Day 86 – to Chalmazel-Jeansagnière

May 17, 86 days away and by some way, this is the coldest it’s been. For just over two weeks now, there’s been rain every day. I came north from the Pyrenees a couple of days earlier than I had planned to, hoping to catch some warmer and drier weather in Auvergne. In the last week the weather has come from the north, so the temperatures have dropped significantly.

This morning my plan to take in a couple of peaks at the Col de Beal, at 1390 metres, didn’t seem such a good one when we got there. It was 1C, but with a ferocious northerly wind that knocked those degrees down quite a few further. It must be my age, but I didn’t find ridges as appealing as I usually do, and descended to the village of Chalmazel-Jeansagnière. This side of the Col is the Rhone-Alpes, now the Loire watershed.

It was a good move. The village has a tremendous ‘aire’ by the rugby club which looks up to the Château, a medieval castle dating back to 1231. There was a period of a couple of hundred years until the sixteenth century when it wasn’t occupied. It had an even bleaker appearance in those days, and was apparently rough inside also, a neglected summer residence. Winters were harsh, and the wealthy occupants preferred more luxury. In the 1550s though it had a makeover, and was inhabited by the Marquis of Talaru until the mid-nineteenth century, when it went the way of many of these old Châteaus, and became a sanatorium for those recovering from illnesses and injuries from wars. In the 1900s it was a boarding school for a while.

The nuns left in 1972, and the new owners have since run it as a hotel, with other parts open to paying visitors.

More sheltered from the wind, I put a hiking circuit of the town together, a couple of hours out in the late morning.

Mainly though, it was a day of reading and reviewing. I got through the second of my series of French novels, Jean Giono’s A King Alone, written in 1947, set in the 1850s in the hills not far from here, in a remote village tormented by a serial killer, and a kidnapper, and the pacifist police captain just returned from the war who has to deal with it.

One of the book forums I contribute to (at the Guardian) asked for recommendations for ‘strange alien invasion novels’. I am a bit addicted to these sort of things, trudging through my records, and the author who presented the column, Nina Allan, had already come up with a very good ten. I suggested five, three of which I’ll mention..

John Wyndham’s last novel, Chocky, from 1968.

Little wonder it earned a reprint from NYRB in 2015, and given today’s news of 1.5 degrees of warming, more relevant now than ever…

“You have not done badly with electricity in a hundred years. And you did well with steam in quite a short time. But all that is so cumbersome, so inefficient. And your oil engines are just a deplorable perversion – dirty, noisy, poisonous, and the cars you drive with them are barbarous, dangerous…

You should be employing your resources, while you still have them, to tap and develop the use of power which is not finite.”

If you’ve seen the film C’mon C’mon you may remember Star Child, by Claire Nivola. It’s a very short read, but powerful one, a reading available on YouTube also, by Joaquin Phoenix, just two minutes, something a bit lighter… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsEvEFs2XZw

War With The Newts by Karel Čapek from 1936.

“Hello you people! Chief Salamander speaking… .We regret the loss of human life. We have no wish to cause you unnecessary harm….”

So can you imagine my delight when I came across this poster, advertising and ExtraTerrestrial conference here in Chalmazel.

This is Raëlism, and should you be keen to be amused, look at the Wikipedia entry, and their website quoted on the poster.

Despite this, the town has a lot that impresses. At the recreation area, by the campervan aire, there are three detailed route maps each for trail running, MTB, and orienteering.

There is also a small community run, and funded, library. It seems sad that volunteers should have to be organised to run libraries, but here it closed down, and has been reopened.

There’s what looks like a pleasant restaurant in town. I stopped by there this morning hoping for a coffee. The owner was about to close, so no coffee, but a good chat about red fox labs, Roja was doing his usual Spanish thing of waiting outside. In France of course, dogs are almost always welcome inside.

My French is terrible at the moment. I’ve just downloaded Drive Time French, which I’m hoping will help. I had worse problems than I expected on the telephone to the vet this morning, making an appointment for Roja’s worm treatment for next Monday.

Fortunately, the restaurant owner was the son of Spanish parents, who owned a restaurant in Madrid, and we were able to speak Spanish. I’ll report back later… I’ve actually only eaten out once so far this course, back in Trabáu in Somiedo on Day 49. No particular reason, just that nowhere has been particularly convenient.

All the beer from a local brewery, La Canaille, the usual breeds, a blonde, an amber and a brown, all about 6-7%. All the meat ‘from the local mountain’ – which takes me back to the French courses in the past when leading groups.

On the tougher bike courses after years of struggling to cook in the big tent and carrying everything necessary we priced in eating in restaurants, and booked them ahead where possible. It was a good decision. Sometimes trying to economise is not the best. In the rural restaurants they mostly claimed local produce, Translating the menu, I always offered something like ‘trout of the river’, ‘beef of the mountain’, ‘mushrooms of the forest’, ‘potatoes of the ground’, ‘salad of the garden’, ‘pizza of the oven’ – none of it accurate, but no one noticed, and all were happy. I’m not sure whether they actually wanted to know, or preferred to hear my ‘translation’. Quantity was the key. A meal like mine tonight would be a starter to those teenagers. In Corsica after a tough bike day it was incredible how much was eaten. Often it was pay for a campsite or tents put up wild and the money can be spent on food, so double budget – guess the answer.

On those sort of courses food, especially dinner, was the absolute key and the highlight of the day – very sociable and understandably lengthy.

It was a good atmosphere and good food. Menu of the day at 13 euros, I went for salad of the maison’s garden, pork (of the maison’s sty) with garlic mushroom sauce and three local cheeses (of the village cattle), all with a couple of beers at 2.50 a bottle.