Down to Menton

The next day was the final long walk from Sospel to Menton (or at least from where the taxi dropped us at the Col de Castillon -giving us a helping hand).

From there we walked up to the Baisse de Scuvion:



we then had a route finding discussion where - fortunately - I was overruled - there were 5 of us at this point so lots of comparing notes! There was then a gentle descent to the Col St Bernard. Not gentle enough , and the notes said Careful I wasn't and tripped over my walking poles and ended up full length on the ground! - the 'careful' was on route finding rather than any tricky underfoot stages! I was very grateful that I'd been walking along with another party as I would have been otherwise on my own. I was rather bruised but managed to continue on the steeper downward section to the coast. And it was a steep descent and a dodgy walk through an underpass under a motorway. But then the Menton seafront and cafes restored us. That evening we ate at A Braijade Meridiounale flaming skewers in the old town. Definitely worth the experience, we were given too many digestifs and made our way unsteadily back to the hotel.

Here's the street containing the restaurant:

alas my phone focussing...

To Italy

On the day in Sopel I ended up doing a walk I didn't intend - or most of it! There's an easier walk but I ended up on the Piène Haute walk and followed it as far as the Italian border when I returned by the way I came. The day before we'd commented that we hadn't done a walking trip in Italy so this walk nearly changed that!

Border posts are a little less active than they were post Schengen:

1943 was when Italy changed sides and supported the Allies. The walk was pleasant and shady with views over the river canyons. It appears that I made the right decision to turn around at the border as another party found the rest of walk was difficult route finding.

Afternoon was spent at the hotel admiring the views of the mountains and Sospel. We had mixed views about the hotel, beautifully situated, food was good but the management was a little off-hand (at least to us!). There were now 4 Inntravel parties all heading to Menton the next day so the evening was spent finding each other and deciding who was going in what order!

The GR52A over to Saorge

So the next day was the longest walk of the holiday, an early breakfast and then repeating the ascent I'd done the day before - I did wonder whether I should have taken a tent and camped out the day before!



The ascent was successfully negotiated and half way through the morning I was overtaken by other (younger!) Inntravellers, though we kept more or less together for the rest of the walk - it helped to pace me. The picture above is from the Baisse d'Anan at 1555m - another steep uphill scramble before these wonderful views. We found golden retrievers up there with bells on their collars - clearly sheep herders though a border collie appeared to be doing most of the work! We stopped for lunch further down. Alas there weren't the flower filled Alpine pastures that we'd seen on Saturday. We carried down to the small town of Saorge and I was pleased to have made the walk in just over 6 hours - when the walk notes suggested 8 hours. This gave us more time for a look around the very scenic Saorge.



Not only houses like the above but being nestled in a high valley, if you do this route try to take the time - even if tired!! - to walk around the village. You'll get views like this from just below:



There was then drinks at the Cafe Heinz and a taxi transfer to the Auberge Provencale in Sospel. A hotel just out of the town but with excellent views over it.

Teaser Tuesday - July 30

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

All our rooms are en-suite, Mother. Yours, I think, also has a TV and Wi-Fi. The other Sister, I'm not sure...

Hierarchy within nuns paying a visit! A final teaser from Salley Vickers The Cleaner of Chartres. This was a book which I found difficult at first and became more appealing and the ending kept me enthralled! Maybe a little neat in tying up ends but it certainly came with a punch.

Teaser Tuesday - July 16

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

And until lately God had played fair by not raising any troubling questions about his existence. Then, at 103, the apparently indomitable mother died.

Again from Salley Vickers' The Cleaner of Chartres.

Teaser Tuesday - Jul 9

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

Above her - now as then - Job lay on his comfortless bed of ashes, plagued by a grotesquely grimacing Satan.
Inside the cathedral, the musty air seemed to be perfused with a faint odour of onions.

Salley Vickers' The Cleaner of Chartres - our book group book of the month - I'm just getting into this so a little early for any views. My autocorrect on the phone changed Salley Vickers to Wallet Buckets...more seriously, here's the Guardian review.

Church at Bourg Trégastel

Church at Bourg Trégastel, a photo by rajmarshall on Flickr.

The intention for the last day was to take a boat around the Sept Îles unfortunately the tides meant there were no boats that day from Trégastel. If you're doing this walk look ahead the tides may be better from one of the earlier stops. Instead we walked to the Vallée des Traouïero a rocky wooded area inland and then walked along the coast in the afternoon. Both evenings we spent at Trégastel we ate out at local restaurants by the port watching the sun set. Unfortunately in Bourg we just missed a concert by the church fitters but we spotted a poster

Le Sentier des Douaniers

DSCF8874, a photo by rajmarshall on Flickr.

The next day of the holiday was walking Le Sentier des Douaniers and old smugglers path over to Trégastel. Spectacular rock formations next to the sea - and the weather behaved! Probably the most popular part of the coast but it was much enjoyed lots of little rocky harbours. The rocky outcrops reminded me of the Staffordshire Roaches with the tide in! Here's the link again to the flickr album.

Politics and the Family - i

Earlier this month we saw the last film of Silkscreen's season - Blame it on Fidel, here's the trailer:

A tale of children growing up in a left-wing activist household in 1970's France. It probably helps to be to some extent left-winged and have a sense of humour, otherwise it becomes a joyless exposé of the trauma that the children suffered. Here's the Guardian review - I loved the way the children felt their way into relationship with a variety of child-minders by the sharing of creation myths. We bought the copy of the dvd at the end of the Silkscreen evening so a re-watch is lined up!

Teaser Tuesday - Feb 7

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

The students wore white t-shirts with the words Juifs Contre la Guerre across their chests. They we talking, laughing, leaning on their signs.

from Alexander Maksik's You Deserve Nothing. This is our book group book of the month - and I've just finished it! It was a book I gradually went off as it progressed, the Guardian review highlights some of the shortcomings, sub-Camus - I'd forgotten that the woman in 'Etranger' is also called Marie, by the time we had the tale of the dark days of the French police under Papon and the Algerian Massacre I was feeling emotionally manipulated and then after a bit of digging I found this tale relating to the background of the book (don't follow that link if you want to read the book with an open mind!). If you have followed it - then my summary can't be separated from those events.

Chancing your luck

This evening at the SilkScreen was Jessica Hausner's film Lourdes, starting off with a documentary feel it tells the tale of a group visit to the pilgrimage centre. Gradually you are drawn in - I felt very disengaged until well into the film but Sylvie Testud's performance as a woman with MS is mesmeric. Questions are raised as to the nature of miracle what if the miracle doesn't last and of healing in all ways. Hausner stands back and lets you see what's going on - the Guardian review refers to the miracle thus:

It is a moment of astonishment that punctures the rational fabric of the film – there is no clearly comparable sense here, but certainly a batsqueak of anxiety that the miraculous might be real, and that it is therefore just as alarming, unsettling and threatening – and perhaps, also, just as absurd and banal – as everything else in the real world.

That review also suggests irritation with the final scene - I found myself more absorbed by the tension at that moment.
Here's the trailer:

yes it's the Spanish version of the trailer, I can't find a French one or the English at the moment...if I do I'll replace it! This mini-documentary also looks worth a watch.

Hugues Cuénod

The death has just been announced of Hugues Cuénod at the age of 108. He was part of the original cast of Stravinsky's Rake's Progress in 1951, he sang in Krenek's Jonny Spielt Auf in 1928 (the French premiere). I posted him singing Poulenc's C last year but this seems a good opportunity to repeat that post.

There's a good long gap before the song starts (c 25 sec) but it is worth waiting for - one of my favourite Poulenc songs!

J'ai traversé les Ponts-de-Cé
C'est là que tout a commencé

a lament on the fall of France in 1940, written and first performed to an audience including German military during that war.
I'll add a link to an obituary when there is one (but in view of his age I guess there's lots prepared) - and here's the Guardian's obit.

A Prophet

We saw Jacques Audiard's A Prophet at the SilkScreen on Wednesday. I was prepared not to like it, billed as violent..., but I really enjoyed it (if that's the right word!). Summoning up the claustrophobia of prison from the start it tells of vulnerable young man 'graduating' from a juvenile offenders to an adult prison and his struggle for safety and an education. Yes there's pretty up-front violence but what I will remember are the silences, the points where the sound track virtually disappeared, the moments when you see through Malik's eyes.

And then there's the playing out to Mack the Knife, maybe open ended but, to my mind the intent is clear. Recommended!

Les Feuilles Mortes - Yves Montand à l´Olympia

Another autumnal piece:

Nabbed the link off entartete musik where's there's also film of the younger Montand singing the same piece, what a distance he has travelled between the two interpretions - this is hairs on the back of the neck stuff. I love the music of Joseph Kosma...

Teaser Tuesday - 24 September

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

They visited some unknown English friends - perhaps tutees or conversation partners - who spoke a little French and had advised Rimbaud 'to go to the country or the seaside to recover completely'. He even took them to the docks and pointed out the Antwerp ferry, presumably without mentioning the tearful scene when Verlaine had left for Brussels.

From Graham Robb's biography of Rimbaud which I've just finished - a really good read particularly on his long silence from poetry after the splendour of his youthful poems. I loved the bit where he managed to get himself expelled across a collection of European countries as a way of getting home. Strongly recommended.
A few years ago we spent a week in France staying at a gîte which was built on the site of the farm at Roche to which Rimbaud continually returned - now it has a poetry themed walk.
I picked up my copy in the local Oxfam where the inside flyleaf has the original owner's name and the message 'To ____ Enjoy Rimbaud make sure you give it back though theif(sic) face ___ xxx' not sure whether it was given to Oxfam by the owner or thief-face!

2 days in Paris

The final SilkScreen of the season, last night, was Julie Delpy's 2 days in Paris. You probably needed to like Woody Allen's work to enjoy this evisceration of certain attitudes and styles. Funny, bawdy and a delight. It took me a little time to get into - and that was combined with the SilkScreen's twitchy sound system and some projection issues but it is a lovely frothy comedy of manners - it had its dead moments - that argument by the canal just didn't work for me at all - but I would otherwise recommend it. I didn't realise until afterwards that Delpy's father, in the film, is her real father, their interaction is wonderful. Here's the trailer:

A French Education

The wonder of google predicted searches!

You should probably look at the google superbowl ad - in related videos - if you're wondering what's going on.

Quatre cents coups

Last night we went to the Silk Screen to see Truffaut's Quatre cents coups.

I'd not seen this film for many years and for some reason it was the memory of the humourous scenes which stuck in the mind from then, but it's a tragic story from a lonely childhood lit by wonderful sometimes funny observation. The above clip is the final scene, audaciously daring, and unforgettable (though my mind was playing tricks!).

Sunday Afternoon Indulgence

Hallyday and Clémence, get out the chocolates!

this youtube version, which looks to be of the same session, has Clémence completely excised?

Small attack dogs

From the Guardian today:

Jacques Chirac's miniature white maltese, Sumo, has been banished by the former president after becoming so depressed about leaving the presidential palace that he began routinely savaging his master.

It's not nice losing one's presidential palace - you don't suppose it is Sarkozy in a reincarnation?
Meanwhile another small [minded] premier if having a few home truths presented courtesy of an Italian TV station prepared to report news rather than toady:

Patrizia D'Addario, 42, said: "Certainly he knew that I was an escort."She added she was not the only escort present at two parties she attended at Berlusconi's Rome residence. "When I arrived it seemed like a harem," she told the current affairs programme Annozero last night.

Today is a national day of protest in Italy about the lack of press freedom.