Day Twenty-Five: Gorgeous Gargas
It's raining, it's pouring, my sinuses are imploding...
Very definite weather pattern emerging -- a morning of light, misty rain, sunny afternoon, then a heavy, dark shower in the evening and steady light rain all night. (My sinuses are bursting with agony because I have no choice but to turn on the dusty old heater or be found a brittle frozen corpse in the morning.)
Another terrific day. Breakfast consisted of very hot hot chocolate and very cold sugared crepes. Moodled south through a very Radcliffean set of Pyrenees -- shrubs hanging on fragments of rocks, twisted pines, see any page of Mysteries of Udolpho. Unfortunately, a good deal of the trees are dead or ill from acid rain. Reached Bagneres-du-Luchon (just plain Luchon to its friends) at around eleven. Oogled the wares at the open air market in the Halles, then took a leisurely promenade down the central avenue, whatever it's called, and bought a pretty blue cotton Indian skirt that took my fancy -- and would result in my extremities being frozen off if I actually tried to wear it in this exceedingly chilly town. Ended up at the not-unhandsome thermal baths -- a big white building ever so slightly reminiscent of Tara (although I doubt anyone ever thought of embellishing Tara with a giant green crushed-glass dragon on its front facade) -- and the public gardens beyond. Took an unhurried stroll through the latter, around a very charming green lake where two sleek, self-satisfied swans (clearly fed by the Tourist Board on champagne, oysters and bouef Bourgogne -- the sort of swans who voted for Chirac) do their bit for the ambiance, while chubby, mischievous ducks mock them from a discreet distance -- except for the three ducks at my end of the lake, enacting some of the racier scenes from Anais Nin.
Ils jouent, ma petite, ils jouent.
(EEL jew, mah puh-teet, EEL jew)
"They're playing, darling, they're just playing."
Was greeted with success in my eternal quest for decent public toilet facilities, shambled back to my car and cocked an eye at the clock. Did I have time to take in the church at St. Aventin and still get back to the Grottes de Gargas for the afternoon tour? I did -- if I hadn't had the extra complication of needing gas during lunchtime. Instead, I took a short sidetrip to St. Beat on a lark, and got totally blown away.
St. Beat is a postage-stamp-sized town of unimaginable age, poised between two mountains of white marble. The marble for Trajan's Column came from here, on dit, and the quarries are still being actively worked. The whole town is covered with a fine pale layer of marble dust, and marble chips and chunks litter the bottom of the mountain. Beautifully preserved 16th century houses hang on the very lip of the Garonne, which is chalky green and rushing away as if it needed to go to the bathroom. One parks beside the river and crunches uphill beside a wild little cemetery built in tiers, utilizing plenty o' marble -- in St. Beat, it's as common as brick -- and if you thought beaded funeral wreathes were just a product of Sylvia Townsend Warner's fevered imagination, I am here to tell you otherwise.
And when you reach the top of the hill, you are faced with a perfect little 11th century castle looking over the whole of the town (once you've crunched through s'more marble chips and rabbit droppings to the southern ramparts). And you hang over the wall and look at the perfect little town and the gleaming river, and you are all alone. The town clock strikes 1:30 in the castle belfry, and not a single living creature is in view but yourself.
Observation on French Life and Culture #22: Whenever I see a white-knuckled adolescent behind the wheel of an "Auto Ecole" vehicle, I am so grateful. Whatever trials fortune has granted me, I did not have to learn to drive in the Pyrenees.
I got to Gargas, the third and final prehistoric cave on my itinerary, famous for its hundreds of prints of mutilated hands, among more traditional cave paintings, with plenty of time to spare and was given an option -- did I want to take the 2:30 tour with a gaggle of schoolchildren, or wait for another tour at 3:00? I opted to tag along with the schoolchildren, having been so successful at understanding the guide at Mas d'Azil when he lowered his discourse to our simple intellects...
Gargas is one hell of a weird cave -- and it's not just the mutilated hand prints, striking as these are. The walls, ceilings and floors are all deeply grooved from the action of ancient waters -- now that's such a dull way of describing it. You'll just have to go yourself one day.
Afterwards, the guide and I traded a few words on the merits of various grottes, he somehow having divined I was a fellow cave junkie. So that cheered me -- to be able to discuss prehistoric art, in a rudimentary fashion to be sure, in my second language.
I doubled back to St. Bertrand du Comminges, and nursed a kir on the terrace of the Hotel du Comminges opposite the cathedral until it was a decent hour to call the States. All is well on the home front.
And then I came back here, and gloated over the day's doings, and got excited and tried to prevent myself from getting too excited about going to Pau. At this time tomorrow I'll be on Magda's home turf -- in Bearn at last.