Room With A View ...

We moved locations yesterday, driving some 250kms, heading for the foothills of the French Alps.  And I am quietly excited because, after so many years of reading climbing literature, I shall finally visit Mont Blanc.  A testing point for so many of the climbers I read.

This new gite is a quirky little cottage, 3-stories high and about 3 metres wide.  It's more like a wilderness cottage in New Zealand, in some ways but still, there's a log fire burning, we cooked dinner in the tiny kitchen, we have free internet and there's tv too.

But more than anything, I am stunned by how like the Queenstown/Fiordland area this place is.  We arrived in 27 celsius yesterday, I was completely destroyed by the huge pollen count - late Springs can do this they tell me.  Our car was coated in pollen when we parked in Annecy.  Thankfully the rain rolled in, we've even heard some thunder roll around in the mountains beside us ... and rain, blessed rain.  It took the temperature down to 13 celsius and washed away the pollen. 

But my idea of mountains, much to Gert's amusement, is that they should always be draped in fog and clouds.  They're at their best that way.  There's a creek running near the house, the rain beat down most of the afternoon, the birds sung, taking over from the cicadas who had greeted us. 

Nature is alive and well in this corner of France and I have to admit, I'm really impressed by it all.  The photograph was taken from the top floor of the cottage.  Tomorrow and Tuesday shall involve much exploring and, quite probably, many more photographs. 

Au revoir.

Cluny Abbey, France

In 910, William the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine, founded an abbey under the patronage of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, accountable directly to the Pope. The abbey grew considerably until the 12th century thanks to abbots like Odilo and Hugh of Semur, who were later canonised. 

Cluny was the mother house for over 1,000 monasteries and became the headquarters of the largest monastic order in the West: the Cluniac order.

And that is where we wandered today. 

Bourgogne is confusing me. There is so much here.  You drive 6kms and you feel you have arrived in another country ... sometimes, another time.  And we have driven so many kilometres, slowly, wandering through time and space in ways I'm not sure I've traveled before.

Cluny Abbey was a Benedictine Monastery that played a hugely influential role throughout Europe in the Middle Ages.  It had the highest arches in the Roman world and was the biggest church in Christianity. 

Sadly French revolutionaries destroyed this incredible site in 1790.  Still, it was a pleasure to wander there, learning of its history, enjoying what had survived and/or been restored.

I turned a corner searching for the 3D film room they promised us and found the corridor below there in front of me.  This is simply a snapshot but I love that it captured something of the beauty that is still the Cluny Abbey.

In Bourgogne ...

I find myself comparing the landscapes here in Bourgogne to those back in New Zealand.  Although, surely, that is the fate of the wanderer.  I find myself always layering memories of places I've lived or visited over where ever I am in the now. Looking for some kind of 'fit' or familarity.

Some mornings I wake up in Antwerp and I smell that particular smell, that heavy-traffic pollution smell, first discovered in Los Angeles,  a familiar scent back in Istanbul and now, oftentimes, there it is in Antwerp.

Here in Bourgogne it is the geography ... the lay of the land.  The vineyards that run as far as the eye can see, the hills, the lush fields.  The air is good.  And somehow the cloud formations make me imagine the coast or a huge lake is somewhere close by.  It's big sky country where we are.

Chateaus and castles are everywhere.  Sunday was spent wandering le Château de Cormatin.  Rather exquisite it was ... no echoes of 'home'.  It was particular and surely an example of 'someplace else'.  Unimagined. Unknown.

Evenings, and I've been relaxing with a short tv series out of New Zealand, Top of the Lake.  A Jane Campion creation.  I'm hooked but find the storyline disturbing.  However the scenery is so beautifully familiar.  Two episodes to go ... Salon.com has promised a 'superb finale'.  Let's see how that goes.

And now?  Sunshine and Bourgogne are calling me. 

Off and wandering.

Bourgogne, France

After 4  days off-off-line, here I am ... posting a snapshot of a dinner we made in Bourgogne, France.

This region is beautiful.   Really beautiful.

I'm using my small travel laptop and I'm really not sure about the screen.  I know there's a problem with a strange kind of film over all of the images I view on it so ... I will post snapshots, tell you some stories, and wait to process the best of the beauty when I am home again.