Day 85 – to Job

The unseasonable weather shows no sign of change. Up in the forest at 1300 metres this morning it was 2C with a heavy drizzle. It was a peaceful stopover though, except for dawn when a couple of birds wanted to play on the van roof. It does happen occasionally, it wakes me, but once I’ve realised what it is I find it quite comforting.

I’ve just embarked a series of French novels for the week, beginning this morning with Patrick Modiano’s Prix Goncourt winner Missing Person. I got half way through it and realised the rain had lightened, so got the waterproof on and headed out to a forest loop with Roja, expecting to see no one, as indeed we hadn’t since yesterday afternoon.

It was with some surprise therefore that we came across a school group. It seems I come across more than most, especially in the outdoors. I have to shake myself to check I’m awake, as I often dream of old trips with kids in testing weather conditions in which some other hitch comes into the equation, often based around the most recent horror novel or movie I have read.

But this group was real, about a dozen thirteen year olds with three leaders on mountain bikes. The kids faces took me back, I’ve seen this so many times before, perhaps most memorably saved forever in a tremendous photograph from Stoer Lighthouse in Assynt, in driving rain and a howling wind.

I spoke with one of the leaders for a while. He had worked as a mountain bike guide in Queenstown a few years after I lived there. The group were from a Clermont school and staying at a local outdoor centre. It really was great to see them. The kids will remember this ride for life. The weather was exacting. I just hope they got some pictures.

Back at the van I drove 50 kilometres or so east, with a much needed supermarket stock up at Intermarche in Champeix. I was putting the produce in their appropriate places when a Dutch couple came over and wanted a tour of the van. It’s always a pleasure to be host for such a request as this. The weather had defeated them, and they were on their way home. Sometimes you can drive an hour and get out of the weather, but not at the moment.

I was aiming for the mountains to the east of Clermont, still the Auvergne, which are split by the Allier valley, the Allier is a left tributary of the Loire. Mid-afternoon I got to the town of Job, which has a decent aire, just by its old chateau. The rain was light now, but even here at 640 metres, the temperature was still only 6C.

I caught up with some book reviews, attended to some other admin, then took Roja out for a snoop around the village. It was pretty quiet, which was no surprise, if any shop of cafe was open, it didn’t look like it was; the proprietors hiding by the heaters inside.

The Chateau’s grounds were more entertaining, the gardens maintained by the local council though the mansion has been abandoned since 2010.

‘Les Mélèzes’, as it is called, was constructed in the nineteenth century as a mountain sanatorium for patients recovering from illness from the cities. Since the 1950s it has had a number of other uses, a hotel, an outdoor centre, and a sanatorium again, for mental illness. In 2010 the upkeep became too expensive, and the owners went bankrupt. Though it has had rumours of sales since then, none have come to pass. Locals speak of it being haunted. Back in the 1880s, there was a period of unexplained deaths to residents, each in quite brutal fashions, though deemed, at the time, to be accidental; a fall from the turret, a decapitation in a horse and carriage incident, a crushing in the hand-operated elevator. Locals say, that any potential buyer has been put off at an advanced stage of the purchase when made aware of this.

Nonetheless we are peacefully situated, a hundred metres or so away..