Liquer, chocolate and a grand cirque indeed

Chausson climbed up a narrow winding road, mist was clinging to the the rock faces at the beside the road, autumn colours tinged the trees. We drove through narrow tunnels, under rock overhangs, across arched bridges to the museum of the Grande Chartreuse Monastery. We passed a couple of signs showing the outline of a hooded monk with ‘zone de silence’ underneath.

Public are not allowed at the Carthusian monastery; the monks spend their time in silence and contemplation only eating a meal together once a week in silence. Their life is not much different to when the order was established in 1084. The Grande Chartreuse museum is sited in an annexe and displays the monks’ life in their hermitages. There is nothing to distract them from their devotions. Their concession to comfort is a small wood burner in their room (they have to cut their own firewood). Every detail is austere and each hermitage contains a hatch with a double door where their food is placed, if they need anything they write a note and leave it in the hatch. They are self sufficient and the Chartreuse liquer they make is one of the ways they support themselves without alms. Pity there was no tasting, I haven’t had the pleasure.

On the way to the monastery

We have been covering some distance recently and found Tain l’Hermitage, a premium wine producing town on the opposite side of the river Rhone to where we stayed (Tournon sur Rhone). It is also home to Valrhona chocolate, probably the numero uno of chocolate manufacturers, established in 1922. A visit to their Cite du Chocolat was on the cards, there were interactive displays of chocolate manufacture and guides to tasting. It was so much better than the Ferrari museum with lots of samples. A new chocolate ‘Dussy’ had been created by accident in 2012 by leaving white chocolate to heat for a long time – it was caramel and slightly salty, I had to check it several times to make sure of it moreishness. I was well impressed with the whole experience and Stuart was daunted to hear that I didn’t feel like dinner after my little binge.

Chartreuse monastery museum

France seems to create us some ‘back up the truck’ moments when we realise we have been sent down the garden path by ‘her inside the satnav’, she is always trying to help us shave a km or two off our trip. We did witness a goodie though – a yellow Transit-type van came hurtling through a height barrier at a carpark in front of us, taking the barrier with it and dumping it in the carpark. This opened up the opportunity for some of Chausson’s white-box mates to get into the carpark and revel in forbidden parking.

Le Puy en Valey

We drove quite a long way across part of the Massif Central area, a cold, high, sparsely populated, windswept place to Le Puy en Valey. The town had a lot of extinct volcanic cones around it, we climbed up one of these to the ancient church on top, Chapelle Saint Michael of Aiguilhe built in 984, amazing to think it has stood so long. The intention was to visit some of the other ‘Puys’ (extinct volcanic domes) in the area but the weather was so-so and as we have a few extinct volcanic domes in Auckland, we decided not to bother.

Chapelle Saint Michael, Le Puy en Valey

A change of scene was needed, we were looking forward to a bit of warm weather and headed south to the Gorges du Tarn. We drove alongside the Tarn river on the narrow winding road, vertiginous in places. This clear jewel-green river snaked past lots of small villages, the towering grey cliffs splashed with ochre had formed into a deep gorge as the river cut its passage over the millenia. The same rock was the preferred local building material.

From age-old to nearly-new, – the viaduct at Millau. We stopped at the visitors centre, the viaduct was enormous – extremely elegant, it looked as if it was too fragile to support itself. It stands 343m high and 2460 m long and has 205,000 tonnes of concrete in the piers and abutments. A French bridge designed by a British architect, Lord Norman Foster. My camera lens was not wide enough to get all 7 piers in. The bridge is a great boon alleviating summer traffic jams as French holidaymakers head to the coast.

St Enime, Gorges du Tarn

Back to age-old in the same day, a medieval fortified village La Couvertoirade. Billed as a perfect ‘Templar’ village, it actually is not quite that old. It is almost untouched by renovation and has only 40 inhabitants who survive off tourism. The setting is magnificent – in the Regional Park of Grand Causses. The landscape has low rolling hills, limestone outcrops and is devoid of buildings. The land supports only rough white grasses and scrubby low growing trees. The sun lit up the landscape and the huge blue sky had fluffy white clouds – a little like central Otago. We saw two lavognes, paved water holes for watering flocks of sheep, whose milk is used for Roquefort cheese.

Millau Viaduct

About 30km from the Templar village is the Cirque de Navacelles. We have never seen anything like it – the cirque is an oval plain lying at the bottom of a 150m deep trench of the Vis gorge. Centuries ago the river changed its path and left a circular fertile plain with an ‘oyster’ of an island sitting high and dry in the middle of it. The ‘oyster’ had vestiges of the old stone walls used for growing crops in terraces still visible. Looking down into the canyon I was reminded of an open cast mine with two tiny hamlets set to one side. I really can’t describe this amazing place, best to Google it. The Cirque was a long way from anywhere, except for a tourist office. I asked where we could park for the night and we were allowed to stay on the spot. It was something like parking on the edge of the Grand Canyon with the sun casting a warm glow over limestone formations and the sky washed with a magenta hue. We were joined by two others vehicles who had also ended up at the Cirque outlook, after the last of the day trippers left it was very peaceful.

We are now truly in the Langedoc-Rousillion area and after we have had our fill we will be heading to Provence to fill in the bits we have missed before.

A lavonge

A fortified Templar village