christianity to Britain, and of the earlier landings of the Saxon warriors Hergist and Horsa in AD449 who soon overran Kent, and effectively set up the first Anglo-Saxon kingdom in Britain.
Just south of Pegwell Bay, the ruins of the Roman fort at Richborough are every bit as moving to a receptive mind. They occupy a commanding position, and mark the main landing place for the forces of Emperor Claudius in AD43. So crucial was this fort that it remained in use throughout the entire length of the Roman occupation, and probably later still. Bizarrely, during the Second World War, a time when the area was last used for coastal defences, soldiers on guard duty told of seeing cohorts of ghostly Roman legions marching into the sea. As they were ‘on duty’ it’s unlikely they had been drinking! The attendant on duty at Richborough tells me confidently that there are no ghosts there now, suggesting in all seriousness, that it may be because the place has been unoccupied for so long, prompting the spirits to move on. Make of that what you will.
From here, all the way south as far as Hythe, the coast is a fortress bordering the ‘ditch’ of the English Channel, the last bastion against invasion since Norman times, one that is fortified by the formidable castles at Deal, Walmer and Dover. Of these Walmer and Dover are especially evocative. From 1708, Walmer became the official residence of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, a distinction held by many famous people including William Pitt the Younger, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Winston Churchill, and the late Queen Mother. The present Lord Warden is Admiral the Lord Boyce. The castle itself, well, it’s a castle, and a chunky castle at that, albeit one of considerable weight on the scales of Britain’s heritage. But the gardens, though far from extensive, are a most tranquil place, where, set against the ordered symmetry of the ‘managed’ gardens, chalkland wild flower meadows are a joy to behold in springtime and early summer. This is a great place to chill out.
The five original towns that formed the Cinque Ports were Sandwich, Dover, Hythe, Romney and Hastings. The Ports were first mentioned in a Royal Charter of 1155, and in return for certain privileges were expected to maintain ships at the command of the Crown for service in times of strife. Contemporary accounts often reveal that the men from these towns occasionally failed to hear the final bell when peace had been reached, and for many years got away with what amounted to open piracy around the Kent coast. Shirley Harrison's 1986 book, The Channel, refers to the Cinque Ports as a 'legalised mafia', a problem exacerbated by the absence of a Navy in those days. As the ships from the Cinque Ports effectively served this function, there was little the Crown could do to control the situation, which often got out of hand.
According to the original Charter, the privileges open to members of the Cinque Ports included the right to 'soc and sac, tol and team, bloowit and fledwit, pillory, tumbrel, infangentheof, outfangentheof, mundbryce, waives and strays, flotsam and jetsam, and ligan'. Presumably someone was on hand to translate!
Compared to Walmer, Dover Castle is monumental. A powerful tour de force of castle building centred around its huge central keep wherein Henry VIII was occasionally in residence as he nervously inspected his country’s defences following his break with the Catholic church in Rome. The castle dominates the landscape of this last corner of England. Take a walk east along the white Langdon Cliffs, if you seek confirmation. The castle is always in view. And while here, take the clear path running all the way to the South Foreland Lighthouse. Okay, so a lighthouse is a lighthouse, but this particular lighthouse was used as a base by Marconi for some of his experiments with radio. From here, on Christmas Eve, 1898, the first two-way ship-to-shore radio messages, using Morse code, were exchanged between the lighthouse and the East Goodwin lightship, about 10 miles away. Three months later, the first international wireless transmission was sent from Wimereux in France, and received at South Foreland Lighthouse: the message? – ‘Greetings from France across the ether’. You can’t help wondering what Marconi would have made of computers. South Foreland Lighthouse has in my view what Hindus call darshana, a presence: a place where something momentous happened.
The county town of Kent is Maidstone, a busy place that boasts fine Georgian buildings, and examples, rare in Kent, of the ornamental plasterwork known as pargeting. But Canterbury is really where it’s at. This indomitable city has been a capital since the Iron Age, and was a major Roman town. But, trying to portray Canterbury in a few paragraphs is, as Roger Higham puts it in his lovely Batsford book on Kent, ‘…like a ten-minute summary of a Shakespeare play: the structure is crudely comprehensible but the poetry is lost.’ Ironically, it was a misunderstanding fuelled by a modicum of ecclesiastical chicanery that led to the murder of Thomas à Becket (the Archbishop of Canterbury, and something of a thorn in Henry II’s side), and a sudden upsurge in the city’s popularity. Almost immediately the slain priest was being credited with miracles, and his tomb became a shrine, drawing pilgrims from far and wide, and in the process doing wonders for the bed, board and souvenir coffers of the rapidly prospering city, at least until Henry VIII denounced Becket for ‘treason, contumacy and rebellion’.
Enduring fame also came to Canterbury in the form of a 14th-century ‘Booker Prize Winner’, Canterbury Tales, in which Geoffrey Chaucer’s pilgrims ended their journey in the city. Today, the cathedral, the ruins of St Augustine’s abbey and the church of St Martin – England’s oldest parish church – are the bedrock of the city’s World Heritage status. Around the cathedral many timber-framed buildings still survive in spite of devastating bombing during the so-called ‘Baedeker Raids’ of the Second World War.
On my travels I managed to stay on a camping site near Folkestone, sadly not one that can accommodate caravans. Its location at the edge of the sea was splendid and invigorating but relaxing. The history of nearby Folkestone pre-dates written records, and almost certainly goes back before the Roman conquest. Unlike Dover, Folkestone didn't have a river or deep-water harbour suitable for large ships, and never quite made it as a major port. Instead Folkestone acquired status as a strategic lookout point and signalling post, and still today the coast is lined with a series of Martello towers built in 1805 under threat of French invasion. But from the beginning of the railway age, Folkestone developed both as a cross-Channel passenger port (Boulogne, lies just 26 miles away) and as a high-class seaside resort.
Like much of the rest of Kent, Folkestone had its share of celebrities, including the Irish politician and historian, Justin M'Carthy, who made his name with such titles as Dear Lady Disdain (1875) and Miss Misanthrope (1878) but then published his History of Our Own Times a seven-volume work that won general recognition. Sir William Hall-Jones, sometime prime minister of New Zealand was born in Folkestone; John Logie Baird did some of his pioneering television work while staying in Folkestone; the English composer George Posford (real name Benjamin George Ashwell) was born in Folkestone and went on to compose popular stage musicals like Goodnight Vienna and The Gay Hussar; H G Wells lived here, and invited other famous people to his home at Sandgate including Sir James Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, G K Chesterton and Henry James. George Bernard Shaw became a lifelong friend of Wells, as did Arnold Bennett and Joseph Conrad.
Of course, none of this is readily apparent as you wander the quiet lanes of this sea-bound county, nor if all you see of Folkestone is the Channel Tunnel terminus. But, without too much determined effort, you may well find plenty of reasons for staying in Kent rather than sailing away.
First published in The Caravan Club magazine, February 2006
To the sea
That most characteristic feature of the French countryside, a sense of space, was much in evidence as I set off from Amiens for the coast. Once the outskirts of the city are left behind, an undulating landscape of farmland ripples away from the road, each hollow, and some of the hilltops, too, housing unpretentious and welcoming villages and small towns.
Picquigny, to the west of Amiens, has a rather Middle Aged atmosphere, virtually unique in this part of France and certainly appropriate. It was here that Louis XI of France and Edward IV of England met in 1475 to sign the Peace Treaty following the miseries of the Hundred Years War (1337-1453).
I took an agreeable route first through Airaines and then Oisemont to the magnificent chateau at Rambures. This stunning piece of military architecture dates from a limited period of peace in the mid-15th century. It looks oddly squat, because it stands in a deep moat, simultaneously presenting assaulting forces with an awkward target and defending forces a more effective and devastating scheme of attack.
I finally reached the coast at Mers-les-Bains. Prior to 1848, this modest seaside village, hemmed in by 60-metre cliffs of flint and chalk, went quietly about its business. Then came the discovery of the therapeutic values of sea bathing, swept along on the tide of fashion that lured the aristocracy and rich bourgeoisie of the time to these shores. Even so, before 1872, when the railway came, the population of Mers still numbered less than 450. But by the turn of the century, it had grown to well over a thousand. Today, it is quaint – in the most acceptable sense – to see the pebbly foreshore lined with bathing huts behind which the seafront properties rise in a colourful backdrop.
North of Mers-les-Bains, the Picardy coastline extends for over 60 kilometres, passing first the resort of Ault-Onival set on a kind of balcony overlooking the sea, and offering stunning views. Further north, the pebble beach re-appears and forms a dyke protecting the lowlands of Hâble d’Ault. But although the vastness of the seascape ahead is quickly becoming apparent, it is only on the approach to the headland at Hourdel that the full extent is realised, a unique and imposing area of more than 70 sq km. More than 230 migratory and sedentary birds are recorded along the coast during each year from tiny firecrests to swans, and the Maison de l’Oiseau near Cayeux-sur-Mer, is an ideal place to study them, both in an artificial setting and for real.
St-Valéry-sur-Somme is a joyous revelation, a jewel along the Somme and built around a walled and gated medieval city, where, in 1430, Jeanne d’Arc was held prisoner en route from Le Crotoy to her trial at Rouen. More significantly, and almost 400 years earlier, it was from St-Valéry that William the Conqueror set sail to England. Since then, the seafront houses along the Quai Blavet have been built, and rather smart they look, brightly painted and attractive with not a modern architectural blemish in sight. In reality, there are two towns here, an upper town, with half-timbered houses, and a lower town beside the port. It is the capital of the Vimeu region, and enjoys a lush and comfortable setting overlooking the Bay of the Somme. Like so many places, it began as an abbey founded by a monk called Valéry, from Luxeuil in Lorraine.
On the other side of the bay, Le Crotoy seems lost in the vastness of the landscape. As at St Valéry, Jeanne d’Arc was briefly held captive here. Five centuries later, this modest little town enjoyed a vogue as a holiday resort. Jules Verne is known to have stayed here, and spent much of his time with Jacques-François Conseil, an inventor of submarine technology. From this liaison came the inspiration which led to Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea.
At the northern edge of La Somme, on a remote site in the Authie valley, stand the abbey and gardens of Valloires, formerly a Cistercian abbey surrounded by woods and orchards. The original abbey was founded in the 12th century by the Count of Ponthieu and later became a burial place for his family. In the 17th century, the abbey was severely damaged by fire, but, being a wealthy order, soon restored, with much of the decoration being under the direction of the delightfully named Baron Pfaff de Pfaffenhoffen, a native of Vienna. Designed by Gilles Clément, the gardens that today surround the abbey were begun in 1989 from a collection of 4,000 species and varieties of shrubs mainly from the northern hemisphere.
Even today it may not be a good idea to proclaim too loudly one’s English antecedents in Crécy-en-Ponthieu. But my contact in Amiens had stressed that I should visit Crécy, and made a point of reminding me about the battle. The problem was that the Battle of Crécy, a bitter defeat inflicted on Philippe VI of France by Edward III of England, was the start of what became the Hundred Years War. This was a time when changes were happening in the ruling dynasty in France. Charles IV had died in 1328, leaving only daughters, who were prohibited by Salic Law from inheriting the crown. The nobles of France resolved the issue by nominating Philip of Valois as King of France to the detriment of Edward III of England, who had, in fact, a better claim to the title as the grandson of Philip IV. Feudal laws required that Edward swore an oath of fealty to Philip for the lands and possessions of the English crown in France, which Edward did in Amiens cathedral in 1329.
But, 14th-century pride being what it was, Edward was nevertheless not slow to be encouraged to style himself ‘King of England and France’. Philip’s response was to send his son, John of Normandy, to besiege Aiguillon and recover Guienne, which at the time were English possessions. Inevitably, Edward had to respond, and landed in Normandy with almost 4,000 knights, 11,000 longbow men and 5,000 Welshmen. They took Normandy with little resistance, and then assumed defensive positions at Crécy, where Edward relinquished principal command to his son, Edward, Prince of Wales, known as the ‘Black Prince’. Philippe advanced with superior forces but tactical miscalculation and a little disorganisation, with resultant carnage: 11 princes, 1,500 knights and 10,000 soldiers fell on the battlefield.
The Gothic church in St Riquier is imposing enough to rival many cathedrals, and has been undergoing renovation and restoration to restore its western façade to full glory. The town is both old and fortified, and grew up around a Benedictine abbey, the setting, each July, for a classical music festival of some renown. Originally, the town was called Centule, but in 645AD a hermit monk by the named of Riquier died in the nearby Crécy Forest, near the present-day village of Forest-Moutiers. The monk came from an aristocratic family, and after his death was taken to Centule where he became the object of pilgrimage. A monastery was founded and prospered, and was later given by Charlemagne to his son-in-law, the poet Angilbert, who injected a new lease of life into the abbey and had large parts of it rebuilt.
Today, St Riquier is a peaceful retreat with an outstanding belfry and an air of calm. With fine local food on offer, and a plentiful supply of wine, I lingered in Crécy’s embrace until the dying light sent me back to Amiens.
First published in Australia and New Zealand magazine, January 2006
Tropical Queensland
I awake in the dark and leap out of bed, uncertain where I am, until I bump into a chair I haven't got. Then I remember: Daintree, part way up the pointy bit at the top right of Australia.
I am also swathed in mosquito netting, without which the night would have been something of an ordeal as the buzzing beasties of northern Australia tend to look on me as a rather tasty al fresco snack. As it is, the undulating curves of my half-sleeping form become a nocturnal playground for the Daintree's own mousey delight, melomys, which scuttles backward and forwards across me for much of the night, resisting my swinging-leg attempts to persuade it to try another bed. In the morning, I find a tidy pile of the remains of a white-kneed cricket on the edge of the bed; a present from my nocturnal visitor. You don't get that in Blackpool – well, not the white-kneed crickets.
On my travels I'd heard much about a tented village deep in the rainforest on the road to Cape Tribulation, and wanted to see for myself. Nothing could have prepared me for Crocodylus. On a scale of one to ten of a blend of wacky, wonderful and downright bloody dangerous this is heading for fifteen.
Cairns
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Cairns (pronounced 'cans') they told me was for the young. So, it is, but they forgot the rest of the sentence – young at heart. It's a fabulously buzzy place which sets huge entertainment areas for kids in the middle of somewhere grassy to lounge and soak up the sun; a mile long promenade flanking a huge sweeping bay teeming with mud crabs and enough birdlife to make a grown birdwatcher drool with excitement, is set against a vibrant food and wine culture that saw me stuffing my face at 'Splash' on the Esplanade with fresh-enough-to-wink rock lobster.
It's the sort of place where anything can happen, and usually does. So, don't be surprised if one evening, while out for a stroll, you encounter a bush stone curlew doing the same. It will look at you, and you'll look at it, and, well, yeah, why not….'How're y'goin', mate?'
Cairns is not hugely huge, but if you get lost all you do is walk out to the sea and start over again. As the town's built in a grid pattern you find yourself going round in ever decreasing rectangles until you find your hotel. Town centre hotels are great and in the middle of things, but towards the airport you'll find it quieter – until six in the morning when the first Qantas 737 roars out.
Up the coast
But I'm looking for something a little wilder than the spirited good fun that goes on in town. So, I head north into the lush green of Daintree.
The road from Cairns is Queensland at its best, hugging the coast, with lazy sweeps of sandy bays, endless beaches fanned by gently swaying palms, and the sparkling sea, or to be more precise, the edge of Pacific Ocean, never far distant.
Beyond Port Douglas and Mossman the swaying ranks of roadside sugar cane give way to luxuriously green tropical mountains, a convoluted fecund chaos of trees and ferns and shrubbery, which seems to grow down to the very edges of the road, leaving me with the impression that the road may be impassable by the time I come back.
I head for the riverside village of Daintree, a place with ramshackle appeal, somewhere you expect to see horses hitched to a rail outside the saloon. I shun the croc cruises and croc burgers and retreat a few miles to turn down a side road to the river crossing point. The only way over is by an ancient and arthritic car ferry that hauls itself along on rusting cables. It's a truly cathartic experience, literally a gateway to another world. Having paid the ferryman, I slip wide-eyed into this verdant wonderland. Butterflies of iridescent hues sweep down to greet me. These lightweight natives of the forest seem to be saying 'Welcome'; at least, that's the spin I'm putting on it because I've heard there are some heavyweight spiders in this neck of the woods and I've no wish to run foul of them by upsetting the welcoming committee.
Humidity is heading for 100. I have the air conditioning on max and I'm still weeping sweat – clammytropic, I call it. But that's a trivial price to pay for the privilege of making it into this magnificent green underworld. Daintree is so diverse it's home to 80% of the endemic species of marsupials, birds, reptiles and frogs in the whole of Australia's rainforests, and that's before you start ticking off the thousands of butterflies, ants, spiders, moths, wasps, snails, cicadas, bees, millipedes and microscopic organisms.
It's dark in the rainforest as I pull into Crocodylus and wander along a narrow path to reception, flanked by the six-foot webs of the golden orb spider, wait-a-while wands, the eerily amplified sound of something scuttling in the undergrowth, and tree full of glow worms. The receptionist beams a welcoming smile – anything less would have had me turning tail and heading out faster than I came in – and suggests I take some mossie coils to help reduce the problem in the tents. All the tents have names, and mine and its problem lies about fifty miles deep in the jungle. It's mid-day, but very little light penetrates the canopy, and what there is casts a gloomy half light that makes me wary about where I'm putting my feet. Five feet off the path, a Boyd's forest dragon clings to a tree, and further in I pick up the vivid green of a tree snake; harmless enough, but just a touch scary if you're not expecting this sort of thing. Later, I find an amethystine python coiled up beside one of the tents, thankfully too young and too small to get a real crush on me. In any case, I'm married.
My tent is huge; in fact my tent is bigger than the ground floor of my house back home. Four sets of bunk beds line the walls, and in a recess is a double bed with a mosquito net hanging over it. Business is quiet, and I get the tent to myself. I start unpacking, but then wonder if this is a good idea. The receptionist had warned me about melomys, which, friendly as it is, isn’t too fussy what it eats or where it carries out its ablutions. So, I opt for hanging my sack from one of the posts of a bunkbed hoping that will suffice, and, tucking the bottoms of my trousers into my socks, decide to explore. As I reach the door, a buff-breasted paradise kingfisher is perched on a branch just a few feet away. I hold my breath and watch. There are more birds endemic to this region that anywhere else in the country, and this is one of them. During the night I heard another, screaming. Honest. Copulating scrubfowl are rather raucous neighbours.
Alarmingly, there's a whole encyclopaedia of things that can do me harm, including a tree of all things, which Australian understatement calls the 'Stinging tree'. In fact, there are three species of stinging tree in Australia, two are found in Daintree. The main offender, the Hairy-leaf Stinger, sometimes called the Gympie Stinger or Gympie Gympie, is widespread here, and there's one not far away. To describe the effect as a sting is on a par with likening the after effects of being hit by a 50-metre road train travelling at 100kph as a bit of a headache.
The point is underlined later that evening when I meet up with Anthony, a forest guide who takes me and a few other worried faces on a night tour of the forest. He cloaks us in waterproof ponchos and hands out powerful torches.
'Where we're going,' he tells us, 'there are many things that can cause you grief. So, stick to the path and don't stray.' We huddle closer together, each intent on following immediately and very, very faithfully in Anthony's footsteps. If it was daylight we'd be so scared by the worried looks on our faces we'd probably wouldn't start. As it is, we put our trust in Anthony; he's a likeable, bright faced young man and clearly knows what he's doing. Ish!
After only a few moments he stops and spotlights a huge frog on a tree, about the size of a rat. 'It's a good idea not to touch this,' he advises, just as I'm about to give it a prod. 'Its entire skin is poisonous. The Aboriginal natives used to rub the spear tips on the back of the frog, collecting enough toxin to kill small prey outright and stun some of the larger ones.' I put my finger away, give the frog a healthy berth and wander further into the forest, surrounded by strange and malevolent sounds. But Anthony seems unconcerned. Suddenly, he stops dead in his tracks, and I sense an uneasy movement in my nether regions. 'Aw, cute,' he says lightly, his torch beam cutting through the dangling vines and highlighting a mini-magpie-like bird on a branch.
'That's a pied monarch', he tells us, 'and he's fast asleep. The trouble is that he's directly above our path, and if we just press on we'll wake him up and he'll fly off into the dark and collide with the nearest branch, and might be injured. So, I'm just going forward to highlight a higher branch, and then I'll wake him up and he'll fly up out of harm's way. You lot wait here……'
Er, just a mo-: too late, he's gone. In the darkness we see his beam illuminate a branch and a moment later spot the monarch fly up to it. Amazing, truly amazing. I wouldn't be surprised if this guy talked to the animals.
There's a certain amount of indecent haste as we press on to re-establish contact with our guide. Someone asks if he's ever been stung by the stinging tree. 'Yeah, once on the back of my hand. Once is enough. The pain lasted for four months; meanwhile that hand was out of action, and, in a rainforest, keeping it dry can be a nightmare.'
Someone else asks how bad the pain was. I'm sure he's smiling when he says 'From one to ten, around fifty.' Apparently even old, dried hairs retain the capacity to sting, anything up to forty years later. And no immediate cure exists. I resolve that in the morning I'm going out of my way to be sure I can recognise this tree anywhere, anytime, even in the dark. This, I think to myself, is not a tree beneath which young love is ever likely to blossom, or on whose branches entwined hearts will ever be carved. Though you could give it to your mother-in-law as a birthday present.
Mere tribulation
Captain Cook was responsible for discovering this part of Australia when his ship, the Endeavour ran aground on the reef a few miles offshore. All was nearly lost, but after some imaginative running repairs and a deal of good luck, the good captain was under way once more. He named the cape where he experienced so much anxiety, Tribulation.
The onward journey up to Cape Trib isn't far, and I pull into the Myall Creek garage-cum-shop-cum-cybercafé-cum-bar and order a beer. Even with the air conditioning, it's hotter inside than out. In the 1970s this was a hippie outpost, and the surrounding forest so dense there may well still be some out there, still spaced out on a joint wondering if man has landed on the moon yet. This is one of the few places were the rainforest runs right down to the beach, and it's truly stunning. Not a lot going on, but just so well worth the journey.
Queensland's Wet Tropical Rainforests were given World Heritage status as long ago as 1988, so what you get is unspoilt virgin rainforest and crystal clear jungle creeks. It's never going to be another Cairns – at least, I hope not. But there's accommodation here adequate most of the year for the comparatively few that venture this far. It's quite an awesome experience, but, if you see something that looks like a cross between an ostrich and a bad tempered turkey, run like hell – cassowaries are not the friendliest of creatures.
Atherton Tablelands
I was looking for a chilling out day when I took the train up to Kuranda and into the Atherton Tablelands. This is the real attraction of Cairns, a lush, cool plateau opened up by prospectors in the 1870s, and then abandoned to the farmers and lumberjacks.
You can drive up to Kuranda. In fact, if you're going further you'll have to. But I'd taken a chill pill and was happy to jump on the train. It's quaint, rickety and totally touristy, but an experience you'd kick yourself if you didn't do at least once. Getting out at the florally bedecked Kuranda station is like leaping into a jungle, and the town above it geared very much to tourists. As a result, you get tat and more tat. But you also pick up some beautiful Aboriginal craft items and jewellery, maybe a lesson on a didge, a stuffed donkey you don't really want, or just a flat white and damper. Or, in my case, a bite on the finger from an eclectus parrot. But that was my fault.
The best way down is not by train; it's by Skyrail. These six-person gondolas are suspended above the rainforest canopy and run for almost five miles down to Caravonica on the coast. And you can usually get a ticket that combines train up, Skyrail down and a visit to a local zoo, as well as hotel pick-up in town.
The Tablelands rise to about 3000 feet above the coastline, and the cool temperatures, heavy rainfall and volcanic soil makes this a fabulous farming area. Atherton is the main town, but close by is the Hou Wang Temple at the heart of what was Atherton's Chinatown, a settlement that sprang up in the 19th century as Chinese immigrants searched for gold. I pressed on towards Yungaburra, a small place famed for its Curtain Fig Tree, the remains of a tree strangled by parasitic figs. There's another further on, as I head back to Cairns. The Cathedral Fig is set a few minutes into dark forest. Brush turkeys stroll across the path in front of you, unconcerned; all sorts of rustling things come and go among the tree roots; strange sounds ping and pong and click at you. But it's a circuit that is arguably the finest drive around here: Cairns, Kuranda, Atherton, Yungaburra and back to Cairns. Breathtaking.
Out to sea
I have mixed feelings about the Great Barrier Reef. Sure, it's a splendid thing to visit, hugely popular, and when I first went the sea was calm, and I tried the semi-submersible boat and saw many of the things I'd have been closer to if I could swim. Fitzroy Island was lovely; a tiny sand oasis, fringed by palms and inhabited by metre-long lizards. There's even a quiet beach for nudists – not that I went, of course.
Another time I went to Green Island, and that really disappointed, not least for the appalling conditions in which crocs are kept in a so-called zoo. But that's probably just me, and zoos. The island was beautiful enough; I just didn't like what they'd done to it. But Green Island, for me, was the only blot on the landscape. A few weeks ago I met a young chap in Marks and Spencers. He was just heading off to Port Douglas for six months. I offered to trade places. I'd go to Port Douglas and he'd write this article. He said no. Damn.
Published in In Britain, June/July 2003
Oatmeal porridge flavoured with stewed or boiled puffin may not be everyone’s idea of gourmet cuisine, but for the people of St Kilda it was part of a diet that also included fulmars, young gannets and guillemot eggs. Puffins were eaten as a snack, just like a packet of crisps.
These essential groceries, thousands of them, were harvested by the most hazardous of ‘shopping’ expeditions that involved clambering perilously on and along impossibly steep sea cliffs - assuming you could land on them in the first place. Indeed, as a token of their worthiness as husbands, the young suitors of St Kilda would have to stand on one foot on the so-called Mistress Rock perched hundreds of feet above the waves and not much else, so demonstrating their ability to perform the sort of balancing feats that were essential to survival for this isolated community. Admittedly, they had the concession of doing so on a relatively calm day: for me, I stood on the rock in a Force 6, and we both moved. I quickly realised that 'Faint heart never won fair lady!' seldom held truer meaning.
The Force 6 was the remnant of the Atlantic gale that two days earlier had frustrated our attempts to reach St Kilda, tossing our tiny boat in every direction simultaneously (it seemed), and producing digestive consequences that are best left undescribed. Bucking along head down into a gale some would say is the only way to travel to St Kilda. And having done so, there is indeed a tremendous sense of achievement mingled with gratitude at having arrived safely, as if one has earned by ordeal the right to stand on this most sought-after of Scottish islands. But if the truth be known, when the captain said it was going to be bumpy, we knew he didn’t mean a fairground ride. That the St Kildans accomplished this in open boats simply beggars belief.
The archipelago of St Kilda, formed from the rim of an ancient volcano, 40 miles west of North Uist in the Western Isles, comprises four islands and two significant stacks, the largest island, and the only one ever inhabited (or accessible today), being known to the people that lived there as Hirte - the others are Dun, Soay and Boreray, along with Stac an Armin and Stac Lee. This, unquestionably, is a place of superlatives and extremes. Here are the highest cliffs in Britain; the largest colonies of fulmars and gannets; the most difficult of living conditions. Yet the most fascinating note is that man lived here for thousands of years, leading a distinctive and constant, though not entirely unique, way of life, forever battling the elements, yet forced to turn its vagaries to their own advantage whenever they could. The comforts of our cushy, consumerist societies, hinder modern man's understanding that, far from outside influence, the islanders had only those things the islands gave them - and just what that meant in terms of day-to-day living. Yet they lived peaceably, in stone and turf dwellings, with seabirds and sheep for food and clothing, and precious little else, except self-reliance and mutual support.
Abandoned by its people in 1930, and today designated as a World Heritage Site for its natural heritage, St Kilda represents a comprehensive cultural landscape and a reminder of a past way of life that is both poignant and powerful.
The film, The Edge of the World, produced by Michael Powell and based on the evacuation of the islands, portrayed a contemporary view of St Kilda: little known to most people, a place that few have visited, difficult of access and remote – though the islanders themselves, with a hint of parochial pride, would simply have regarded everywhere else as remote. Visible from most parts of the Western Isles, and certainly, on a clear day, from the chambered cairns built on the island hillsides, St Kilda will surely have tempted prehistoric man to speculate whether this distant land beyond the limits of his world would also be suitable for settling.
But that story came full circle in 1930 when the few remaining islanders, beaten by circumstances and a way of life that held more in common with Tristan da Cunha than it ever had with Glasgow or Edinburgh, were finally evacuated. In so doing, the islanders threw themselves into the twentieth century, something of which they knew little and understood even less.
Today, it is impossible to visit the islands and not be moved by what you see, good and bad. Even on a calm day, the boat rocks on the swell in Village Bay, as rubber dinghies ferry people ashore. Those fortunate to arrive when the sea is calm, and the islands materialise slowly from the seascape as steep, lop-sided purple shapes against a cerulean sky, will find ample distraction from the hideous wart that is the radar tracking station, in the smooth-sided hills and jagged ridges that shelter Village Bay. The intrusive, angular generator building (known as the Kilda Generating Board, or KGB), and the equally intrusive masts on Mullach Mór, are obstacles to be negotiated, both physically and emotively, before the senses are allowed to communicate with what lies beyond.
And beyond, you gaze into an empty grave. On the day the people left, abandoned their cats and drowned their dogs, each household in that now-famous arc of Village Bay's settlement left behind an open bible: one, poignantly, at Exodus.
The sadness that lay heavily on the last people to leave, we can never imagine. But St Kilda plays tricks with your senses, guides you through the detached houses and sightless windows and a landscape peppered with strange, low-lying stone structures – cleits, that served the St Kildans as drying rooms and refrigerators. Below the houses stands the church – which boasts the largest pulpit in the Western Isles – and the schoolroom, recently recreated and so today little different from when they echoed to the sounds of bible verse and education. Beside it stands the warden's house, the former manse, for though St Kilda is no longer permanently inhabited, it is occupied, by a warden from the National Trust for Scotland, who own the islands, by visitors on working parties who have paid for the privilege of carrying out conservation work here, and by the month-on, month-off men and women of the Qinetiq base. Cruise ships put in, when the weather allows, and tourists paw the quiet street where once local 'Parliaments' decided on the work for the day and children ran barefoot across the lush green grass.
Jane Shillingford from Mull, originally an ex civil servant from Sussex, comes over for a month with the working parties and acts as cook. 'This is a very special place' she says, 'and you can make of it whatever you want. You can't explain what it is about St Kilda, but you can certainly feel it.'
On the hillside above the Bay, Olivia Lelong from the USA and John Duncan, both archaeologists with the University of Glasgow, are supervising a working party that is excavating a recently discovered midden that has yielded 9th-century Viking remains, and pottery thought to date from 300AD, the earliest find of its kind among the islands. It's a bizarre way of taking a holiday, but the trips are booked solid throughout the year.
Above the bay, sheltered by the natural breakwater of Dun, the hills of Oiseval, Conachair and Mullach Mór provide shelter from all but a south-easterly. Here, as elsewhere great skuas (bonxies) stand proprietorial guard and dive in on persistent intruders forcing you to bow in deference or hit the ground in an undignified heap to evade their attentions: eyeball contact with an indignant bonxie targeting your face is a memorable experience.
From the village, a road, complete with waggish pedestrian crossing, snakes upwards to the tracking station, and can be left at the head of Gleann Mór (the big glen) to explore the cliffs of Mullach Bi and Cambir, beside which lies the craggy shoreline of Loch a'Ghlinne, a place only for wild flowers, seabirds and waterfalls. Here the sense of remoteness is complete: birds, the sea, Nature. And yet the people who came to St Kilda, who manhandled fearful beasts ashore, somehow tried to fashion a place of settlement here, until prehistoric sense prevailed and hoiked them back over the top of the big glen and down to Village Bay. Today, you shake your head in wonder that anything could survive here for a week let alone thousands of years. That borders on the unique.
And in that time Nature, too, took to shaping something that was unique, something peculiarly St Kildan. Here, for example, there were two kinds of mice - the St Kilda house mouse, which became extinct after the people left, and the St Kilda fieldmouse. And from the barren walls of the cleits and the cottages comes the sound of something that didn't evacuate, something that didn't die when the people left - the St Kildan Wren. Troglodytes troglodytes hirtensis is a distinctly larger sub-species of the mainland wren, its shrill song echoing from the stone walls and hillsides. Just over a hundred pairs remain on St Kilda. But with them, safe inside the cleit walls from the attentions of predatory skuas, are upwards of 42,000 pairs of Leach's storm petrels, the greatest concentration in the world: walk among the cleits, quietly, at night, and the petrels will call to you from within their shelter.
For all who visit St Kilda there are life-long memories of an awe-inspiring landscape and seascape, and an incredible, almost humbling, atmosphere in the village which seems to sit waiting patiently for its people to return, as if they left only a short time ago rather than seventy years.
Published in Living France, December 2002
In the end, I abandoned my poor French and Monsieur Vacheron gave up on his slightly better English, and we let the wine speak for itself.
It was a late-June day with enough of a breeze sifting through the trees to take the edge off the heat that nurtured the wheat fields and vineyards of Sancerre, and chance had guided us to one of the renowned cellars here. Admittedly, wine wasn’t the reason that had brought us to the upper Loire valley, but, as we were here and as Sancerre Blanc was one of our favourite tipples, it seemed the decent thing to check-out a vineyard or three, a kind of homage and pilgrimage combined. After all, wine has been produced around Sancerre probably since Roman times, and the Sancerre whites are today highly regarded by those who know about these things; me? – I just like the stuff, and pay it generous lip service, if you get my drift!
Saint Gregory of Tours wrote about the Sancerre wines as long ago as the sixth century, though the vineyards were developed, here as elsewhere in France, during the twelfth century under the guiding hands of Augustinian monks, in this case those at the abbey of St Satur. At this time, the monks, in consort with the counts of Sancerre, were producing a fine pinot noir, which they exported along the Loire river. This brought it to the attention of the nobility, among whom Jean, Duke of Berry, considered the Sancerre red to be among the finest wines in France, an observation that in no small way secured a fair amount of royal patronage.
Alas, in the nineteenth century, the vines were destroyed by phylloxera. But all was not lost, for this disaster was the catalyst that saw the introduction of the sauvignon blanc vines which were well suited to the local climate and resulted in a wine of such high quality that it was among the first round of wines granted the status of its own Appellation d’Origine Controlée (AOC) in 1936.
Visitors coming for the first time to Sancerre are surprised by the extravagant beauty of the region, a place of stunning panoramas, homogeneous hamlets huddled in hollows, quiet villages, and medieval towns perched atop flint and limestone hills cloaked in endless tidy rows of vines, gathered like battalions ready for battle. And at its heart, the ancient walled Protestant city of Sancerre which, during the religious wars of the sixteenth century endured more than seven months of unrelenting siege. Today all that remains of these distant feudal times is the Tour des Fiefs, built by the counts of Sancerre, a sombre edifice dominating the town.
But on this particular day, Sancerre was simply the turning point in a tour that had begun fifteen or so miles away in a sleepy backwater along the River Aubois. Patinges, boasting a population of more than 2,000 around the tenth century, today has only about ten per cent of that, and you may have to count a few cows to make up the number.
What makes Patinges so special is that it was chosen as a base by a retired American corporate businessman, Frank Pettee, for what has become a successful walking and cycling business. Tired of corporate affairs, yet not wanting to even think of retirement, Frank, a lifelong cyclist, hit on the idea of operating cycling holidays that didn’t revolve around a demanding itinerary that just had to reach a new destination at the end of each gruelling day. Instead, he thought of individual days’ cycling, more relaxed expeditions along quiet country lanes, returning each evening to comfort and good food, and convivial company.
Sancerre was just one destination from over twenty that Frank has carved from the exquisite countryside of The Berry, as the region is known. Seeking moderate terrain, Frank’s fortuitous choice of Patinges was reached by a process of elimination. ‘I had to have somewhere that was within easy reach of Paris, and which enabled me to combine easy riding with spectacular scenery.’ That was when he discovered Le Vieux Moulin – the Old Mill.
Perched neatly on the banks of the River Aubois and flanked by the Berry Canal, Le Vieux Moulin is an island of calm in a sea of worldly troubles. Originally built in the fourteenth century, this was a flour mill serving the surrounding region. It took Frank a good eight months to complete the transformation, and a few more to figure out the best routes for cyclists and walkers, to find the local restaurants that never feature on tourist itineraries or in guidebooks and to discover the delights that daily dazzle his visitors, young and old alike.
In the morning we were awakened by a dawn chorus of chiffchaffs, blackcaps, whitethroats and song thrushes, a gently insistent alarm call far better than anything man ever made, though they do start rather early, a point to bear in mind if you’re a night owl yourself. Breakfast combined the simplicity of a basic ‘continental’ breakfast (croissants freshly bought that morning from the nearby village) with cereals, eggs, fresh fruits and yoghurts to produce an ideal, and not too heavy, start to a day that would see us pedalling across the countryside, invariably in Frank’s wake – for a man approaching seventy, Frank is no slouch in the saddle. But he did have additional guides, who stayed with us through thick and thin, offering quiet words of encouragement.
Sun-drenched villages peppered the day – Jouet sur l’Aubois, Sancergues, Feux, Vinon, Thauvenay and Ménétréol-sous-Sancerre, which sits beside one of the many canals that criss-cross the Loire countryside. Fields of wheat swayed in the breeze, their margins enlivened by the bright red of poppies and the mauve of cranesbill and vetch. Elsewhere, rows of vines held young but burgeoning grapes destined for a September harvest, and, we hoped, another good year for the winemakers.
Some days start directly from Le Vieux Moulin, others involve a short trip in a minibus to reach a suitable starting point so that the daily tally rarely exceeded thirty miles. But no day’s ride is so exhausting as to be beyond the capabilities of even the most basic cyclist, or indeed anyone from seven to seventy. On the way there are numerous stops to take pictures – and plenty of reason to – and Frank often calls a halt while he explains about the significance of a village, the landscape or its history.
During the week a-wheel our visits embraced the Wednesday market at Sancoins, then Apremont, one of the most stunningly beautiful villages in France, a place preserved in aspic, of medieval homes with sculpted hedgerows and beautiful gardens, and the ancient walled city of La Charité-sur-Loire, where you can stroll through the twelfth-century cathedral or sit at street cafés listening to a mean piano man rendering Chattanoogo-Choo-Choo in that laid-back way only a talented jazz musician can. We often rode for half an hour with only one or two battered Citroens to contend with, their drivers waving to Frank like the amiable old friend he has become. For these were quiet roads, as far away from the brouhaha of modern life as you could wish to be. Buzzards and harriers patrolled the skies, beak-poised herons tip-toed through the water margins of ponds and canals, and fields of gold and green rippled away to far horizons. Half-close your eyes and you have instant Monet.
Lunches are invariably taken en route, usually in small family run restaurants, simple and inexpensive, and just enough of an energy intake to see you back to base. And back at base is where you’ll always be in good time to shower, relax in the extensive gardens watching humming bird hawk moths flit about the lavender, and prepare for that other ingredient of Frank Pettee’s unique recipe, the gourmet dinner that concludes each day. Nothing quite prepares you for dinner, because Le Vieux Moulin doesn’t look like a restaurant, but Frank’s flawless business philosophy ends only when his guests leave the table pushing their stomachs ahead of them.
When Frank first set up in the early 1990s, he employed a seriously talented chef, who stayed with him for over five years creating stunning recipes, among them rainbow trout en croute, rabbit in mustard sauce spiced with thyme, guinea fowl in prune sauce, or veal in olives. Now those recipes have been handed down to the two ladies that prepare each evening’s meal, and nothing has been lost in the translation.
An extensive range of cheeses, some local, some from Savoie, Brittany or the Pyrenees, prelude desserts – chocolate mousses, apple tarts and rich, calorie-laden sauces – that had me drooling embarrassingly, but I always was an enthusiastic eater. And Frank’s own modest ‘cave’ is an eclectic dip into the wine repertoire of the region. As one guest wrote in Frank’s visitors’ book: ‘I didn’t want the cycling to end, until I thought about dinner!’
And what did the wine say? Well, visit the vineyards of Sancerre, and you’ll discover for yourself, after all, what a man and his wine have to say to each other is, like this little-known region of France, something special.
Chartres: the town beyond the towers
Published in Living France, April, 2003
The vegetable markets of France are one of the reasons why I stay in self-catering apartments whenever I holiday there: I simply can't resist the piles of carrots, onions, garlic, squashes, shallots, beans and herbs, so fresh I just have to dash 'home' and give the wok a good work out.
A few years ago, at Place Billard in Chartres, where once the count's castle stood, I stopped and asked for a kilo of haricots verts. The stallholder handed me a plastic bag to help myself. When he put them on the scales, he smiled and a twinkle brightened his eyes: 'Un plus, s'il vous plaît', he said: one more. I handed him a solitary bean. 'Et voila, monsieur. Un kilo exactement'. And then he added a few more for good measure.
Close by the market, the rue des Grenets (named after an old Chartres family) leads into the rue des Changes, where, from the 11th until the 15th century, money-changers stood at benches, their place of business. 'Bench' in French is 'banc', the origin of the word 'bank', and so the money people became known as 'banquiers', or as we call them now, 'bankers'. Today, this is the site of the Saturday livestock market, a buzzing, bustling, rambunctious place where geese and people meet, disembowelled rabbits hang beside unplucked pheasants, young ducklings in crates, unaware of their fate, fascinate passing children, and from first-floor apartments the rhythms of the Manic Street Preachers clash with Edith Piaf and Simply Red.
The street names, we soon realised, are a clue to the busy commercial past of Chartres: the rue de la Poissonnerie leads to the site of the former fish market at the Tertre de la Poissonnerie, and the lovely 16th-century, half-timbered Maison du Saumon also known as the Maison de la Truie qui File (the House of the Spinning Sow). The building is decorated with wood carvings that are ornate and skilfully executed - a salmon, a pig, angels, vines, butterflies and birds. The rue de la Petite Cordonnerie (Shoemaker's Street) and the rue aux Herbes (Herb Street) lead back to the cathedral square, and a building that cannot be ignored.
From whichever direction the visitor chooses to approach Chartres, it is the two steepled bell towers of the cathedral, one ornate, built in Flamboyant Gothic style in the 16th century, the other, Romanesque, quite plain by comparison, soaring high above the Beauce Plain that first proclaim the whereabouts of the city. Gradually, the cathedral, floating in a distant haze, materialises above fields of golden wheat or sunflowers, its position on a hill above both the town and the River Eure, becoming clearer little by little. But not until the last moment, or so it seems, does the town itself materialise, spread about the cathedral in a haphazard mosaic of pan-tiled roofs, pinnacles, half-timbered houses and limestone walls that crowd the narrow lanes leading down to the river.
By cathedral-building standards, Chartres was something of a rush job, being substantially completed within less than thirty years, after a fire in 1194 had destroyed most of the city. For latter-day visitors and architects alike, the most significant consequence of this TGV-like workmanship is a cathedral that is architecturally both coherent and harmonious, the finest example of the Gothic style in the world, and an inspiration to the church builders who followed. No mean feat considering the many wars and countless religious upheavals that took place in France during the last millennium. It was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1979.
First impressions on entering were of a brooding half-light pervaded by calm and reverence, but once our eyes had adjusted the reason for the throngs outside soon became evident: Chartres cathedral holds the oldest and most sumptuous collection of stained glass in France, more then 2,500 square metres, formed into intricate designs depicting scenes from the Bible – in essence a poor man's Bible, for those unable to read. In a very understated way, it is potently breath-taking - and, soaring high into the vaulted ceilings, conducive to neck ache. With wishful wisdom I thought I figured out that the scenes contained within circles depicted events from the New Testament, while the Old Testament stories were found within squares. But it would take a lifetime's study to understand what all the scenes described.
Forty-two of the windows were donated by various merchant brotherhoods, stained glass business cards, if you like, representing the commercial activity that centred on the city: bakers, carpenters, goldsmiths, weavers, innkeepers, shoemakers, wine merchants, masons, furriers, drapers and many more. The windows high above the main door are so intricate that you'll need a guidebook or the services of a good guide to explain their meaning.
Thankfully, a number of guides are on hand, the most renowned among them an Englishman who never came home, Malcolm Miller. Educated in Aston, near Birmingham, Malcolm Miller later read French at Durham, during which time he had to spend a year in France as part of his studies. Astutely, he chose for his thesis a topic he judged the faculty might know less about than himself: Chartres cathedral. After finishing at university, Malcolm longed to go back to France, and sought a teaching post in Pau in the Pyrenees. When this ended, he still couldn't bear the thought of returning to England, so he found other teaching posts, in Marseilles and, ultimately, in Toulon. Ill health forced an end to his teaching career, so he returned to Chartres, and guided visitors around the town and the cathedral whenever he could. But eventually, his health compelled a return to England, where he was advised never to go back to France. Against all advice, he did return in 1967, and says that when he again saw the cathedral he started crying, realising that this was where he was meant to be.
And this is where he has been ever since. Today, Malcolm Miller, who lives in a beautifully ornate 15th-century half-timbered house in the Old Town, is an Honorary Citizen of Chartres, his services to the town and its cathedral recognised by the award of the Silver Medal of Tourism from the French Ministry of Tourism in 1991, the Knighthood of the National Order of Merit, by the French Republic in 1998, and the Knighthood of the Order of Arts and Letters, by the French Ministry of Culture also in 1998. I spent much time in his company, in awe of his knowledge, and not infrequently amused by his wit. To complaints that people at the back of his group couldn't hear what he was saying, he replied simply, 'Move closer'. You could join Malcolm Miller's guided tours twice each day (there is a fee of 10 euros), every day for a week, and not hear the same story twice. According to Malcolm Miller, the cathedral can be compared to a library. And like a library, we may visit and read many books, maybe even re-read some books, but we will never read all the books. Chartres is much the same: its contents, architectural design, statues, and stained glass are each like books, their images are their text. What is so remarkable about Chartres, Malcolm Miller told me, is that much of Chartres can still be 'read.'
Without such a guide you could easily miss the fascinating 13th-century labyrinth inlaid into the floor of the nave, around which pilgrims walked as a spiritual devotion, or went round on their knees, as penance. Labyrinths were a feature of many medieval cathedrals. The one in Chartres involves a journey of 262m that on hands and knees would take an hour to complete. The pews are sometimes removed so that today's visitors can follow in the footsteps of those early pilgrims.
But, splendid as it is, Chartres cathedral is not the only place of worship in the town that is worth a visit. The Benedictine abbey church of St Pierre also has lovely stained glass windows. Beside the river, the Eglise de St André is often used for art exhibitions and jazz concerts. Behind the cathedral, the Musée des Beaux Arts is housed in the former Episcopal palace, and contains a lovely collection of tapestries and paintings.
Chartres, one of the first urban conservation sites in France, is very much a success story. Its quirky cobbled streets and half-timbered houses are not all that contribute to an appealing ambience for here, too, there are also steep lanes (tertres) that lead down to the river linking the high and the low towns, humpback stone bridges and numerous public washhouses (lavoirs) where, until the middle of the 20th century, women did their washing, using a pulley system that raised or lowered the scrubbing boards dependent upon the height of the river.
Yet in spite of the world renown of its cathedral, Chartres is a delightfully unpretentious place, its department - Eure-et-Loir - largely unknown. It is the most northerly of the départements of the Région Centre, yet it has much in common with Normandy, Île de France and the adjacent Loire and Loir valleys. It is all very relaxing, unassuming and welcoming, an ideal place to spend an agreeable few days, almost off the beaten track.
From the terrace behind the Episcopal Palace I sauntered through a tiered garden to a doorway leading onto the Tertre St Nicholas. A short distance away is the steep-sloping rue Chantault in which number 29, the Maison Romane, is the oldest inhabited house in Chartres, dating from the 12th century, its windows decorated with curious Romanesque sculptures depicting heads, acrobats, monsters and demons. Across the river, I followed the rue de la Tannerie as far as the rue du Bourg, where I crossed the Pont Bouju - one of the traditional entry points to the walled city – and found my way into the rue des Ecuyers (the street of the Equeries). Here are some fine 15th- and 16th-century houses, one, number 25, is the Maison de l'Escalier de la Reine Berthe, a house with a remarkable external spiral staircase, though there is no link between the 11th-century wife of King Robert II, and this 16th-century house.
In complete contrast, the modern town is typically boulevard France with busy shops, pavement cafés, restaurants, living statues, markets and the occasional iron pissoir (Gents only, of course). Along the Boulevard de la Résistance stands an impressive memorial to Jean Moulin, hero of the French Resistance during the second World War. He was Prefect of Eure-et-Loir when the Nazis occupied Chartres in 1940. Under torture he refused to sign papers alleging atrocities of the French Army, and after his release was responsible for organising the French Resistance, and, as 'Max', became a legendary figure. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943, and died at the hands of Klaus Barbie.
I settle down with a coffee and a magazine. Nearby, a beautiful young woman is selling flowers, a pavement artist is working hard at the northern tower of the cathedral and a couple of music students playing violins are doing the best they can with a half-hearted re-arrangement of one of Mozart's string quartets. Such is life, and it will soon be time for lunch.