From Albi to Auch, through the country villages of Le Gers - end of July 2011
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We got to Albi at dusk, found a hotel, ate some crèpes and went to bed.  When I opened the window in the morning this is what I saw.  The tower of the Cathedral was like a cluster of red-hot missiles waiting to be launched!
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First, I took my own red-hot missile down to the boulevard to find a patch of grass.
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Then I joined the little ones for breakfast in the hotel.  August gets butter and jam spread on his croissant, but I have to do my own.  And then they say, "Age before beauty"!
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Albi was just waking up, and the streets being washed.  It's a very beautiful and clean town, and you feel that the natives are proud of it - rightly so.
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They say the Cathedral was deliberately designed to resemble an invulnerable fortress.  Albi had been the epicenter of a bloody civil war, in the 13th century, because of the Albigensian "heresy" - a new form of Christianity which had sprung up in the region.  
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Peasants and aristocrats began abandoning Catholicism to espouse the new Cathar faith, as it was also called.  The Church and Crown saw this as an intolerable threat and launched a Crusade to stamp them out.  There were fearful massacres with many castles and cities put to the torch.  
So the new church had to strike fear in  the hearts of all who walked in its shadow.  It had to be big, too, and since there wasn't enough stone in the area, brick was used instead.
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The Cathedral was still shut, so we took a walk in the picturesque streets of the old city.
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We entered a gate that led to the old cloister of a nearby church...
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...the ruins of which had been artistically transformed into a romantic garden.
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Stone and brick were often used in the same building, both in the Middle Ages...
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...and in later times, as in Albi's very unusual covered market.
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Albi is a terra cotta fairy tale, to be sure.
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Gus and Frog had a run at the foot of the Cathedral towers.
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We went all the way around the Cathedral, first down a narrow alley.
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The gargoyles under the eaves look like spouts on some gigantic tea kettle.
The Cathars have been largely forgotten by history, since the Church made sure that not a trace of them was left.  They were religious fanatics who wanted to create a new, virtuous society, so there was every reason to fear them.  The dreaded Inquisition itself was created to hunt them down, and only later was exported to Spain to become what we know today as "the Spanish Inquisition".
There is a famous aphorism from that bitter war which has, however, become part of universal culture, even though few of those who use it know the origin. A powerful Abbot was laying seige to a town in which many of the people were known to be "heretics", or Cathars.  Since they refused to surrender, he ordered the entire place to be set alight so that everyone in it would burn to death.  One of his comrades reminded him that there were many faithful Christians in  the town and that they would perish too.  The Abbot raised his eyes to the sky and answered,  "Tuez-les tous, Dieu reconnaîtra les siens" - Kill them all, God will take care of His own. In other words, when they go before the Lord, as good Christians, they will be admitted to his Realm...

The expression is used nowadays for a situation in which both guilty and innocent are made to suffer the same punishment or discomfort, as if to say, with a very Gallic shrug of the shoulders, "Too bad for them".
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The gate was built several centuries later in the Flamboyant Gothic style - here is the canopy-like portico which protects those who enter from the elements - but not from the wrath of God, if they have heresy in their hearts!
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From the moment I entered, I was enchanted by the spacious, luminous and very colourful interior - like a joyous theatrical set rather than a dark, dour praying-place, as most churches have become since the stone lost its colour.  The upper parts of the nave are said to have been painted by Italian artists, and it shows!  
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The bases of two of the church's great towers are covered in frescoes depicting the Last Judgment.  On the left are the souls chosen to enter Heaven and on the right the sinners damned to eternal Hellfire.  God on his throne was painted on the joining wall in the middle, but during the Renaissance a chapel was carved into the mass of brick which had the sad effect of eliminating God.
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Can't you imagine this as the backdrop for a performance of Tosca, or some other wildly romantic opera?
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What interested me most were the damned souls wailing and wringing their hands as they hear the Judgment passed against them.  Each one - like the virtuous souls on the other column - has on his chest a book, representing the story of his or her life.  Could anything be more graphic?
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They might also be aspiring novelists after reading their rejection slips from a major publisher.  Being a writer myself, I know how badly it hurts.
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Here are the souls who committed the sin of gluttony, being force-fed on nasty-looking things.  
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I'm not sure what kind of sin these souls are paying for, but it must have been a serious one!  The painters were from Northern France or Flanders, contemporaries of the great Flemish master of surrealistically ghoulish punishment scenes, Geronimus Bosch.
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(Let me here confess a sin of my own: I copied these last three images from the Internet, since my own little camera was unable to capture all the details, especially from several meters below.  Thanks to whoever put them there!)
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The Cathedral is dedicated to Saint Cecilia, the patroness of musicians, and here she lies in her martyrdom.  It is said that she died a lingering death, after the Roman soldiers made three failed attempts to chop her head off. In her agony she sang to God, which is why musicians have always venerated her.
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I found this bit-of-fresco which strongly reminded me of pre-Renaissance Italian paintings - what they call "quattrocento".
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The great Choir is, like the entrance gate, in the Flamboyant Gothic style, and of stone rather than brick.  What an orgy of shapes and colours it all makes together!  A dazzling symphony for the eyes, as the name of the Cathedral suggests.
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The Bishop's Palace stands close by, and is very well protected, since the Bishop was a much-hated man, in the wake of the bitter war with the righteous Cathars.
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Behind it are the palace ramparts, and beautifully kept gardens with a view over the Tarn River.  You can see one of Albi's  brick bridges on the right.
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The Bishop's Palace is home to the world's largest public collection of the posters and paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec, who was a native of Albi.  Here is August having them explained to him by his Dad. But how do you explain what a brothel is to a little boy?  He was more interested to learn that the artist was very short because he broke his legs as a child and they never healed...
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We drove westward towards Montauban. It was lunch time, and passing through the town of Réalville we saw this little place which looked promising - "Bar-Hotel des Promenades" with tables in the garden.  Must be good food there, I thought - and I was right!
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These pictures came out blurry but they give you an idea.  My dish, above, was thick pieces of extremely tender and tasty beef, very rare but brown on the outside, in a mustardy sauce.  I asked the owner who served us if it was local beef and he said "Bien sûr", and I believe him.  
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Wijie had salmon with a purée - perfect!
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The sunflowers were in bloom in south-western France... everywhere.  August was fascinated to hear that they turn during the day to face the sun, which is why they are called "tournesol" in French - "turn to the sun".
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In the town of Montauban we visited the famous "Place Nationale", which isn't perfectly square but shaped like an irregular lozenge.
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It is also famous for its double arcades.
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You can see that the sides don't form a right angle, which seems curious in something built when professional surveryors already existed - at least until you know the history!  This is that the current 17th century square took the place of a much earlier medieval one which burned down. The original plaza was created in the early 12th century, which, historians say, makes it the first example of a purpose-built central square in Europe, where towns always surrounded the church or Cathedral.

Until Montauban, all such squares, plazas and piazzas began as fields outside the city walls which were used as fair grounds and, as the city grew around them, paved and surrounded with houses.  But there were cities built around squares in the Holy Land and the returning Crusaders often mentioned them, which may well have inspired the Count of Toulouse to make one of his own.

The fine houses we see here now, therefore, were simply built on the irregular lines of the original, asymmetrical "place" built in the Middle Ages.  A glance at the city map reproduced below, with a little highlighting by me, shows how the square was inserted in the space created by four intersecting streets.  The open (green in the map) part of the square is smaller than the space between the streets because of the arcades, which occupy a broad margin all around it.  The four entrance passages which lead from the angles to each corner of the square cut diagonally through this surrounding strip of arcades.  

I would venture that the streets existed before the square, and that when the Count of Toulouse decided to put a market  in the middle of his new town he simply cleared away a block of houses to create the space needed.  But the books say that the whole town was designed from scratch, streets and square all at the same time, so I may be wrong...
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Further on, we followed a sign saying "Ancienne Halle" into a town whose name I forgot to note down.  Many provincial towns still conserve their old wood-beamed covered markets.
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This was by far the biggest "halle" I have ever seen, filling a very large square.
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Some of the beams must be three or four centuries old.  France is one of the most densely forested countries in Europe, which explains where all the wood came from.
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The pictures speak for themselves!
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"Halle" in French doesn't mean "hall" at all - but just this, a covered market. The most famous one is now gone, Les Halles de Paris, made of cast iron and glass in the 19th century.  Relics such as this one are still used for arts and crafts markets and open-air concerts.
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The next "halle" we saw was in the village of Lamothe-Cumont, with handsome stone pillars.  

The word is pronounced like "pal" (without the "p"). It has the same origin as our "hall", but was  confused with the Latin word for courtyard, "aula".  Since these markets were always held in town squares, often under a roof, the word came to mean simply "covered market" - even if it has walls, like ours in Saint Jean de Luz.

If you're interested in the warped ways of language use, be informed that our English word "hall" (without the e on the end) is commonly used in French to specifically mean the entrance hall or lobby of a large building - while "hall-corridor" is "couloir" and "hall-large room" is "salle".  They pronounce it just as an English cockney would, "all", dropping the "h".  But  they don't see the nexus between our "hall" and their "halle", which is strange.  
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Westward through the Gers Department...
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In the Middle Ages, the local baron would re-design his villages with a central square surrounded by arcaded houses. These arcades, called "couverts", were used on market days by the farmers who came to sell their produce to the townsfolk.  Later, when the town grew and the arcades were no longer big enough to protect all the merchants from the elements, a roof or "halle" would be added in the square itself.
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The region is famous for its garlic production.  This shop is called "Garlic Palace" - stand back from the Baron and Baroness when they talk!
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St. Clar has a very pretty little "halle", which serves as a porch for the Town Hall (no pun intended).
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The village square around it has deep "couverts", also called "cornières".
These spacious arcades were generally added to the existing houses, stuck on the front of them as it were. First a central square was built, either from scratch or by destroying a block of houses to free up the space. Then the old façades were covered by an extension which both enlarged the living space of the house and created the covered area needed for the merchants to sell their wares.
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In the shade of the "couvert" of St. Clar we found a café whose owner had thoughtfully installed a "Dog's Bar" which Froggy appreciated.  English is taking over in France, it seems - the country is really going to the dogs!
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Larressingle has a truly extraordinary little citadel. It reminded me of walled towns in Tuscany like Siena and San Gimignano. with their slender towers and battlements.  
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This one is almost miniature in scale, like a make-believe castle in painted cardboard that August has.
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The city of Auch stands on a promontory overlooking the Gers River.  The Cathedral is on the right, with its back facing the river, and a medieval prison, the Tour d'Armagnac, rises on  the left .
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This is a detail from the previous picture.  Auch is pronounced "oh-sh" rhyming with the first syllable of "kosher" (sorry, I can't think of a more appropriate example).  The name comes from a Basque word, "euskal", which means simply "Basque".  There is an old Basque community here, although the official Basque Country is further south, having shrunk considerably over the centuries.
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We slept in Auch and early the next morning I took Froggy for a walk along the river. I noticed this strange contraption, a cogged bar and a sort of gear box in the middle, and asked two friendly-looking passers-by what it was.
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The elderly gentleman explained that it is part of a flood gate buried underneath that controls the water coming from a stream that empties into the river.  When the gear is thrown to the left, as it is in the next picture, the gate is closed - F for "fermé", and the other way it is open - O for "ouvert", as someone has helpfully painted on the gear box.
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I was so glad to learn all this that I forgot to ask him just why it would be necessary to close the gate to the stream, and by the time I looked around he was driving away in his car, probably to take his housekeeper to clean his farmhouse - a widower, I imagine.  
So I am still wondering... if the gate is closed and there is water in the stream, where would it go?. And if there isn't any water in the stream, why would the gate have to be shut?  In a word, what is the gate good for, except to intrigue snoopers like me?  The next time I go to Auch - and I hope it's soon - I will be sure to ask some other passer-by for the full explanation.
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In front of the Cathedral, the market was in full swing.  A sight that could have been taken from a novel by Victor Hugo.
The Cathedral is Gothic, but a neo-classical façade was installed later on, detracting from the Hugo-esque appearance of the scene.
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When he wrote his great novel - which we know as "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" but in French is simply entitled "Notre Dame de Paris" - the great Cathedral was in ruins, after all the pillage during the Revolution, when the mobs attacked anything that reminded them of religion.  The city authorities wanted to demolish the battered hulk altogether and replace it with something suitably neo-Classical, on the lines of what we see here. But the novel was so popular that the Parisians realized what a crime against civilization this would be, and insisted that Notre Dame be saved, and restored.
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This  stand is a real open-air clothing shop, with a men's section and a ladies' one, just in case you can't find the part you want. RAYON means "section" in department store parlance.
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A very creative basket-maker...  August liked the donkey but I preferred the bike.
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Markets are so much fun, especially French ones - but this one exuded such maddening aromas that I could think of nothing else but roast chicken for the rest of the morning.  I told Wijjie I would have to have chicken for lunch, but by that time other aromas changed my mind.  Overwhelmed by abundance is what we are in France - they have an expression for it, "Embarras de biens ne nuit pas".  I think the English equivalent is "Plenty is no plague".
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The street that leads away from the half-timbered house (Auch's tourist office) is the main artery of the old city.
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This storekeeper and her friend-admirer-sweetheart could be in a street of the Latin Quarter, couldn't they?  Auch is a "hip" town too, as well as being a major agricultural center.
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When we pulled into Auch the night before, all the hotels in the center were full, so we ended up near the train station at this "hotel-restaurant".  The signs on the front gave the hotel's original name, "Le Relais de Gascogne", and, curiously, that of a Chinese restaurant on the ground floor, "Nuit de Shanghai".  

In fact the whole place had been taken over by a group of Chinese fellows who ran it all very efficiently, although there was a bit too much lacquered red paint in the room for my taste - made me want to ask for the soya sauce and some chopsticks.  But it was clean and cheap, and the Wi-Fi was free and, even better,  worked perfectly.  Still, it was a surprise.
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We wanted to visit some ancient places around the nearby town of Condom (which I have described in another article).  This village we passed through is like an ikon of "la France profonde": church steeple, street lamp, the pale brown house with the round ventilation hole in the attic, and the "Monument aux Morts", the First World War Memorial, with its bed of flowers.  There's even a lone palm tree to remind us that we're in the "Midi de la France", south of the Gironde.
The smell of the summer fields was intoxicating.
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We came to the star of all the historical villages of the region, Bassoues - pronounced in Occitan "ba-SOOS".  This tiny town is dominated by a gigantic medieval tower - 43 meters high, making it one of the highest castle towers in existence.  
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But before we could gaze at the monuments we had to do that lovely thing that we all, whether we are English, Syrian or Swedish (the last three being our case) or of course French, love doing at noontime...  

There were some touristy places under the arcades but we preferred one at the end of the main street called "L'inattendu", which means "The Unexpected Guest".  It is also a "tabac" or "tobacco shop" and "presse", newspaper and magazine dispenser.  Just the "general store" sort of establishment where you find good fare at lunchtime, and at the right price.
Do you know why tobacco shops in France have a red "carrot", as they call, it hanging outside?  When the first tobacco leaves were brought from America, one of them would be twisted into a long roll and put in the door of the shop so that smokers would know where to fill their clay pipes.  But the expensive leaves soon rotted so a real carrot was used instead.  Later, the carrots were replaced with red plastic double-cones with a light inside.
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The "terrasse" or sidewalk tables were full so we sat inside.
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The starter was exceptional, and original - softly cooked aubergine (eggplant),  tangy, sticky lumps of goat cheese, and fresh canteloupe.  I am for lack of words (at this moment, at least) to describe how good it was. Both the ingredients and the combination thereof were superb.  C'est l'art de la cuisine française!

I asked the attractive young waitress (see below on the right) how the aubergine was made, and she went to the kitchen to ask her mother.  The rather brief answer: steamed and then marinated in olive oil. Wijjie tried it as soon as we got home but don't think the lady gave us the whole recipe because it wasn't as good. Professional secret, I guess.
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The roast pork and courgettes was fine but I forgot to take a picture of it.  Very good homeade cake for dessert, though, with freshly-picked berries.  But it was the starter, or "entrée" as it's called here, that I will always remember Bassoues for, food-wise at least.
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In the foreground, the covered market, and behind it - seen through it, here - the remains of the baronial fortress.
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In the main square under the "halle", with restaurant tables set out under the "couverts".
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Looking back towards where we came from.
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This sign in the Halle explains what "bastide" means.  

"In the 13th century, between the Garonne River (which flows into the Gironde near Bordeaux) and the Pyrenees, several hundred new villages were built by the King and the local barons - "bastis a novo" meaning, in Latin, "new-built"."

This was abbreviated to "bastide", pronounced bas-TEED.
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August at the well.
These "bastides" or "new towns" are only found in south-western France (although they were later used as a model for medieval "city planning" elsewhere).  This is because the region, during the Dark Ages, was for the Frenchmen of Paris and Normandy, nothing but an empty wasteland, an inferno of impenetrable forests and deserts that desperately needed to be tamed, just like the American Wild West in the days of Buffalo Bill.  

For one thing, the vast area above the Pyrenees was infested with brigands (the few natives were hostile too and often attacked travellers) which made it dangerous to cross on the way to France.  When the shrine of Saint James was created in Santiago de Compostella, at the beginning of the 12th century, the Church realized that the area had to urgently be made safe for pilgrims travelling south on what the Spaniards still call "el camino francés", the French road.  

What was worse, the region's remoteness made it an ideal haven for "heretics", religious rebels against the Pope - the fanatical Cathars.  After the "Albigensian Crusade" had stamped them out, or at least stamped out their visible presence, great impetus was given to the construction of new towns everwhere.  Land was offered to everyone who came, as well as tax exemptions and freedom from feudal control, to make it more attractive to good Christian settlers from other parts of the Kingdom.  

Hundreds of new, pupose-built and for the time very modern towns were thus created, as the sign in the Halle explains.  Fortunately, and due once more to the south-western region's relative isolation and under-development, many of them have come down to us intact.
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When the "bastides" were laid out, each building plot was measured at what would be today 8 meters wide on the street side, because that was the average maximum length of the wooden beam needed to carry the weight of the upper floor.  The massive tree trunk we see here, spanning the pillars, is truly the backbone of the house!
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Finally, the great tower, about all that is left of the original castle.
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The little holes at the top were for dropping stones and boiling oil down on the atttackers, who were presumably trying to "sap" or undermine the foundations of the tower to bring it down.  Pleasant thought...  After that lunch I didn't feel like climbing to the top and waited for August and Wijjie below.
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At a "salon de coiffure" across the street I poked my nose in and heard some locals complaining about the town's strict building laws, which, for the sake of "la culture", prevents them from doing what they please with their historical homes.  

The tourist trade Bassoues enjoys thanks to those laws doesn't seem to be causing a medieval famine among them, though.
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On the way back to Saint Jean de Luz, we followed a sign leading off the road saying "Medieval Church". In a hamlet on the other side of a sunflower field we found, in an otherwise uninteresting church, this precious "tympanum" above the gate, showing God holding the key to Heaven and two virtuous souls about to join Him there...
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ALSO BY LAWRENCE BOHME
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WEB SITES
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(as well as this one, French Places)
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donlorenzo.com
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vivagranada.com
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EBOOKS
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about his life and travels, on
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amazon.com
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lulu.com
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