sun sets on zadar

“We have the most beautiful sunsets in the world,” the thin waiter tells me as he delivers my glass of 'maraschino' on ice.

“You do,” I agree, as the blood orange sun slides into the azure Adriatic. Above the scalloped edges of the long island on the horizon, the sun bleeds into the sky, making silhouettes of boats, people and palm trees.

Of course many places in the world have sunsets to die for. [I love Bali sunsets for example], but it is the power of words which gives Zadar the superlative sunset. Alfred Hitchcock's words in this case. It helps if the words are those of a celebrity!

It is our last night here. We plan for two nights and stay for five, such is the allure of this city. Because we haven't pre-booked accommodation and it is August, we have to move three times, from a spacious private room to a hotel room the size of a wardrobe to a studio apartment with walls painted lurid lime and vibrant vermilion.

Luckily in this pedestrianised Old-Town of Zadar, we only pull our bags a couple of hundred metres over shiny flagstones each time we move. It is kind of fun. And a city without cars is every thing I imagined it to be. If only... We don't want to leave this haven which nestles between the old city walls and the sea, but there is so much more to see along the Dalmation coast and only two weeks left to see it.

Architecture, or the initial 'publicity shot' 
for the release of the latest 'Fiat Punto'?

As the sun sets we are eating grilled sea-bass at the restaurant on the esplanade, when a group of eight men at an adjacent table start singing, with rich harmonies, softly at first, then building to full voice. The music is 'Klapa', traditional Croatian songs of love and longing and loss.

I imagine fishermen in their navy and white striped tops sailing around the 1,246 islands of the Dalmation archipelago singing as the sun sets.

Later we see our singers perform at a concert on the esplanade; they were practising over a drink in our restaurant.

When the men stop singing, a group of young women begin tentatively singing sad, haunting songs. Their voices are higher and thinner but strangely mesmerising like the sounds of mermaids which sailors heard at sea.

With the sunset, the songs, the succulent sea-bass, the serene sea, it is hard to imagine a more perfect place to be. Yet the city was repeatedly bombed by the allies during the second world war, so much of it had to be rebuilt. Although the Serbs attacked Zadar during the Civil War, they didn't penetrate the Old Town.

The weather is sublime every night. All the women wear sleeveless dresses or tops. Yes, even I bare my fleshy arms!

The keen observer will have realised Carol does not use a

Canon EOS digital camera.

The entire city is buzzing and bursting with life. People fill every square and alleyway, at tables and chairs or wooden benches. Some promenade or dance to the nightly free music concerts in the central square. Our apartment is in a zone where the men go for beer or spirits with small black coffee [kava] and cigarettes for breakfast. This is near the university, reputedly the first to be built in Croatia in 1396. At night the district transforms itself into a labyrinthine outdoor night club with psychedelic patterns projected onto old stone walls. Here the young and cool chill-out as music thumps out of doorways of bars and clubs. But we don't see any drunk or disorderly behaviour as we head through the zone to reach our apartment at midnight.

Zadar caters for everyone. Families with tiny children dance in the square alongside middle aged couples and the old men still sit in another alleyway and smoke.

Although bustling, Zadar is not overcrowded. I don't feel overwhelmed by the 'humants' we experienced in Plitvicka.

Every day we find more to delight us within Zadar's protective walls. I love the eclectic mix of the old and the new in architecture, music, people and food.

Old women dressed in black with black head-scarves come in by ferry to shop at the fresh produce market alongside barely clad, tanned leggy girls with long lustrous hair and bodies as luscious as the ripe fruit and vegetables stacked on the market stalls.

Children play on Roman ruins next to swanky cafes. Ancient stone pillars appear in the middle of newly paved squares. Shops selling religious icons around the corner from a sex shop with its fetishist icons, including the biggest plastic [?] penis I have ever seen. Women in traditional Croatian folk costumes finish a performance and come to dance to a rock and roll band in the square, waving their head scarves in the air.

Croatian dancing... folk and funk.

We take ferries to two islands. My favourite is Silba, more remote and unspoiled, with an old stone village, fragrant pine trees, a fennel schnapps after lunch and the clearest warmest water for swimming. Silba has twenty unique species of butterfly and claims to be allergy free. There are no cars. People move heavy loads around the island with handcarts. 

Island immersion.

As the car ferry pulls out from the wharf, the sun sets on Silba and the sea darkens to a midnight blue. My eyes are heavy and my skin stings with sun and salt, so I stretch out on a bench on deck for the four hour ferry ride back to Zadar by the light of a thin crescent moon. I swear I can hear the eerie sounds of sad siren songs calling me back to the sea.

plitvicka...when push comes to shove

Our first glimpse of the sublime, clear, cobalt-coloured water of the Plitvicka Lakes

I am at the Plitvicka Lakes, one of the most exquisitely beautiful places in Croatia, and I am distressed and disappointed.

At the end of a long day, I am one of the first people waiting for the bus, which transfers people between locations in the park. The bus arrives, but hundreds of people surge forward, blocking the doorways, and filling the bus before I can climb aboard.

A sullen mouthed woman in a blue uniform says, “No more,” and the doors close. “Excuse me,” I say. “I have have waited over an hour for two buses now and I can't get on because people push in front of me.”

She is unmoved. “That's our rule here,” she says “You push.” Her eyes are insolent.

I am a 63 year old woman, tired from four hours walking around the lakes on a warm day, and there is no way I can push past the 7 foot tall German Heidis with their thick plaits or the groups of athletic young Croatian males. I have never been good in crowds. Dave says he will push for me next time, the way he shielded me in Hong Kong more than 30 years ago when I first experienced a human crush, while catching a ferry. But I won't wait for another 30 minutes and it is getting late so Dave and I walk for nearly two hours to get to the boat to take us across the surreal turquoise lake.

Sometimes emerald green, sometimes turquoise waters 
of the lakes.

On the shore, a tour group of Italians waits for the boat with us. As soon as it moors, an elderly Italian man elbows me out of the way, shoving me in the ribs. By now I am close to tears.

Why are people behaving like this? Our hotel manager nails it. “There are too many people.” She sighs. “The tour groups. Too many people in July and August.”

By listing the Plitvicka Lakes as the number one attraction in Croatia, 'Lonely Planet' has ensured that it will never be lonely. It has been a popular tourist destination since 1951, when it became a national park. UNESCO declared it a world heritage site in 1979.

In 1991 tourism was rudely interrupted by the Civil War which, ironically I reflect, began here when rebel Serbs took over the park as their headquarters. The first casualty, a Croation policeman, occurred here. There is something almost obscene about a war beginning in such a natural paradise.

Tranquillity and peace...

Like so many other people, I came here to commune with nature, to hike around the wondrous system of tiered lakes, cascading streams and waterfalls with their clear waters and forested mountains. I hope to glimpse the wild animals, wolves, deer, bears, boar or lynxes, or at least to feel their shadowy presences in the woods of beech, fir, spruce and flowering ash.

Instead, I see people. Tens of thousands of them. They are crawling in single file along the 18kms of paths and board-walks and narrow footbridges, like ants. I can't go at my own pace or stop to stare. Sometimes I flatten myself against a rock wall and wait for half an hour until there is a little space. Koreans, South Americans, Italians, Chinese and Russians file past. It is hard to even see the lakes, but I can hear waters rushing beneath the board-walk in places.

'Humant' behaviour.

It is more crowded here than at the Alhambra in Spain. There are queues for food, for the boats, for buses. I overhear some young people from Spain and the Netherlands expressing their disappointment. They can't see the lakes or the wild boar. They note the number of Russians with “big bellies and cowboy boots.” They see the Russians in every country they visit. “Just because they have money, they think they have rights.” It is a sensitive time, economically, in Europe and these young university graduates are feeling it.

When we reach a waterfall, I see a steep stairway cut into the rock leading to a lookout high above. To escape the crowds we huff and puff our way to the top to find spectacular views and a forest track with only a few young hikers. The scenery is spectacular and apparently almost unchanged since the last Ice Age.

I know that in every culture there are people who believe in 'dog eat dog', a survival of the fittest mentality, but now that we are rapidly moving towards a one world consciousness, we need to find a more humane and pragmatic set of values. I see a lad wearing a TEAM [Together We Achieve More] slogan on his T-shirt.

I once heard Tim Costello, an Australian social commentator, say that the measure of a society's robustness is the way it treats its frail, elderly and marginal citizens.

Surely there are better ways than 'push and shove.'

Splendid solitude...

We are leaving Plitvicka for the Dalmation coast. A diminutive young Parisienne notary engages us in conversation at the bus stop. Her gentle brown eyes brim with tears as she says, “I don't like this country. The people look unhappy. They won't help you. I don't understand a touristic place being like this.”

She has travelled a lot, particularly in Europe and Asia, but like me, she has sensed something harsh in Plitvicka.

After driving through wooded country, where the trees suggest that summer is morphing into autumn, we pass through a long tunnel cut into the pale limestone hills and reach Zadar, our first coastal destination.

We have entered another world. A Croatia which delights us!

A final reflection...

zagreb

There's a kind of hush all over Zagreb. We notice it from the first day here when we venture out from our Hotel Croatia to explore the city on foot. Even along the six kilometres of Ilica Street, the major road separating the Upper Town from the Lower Town, there is only an occasional car. We pass pedestrians. People on bicycles pass us. Sleek sky blue trams reflecting clouds in their windows quietly glide past every few minutes. Beneath the austere brown buildings lining the street there are many shops, but except for the bread shops and caffe/bars, a lot are closed, giving the street a shabby, deserted appearance.

Another closed local shop.

My map reading skills being what they are, we take a wrong turning and are soon lost on a thickly wooded hillside, where the paths criss-cross each other at confusing angles. There are no signs. We are like Hansel and Gretel lost in the woods, but in the middle of a city of one million, which is about the same size as our home town, Adelaide. Half an hour earlier we passed an old woman walking with a stick and a jogger flashes past between the trees higher up. Zagreb certainly has plenty of parks but where ARE all the people?

We head upwards hoping for an overview of the city and come to an open park with a playground and a kiosk where two teenage girls with earrings in their noses and ears huddle at a table, engrossed in each other. They speak English well and are very happy to point us in the right direction to find the central squares and pedestrianised streets of the city, the centre of Zagreb's renowned lounge culture. We find the cafes with rows upon rows of outdoor tables and chairs filling street after street, but Zagreb seems almost empty compared to other places we have visited like Seville and Granada and Carcassonne. And this is Saturday when most of Zagreb reputedly goes out for coffee and cake and people watching.

Later I read in my Lonely Planet Guide that Zagreb is almost deserted in August when everyone heads for the coast. We see few young people [the students must be on holidays], or families with children; mainly middle aged or elderly Croatians and a sprinkling of German, Italian, French and Spanish tourists. All the young beauties of Zagreb must be sunning themselves on the party islands of the Dalmation coast.

There are handwritten signs on shop doors indicating that the proprietors have gone away until the end of August.

On Sunday a few tour groups, with guides, swell the numbers in the centre and we admire the same sights; some architecturally interesting buildings, the palaces and museums, the cathedral and the iconic Saint Mark's church, the colourful markets under red umbrellas, the pageantry of the Changing of the Guards, the statues and folkloric performances. 

Changing of the Guards

Zagreb boasts many theatres, art galleries and museums, and a packed program of cultural events, but early August is not the best time to visit, particularly when we find everything, even the Botanical Gardens, closed on Wednesday for the Festival of the Virgin.

St Mark's

We learn that Zagreb invented the neck-tie and the fountain pen, both fading in relevance I fear. 

 

We love the museum of naive art with many works depicting scenes of village life in this region. There are a lot worse things to do than to sit in the sun with a cold beer in one of the spacious squares of Zagreb.

Ban Jelacic 1848.

The city revs up a bit during the working week, and the trams are packed when we travel to the residential areas outside the city, to see endless shabby concrete blocks of flats, many spacious recreational parks and matronly women flocking to new shopping centres.

MacDonald’s is turning from red to green. Hot Red Chilli Peppers are performing at the Arena in September. Even Harvey Norman is here. Zagreb is on the move.

On the trams and in the cafes I am struck by how quiet it is here after three months in Spain and southern France. It is not just the time of the year or the relative absence of cars which accounts for the silence.

It is also the language and the way people speak. It is softer and flatter, at times hushed or monotonic. It is the whispering of a sad sea or the soothing voice of a mother calming her child to sleep. Sometimes it is the staccato sound of rapid fire.

The Spanish talk loudly and expressively, laugh, sing, shout and chant. In Madrid the human sounds soared above the sounds of the traffic. The French use language to engage and connect, to joke, to express civility. Particularly in country regions, everyone acknowledges each other with a cheery “Bonjour.” I am eating alone in a cafe and a passer-by wishes me “Bon Appetit” We are farewelled with “Au revoir” or “A bientôt.” The language is a musical stream babbling over rocks.

I loved it when we were in Bouriege listening to children's voices ringing out across the valley as they chanted French rhymes and clapping songs. Wherever you are in France, people acknowledge each other. “D'accord,” “Voila,” “S’il-vous plais madame,” “Mais oui,” “Merci.” Happy sounds.

I know I haven't been here long; I have the naive perceptions of the outsider. Perhaps an outsider, in seeing differently, finds a pattern, a colour or shape to things which the insider may not notice. I wonder how much the language has shaped the culture or vice versa.

Here people sit silently in cafes and chain smoke or talk to each other in subdued tones. There is a melancholic note to the language. Two men at a cafe table communicate in sign language for the deaf. Their non verbal animation seems louder than the conversations at other tables. The manager at our hotel smiles with his eyebrows not his mouth. But the young receptionists have warm smiles and fluent English. I am sure that when the young people return from holidays, Zagreb will resume its new optimistic personality.

A group of women in traditional costumes sing lustily with joy, but many of the old people look ravaged by their lives. I see a number of women with black eyes. There is an exhibition about violence to women on at the gallery of modern art. Women were burnt as witches in the 18^th century; domestic violence is an issue here.

I feel increasingly sad as I learn more about the disturbing history of Croatia, the way people here have suffered and the cruelty we are capable of as human beings. Although there are positive signs in this 'new' Croatia, I can't help noticing the poverty and the pain.. Our hotel receptionist is outraged when she hears we have been overcharged by a taxi driver. “I work for two days for that amount,” she says, “and a taxi driver takes that from you in half an hour.” Now she is expressive. We see two men shouting at each other in the middle of the road, in dispute about who was at fault in a near accident. Beneath the silence, perhaps there is a lot of anger and fear.

As we approach the main city square we hear loud live music. A band and young singers belt out 'Proud Mary' in English. There are television cameras and a surging crowd.

A quartet of older male singers, with voices which blend into a single stream of harmonies, mesmerise the crowd with traditional Croatian songs. I notice people waving little Croation flags, or dancing and singing along with the words. The younger pop singers return and sing 'My Way' and 'We are the Champions.' Of course. It is the homecoming ceremony for the Olympic athletes.

The crowd roars when they come on stage. There are speeches. The excitement builds. The men sing more traditional anthems and everyone joins in, young and old. An old man next to me has tears in his eyes. Old women sway their hips in time to these rousing anthems. Young men hug and raise their flags.

The rock band sings 'Stand By Me' and I join in. I feel it. The nationalist pride of a new nation. Croatia. I am one of them for a moment. I want to show the world what we can achieve, despite the turmoil of our recent and more distant past. How easy it is to stir up nationalist sentiments!

The athletes leave the stage and the crowd disperses, but a few stragglers stay to hear the final song.

After the exhilaration comes a sobering reminder of the tragedy of the Civil War in the emotionally charged voice of the pint sized female singer:

I don't wanna talk

About the things we've gone through,

Though it's hurting me

Now it's history

I've played all my cards

And that's what you've done too

Nothing more to say

No more ace to play

The winner takes it all

The loser's standing small

Beside the victory

That's a destiny

 A bearded man, decked out in red and white, lowers his flag. He looks confused. His eyes empty of fervour. The moment is over. He gets on his bike.

Over fresh trout with almonds at the place where they dress like Hansel and Gretel, we talk about being away with different words. We feel rude when we can't respond in Croation. I know Ne is no and Da is yes and Molimo means please. “Bog is hullo” I say. '”I'm not going to say that,” says Old Dog.

I look blankly at the street signs and menus. I notice how many consonants there are in words, particularly V and K and J and Z, with few vowels in between. I look at them and try to hear the sound of the words. But I can't visualise them or make associations unless they resemble words I know.

When I see the word “tram”, I hear it and I see the word and I see various trams and I feel the movement of the old rattling tram to Glenelg and I remember the feeling of excitement when my nanna took me to Adelaide on the tram and the old horse drawn tram to Granite Island .I think about it being a green and effective way to travel in cities. I wish we had more trams and less cars in Adelaide.

The four letters are exploding with meaning. But when I see vrijeme or sljivovica, there are no associations. There's a kind of hush.

bit of a boules up

Our friends invite us to visit Saint Antonin to play pétanque with them in the village competition.

We punch Saint Antonin into the GPS and she comes up with two places. One is in Provence. We choose the other which is west of Toulouse as we know our friends are about 100kms from there.

We couldn't manage driving in France without the GPS. We call her Joyce as she sounds like a gentle well spoken English woman from a BBC program. The kind you could see reporting from the middle east while bombs explode and yet she stays as calm as if describing a royal garden party.

The drive is uneventful until we pass through Toulouse on a spaghetti tangle of big busy roads. “Have you looked at the map on the the screen?” Dave asks. “Yes, but it's doing my head in,” I reply.

Even with Joyce's calm no-nonsense guidance we manage to take one wrong turn. But the beauty of Joyce is that she is implacable and unflappable. “The route is being recalculated,” she announces in a voice devoid of derision or anxiety, and she firmly redirects us through the network of roads which remind me of the Mad Mouse, a sideshow at the Royal Adelaide show which I foolishly rode once with my son.

Eventually we leave the endless apartment blocks behind and see fields of corn and hay and sunflowers from the busy motorway. The country is flat and uninteresting compared to the Aude region where we are staying. Strange, we think, after four hours, as we neared our destination. Our friends said it was spectacular country. Perhaps it changes suddenly.

Finally Joyce directs us to turn off on a narrow road and after 20 kms announces,”You have arrived at your destination.”

Sure enough, there is the sign, Saint Antonin. “But we can't go into the town,” I say. “there is a fete today and we won't be able to get a park, so we have to go straight to the camping ground to meet our friends for lunch and pétanque.”

But we are already in the village. Not a car. Not a person. Three houses One Mairie. No shops. No bars or cafes. Not even an église. I wonder where our Bed and Breakfast is, but before we can blink we are out of the town. We drive around for half an hour looking in vain for a camping ground

Tired and hungry, it slowly dawns on us. We must be in the wrong place!

How is this possible?

Luckily I have brought the French Road Atlas. I check the index. Yes, Joyce was right. Only two 'Saint Antonins' but I notice five 'Saint Antonin-somethings'. Through a process of elimination we choose two possibilities, north east of Toulouse, but one is too far. We choose 'Saint Antonin Noble Val' because it is larger on the map. We phone our friends, they don't answer, so we may travel for another four hours and still not find them.

I have a hell of a headache. Dave is limp with driving and disappointment. Then I find I have lost the money from my purse, probably when we stopped at the boulangerie. We push on. The sky darkens. I see a lightening flash on the horizon. The traffic is horrendous, as the weather worsens.

We see fruit orchards and almond trees and broad rivers. “I think this IS the region,” I say. We reach the town, gloomy in misty rains and heavy skies. There IS a fete with tractors and hundreds of cars clogging the roads as they leave. Everything is sodden. The light is fading fast.

“At least we know it is the right place.” I whimper.

But we can't find the tunnel or the camping ground. We ask a man walking along the road with umbrella and baguette. “Premier a gauche,” he replies. First on the left. We have arrived.

After a fruitless search of the site, we ask the manager who looks through pages of names in her book of registrations. Our friends are not listed.

“Are there any other camping grounds here?” I ask

There are two more. As we approach the first one I see the landmark our friends had mentioned...a stone tunnel through the hillside. And rising up behind it are the white Les Gorges de l' Aveyron.

Les Gorges de l' Aveyron at dusk.

Eventually we find them, exhausted from traumas of their own. There had been such a fierce storm that it had brought down trees and flooded the office of their camping ground. The fete and the pétanque had been washed out. They have been working all day.

The woman from the B&B has just rung them wondering where we are. Perhaps she hasn't kept our room. We rush in to town. All is well. We settle into Numéro Quinze and flop on to the bed. “I wanted an adventure.” I say. Old Dog doesn't even raise one eyelid.

He is dreaming of the Saint Antonin Noble Val pétanque competition tomorrow!

Old Dog swears someone beat him to it.

It is a brighter world in the morning. We chat over breakfast with a charming Swiss couple, who tell us that we were on the roads on the worst weekend for driving in France. It is called 'Black Saturday'. There were traffic jams up to a total of 175kms at the five main 'hot-spots'.

Tractor fête demonstration the day following the storm.

We are enchanted by the mediaeval town when we explore it on foot. If you are ever in the Tarn, 'Saint Antonin Noble Val' is a must to visit.

Saint Antonin Noble Val city-scape.

Dave enjoyed the pétanque competition, despite the butcher's father taking them into the village to a rough, hilly bituminised lane for a game. 'Très difficile'. The Frenchman had heard about the Aussie fiend!

Saint Antonin Noble Val's river bank is an idyllic site for the pétanque competition.

Only small winnings to celebrate but we have a gourmet meal at 'Le Festin de Babette', a riverside restaurant in Saint Antonin, which leaves a very pleasant taste in our mouths.

It is all research...

The highlight of our return journey is a visit to the 'Toulouse-Lautrec musée' in the artist's birthplace, Albi. Outstanding!

Albi has the Lautrec Musée AND much other grandeur to recommend it.

font del carol

Imagine this...

It is our grandson's 9th birthday, and we are in France. After two months away in Europe we are missing him. We sent him a postcard with a picture of an Old Dog barking Happy Birthday in English and French. [Dave plays in a band called the 'Old Dogs']

Why are we here away from home and the people we love?

As I sit out on the deck in my nightie with a bowl of cornflakes and yoghurt, the warm sun burns my back as if I am sitting too close to a radiator. It is bright and hot already. Yesterday Britain had its warmest day so far this year, with the Olympics saturating BBC television. Here in southern France, summer has ripened into relentless heat and humidity.

We decide to drive up to the higher mountains where the air is cooler. I want to see the 'Gorges de la Frau' and we want a distraction from thoughts of home.

As we leave the village we see our little white house in the valley, surmounted by sunflowers.

Soon we are ascending winding mountain roads which make me feel nauseous and dizzy. The surface is newly bituminised, very smooth, hurriedly resurfaced for the recent Tour De France but without white lines. The scenery over the Pyrénées is breathtaking but I feel so sick I can barely take it in.

Old Dog, normally a cautious driver, decides he is Australia's next Jack Brabham as soon as he finds perilous curves.

We stop at a mountain village, Belcaire, for a 'crustade aux pommes', a sort of airy light pastry slice with a stewed apple and cinnamon layer inside, and coffee on the 'terrasse' of the only hotel/bar in town. A short stroll takes us around an apple green lake where happy campers picnic, swim and sunbathe. French families having fun.

From there it is a short drive to another very old stone village, Comus, the first we find with a sign at the water trough declaring the water drinkable, 'eau potable'.

We are up in the alps where the air and the water are fresh and clean, starting the walk to the 'Gorges de la Frau', along a section of the 'Sentier Cathare'. the ancient path of the Cathares from the chateau at Foix to the Mediterranean.

On the way down.

It is a steady descent in the intense midday sun. I have no hat. Neither of us carry water. After a couple of kilometres Dave says, “It is going to be an even longer walk on our return.”

We realise it will be uphill all the way back, and without a cloud in the hot blue sky, I worry about dehydration and about Dave stumbling as he feels dizzy today. [My walking friends will be even more concerned at my foolishness!]

B is for BlueBell and Beautiful Butterfly.

Little lizards scuttle in the undergrowth. Big bumble bees buzz on wild-flowers. Butterflies, pale yellow, leopardskin print or tawny cream and brown, flit around us or lightly land on petals. I notice swarms of small lilac butterflies. “No, they are 'poo' moths,” Dave says. “They are eating the horse 'poo' along the track.”

“Like dung beetles,” I say, disturbed from my romantic reveries.

Sometimes the moths look like one giant flower on the track, but as we approach, they are startled and fly away, revealing the lumps of horse manure. A nice little ecosystem!

Pine trees grow on the mountain sides but other alpine trees gain ascendancy as the rock faces narrow to form the Gorges, which are sunlit only in the early afternoon.

Alpine trees have their individual take on gravity.

As we walk the dappled path between the sheer stone walls of the narrowest section of the gorge alongside a stream, I imagine the Cathares and even earlier human inhabitants of the Pyrénées, following these tracks to hunt, to camp, to traverse the land from mountains to valleys and oceans when the snow fell.

In the silence I feel an almost visceral connection with all my antecedents on planet earth and with our children and grandchildren as they walk their own paths.

On the way back from the gorge, it is even hotter. Now there are frenzied flies feeding on the dung and cicadas noisily tuning up their orchestra. Luckily the flies are so well fed they don't bother us.

With this abundance of insect life, I realise how much the use of pesticides and other chemicals has changed our urban world, impacting on all creatures great and small... as Joni Mitchell wrote forty five years ago...

Hey farmer farmer put away your DDT
I don't care about spots on my apples
leave me the birds and the bees... please!

 This is a world of subtle sounds and pungent smells, of diverse plants and animals, of nature as a presence, before dominated by man.

The lizards, emboldened, or perhaps soporific in the sun, brazenly sit on the track rather than dart away. My eyes are alert for snakes.

Soon there is a new sound. Horses hooves. A man calls out “A gauche”, on the left, to warn us of their approach.

Sharing the trail.

A group of young riders, with bouncing buttocks and long pony tails, mirroring the horses' rear ends, ride past in single file, flicking flies with swatches pulled from leafy trees.

Washing day... the blue of the sky and the clothes.

After our 9km walk, we drive on to Montaillou, a Cathare village nearby. The story goes that four of the Cathares from Montsegur, decided to 'convert' to Catholicism and live, rather than walk into the flames to be burned alive. They formed a settlement in this remote place, and secretly kept alive their Occitan language and culture. 

Stone houses and the remains of a chateau overlook a vast valley. “ God's own country,” I think as I survey the scene from a stone wall.

Apparently the 20 or so current inhabitants are descendants of the original settlers, with the same surnames as on the earliest gravestones. How this is possible after 7 centuries baffles me, but then so do a lot of things.

The road signs are in the Occitan language [hence the name of the region...the 'Language of Oc'... 'Languedoc']. Occitan was the language of love and poetry and rebellion, of troubadours and heretics.

We wander around Montaillou, admiring the vegetable gardens, the rustic buildings, the beauty of the place and searching the faces of the old people for some resemblance to my grandmother, when I come across a fount of water gushing into a trough and go to cool my hands and face.

Imagine my surprise when I find I am dipping my hands into the 'Font del Carol', obviously my occitan source! Home again?

'Font del Carol'