Vézelay - the Town - Part 2

Lillian :  If we were starring in a movie & there was a scene where we were strolling about a lovely Medieval French town ... well, the ideal sound-track would be someone playing a Celtic Harp. 

Audrey :  Someone like John Garlick.  A lovely sunny day, after eating a lovely lunch eaten under masses of wisteria, strolling around Vézelay ... and a Harpist.  Parfait!

Lillian :  One of the charming things about the little ancient rural towns is their home-made architecture.
Audrey :  Sometimes quite higgledy piggledy.  Sometimes you can guess what is on the inside ... we thought this skinny bit was pwobably a stair-case.

A Staircase?

This circular building was a bake-house ...
















But - what about this?

Ancient Scullery?

Lillian :  Our people have been trying to research these round or round-ended jutting out things.  We found other examples in Avallon and Le Puy-en-Velay.  There are never very large & all the ones we saw were on the 1st floor - the level just above the ground floor.  The most likely explanation is that these were, on the inside, the skullery.
Audrey : Skullery?  ergh! that doesn't sound very nice - I hope people didn't have special rooms for their skull collections!
Lillian :  No my dear, the skullery was where the dishes were washed - perhaps the clothes too.  Before modern plumbing with hot&cold running water the skullery was the wet-room with tubs of water, coppers to boil water ... all that sort of thing.  Of course, without plumbing getting rid of the dirty water was a problem most easily solved if you could drain it straight into the lane below but preferably not too close to the walls of your house ...
Audrey :  But that wouldn't have been nice if you were walking underneath!
Lillian :  Ummm no - life was very different then.  Nowadays we turn on a tap and Voila! water ... until recently people (usually the women) had to fetch all the water from a well or pump.
Audrey :  Oh!  we saw an old water pump ...

Cast iron - "Hauts Fourneaux & Fonderies.  Pont a Mousson"

Audrey : And I thought this was another pump, or perhaps a time machine.  But it is a cast iron bollard - must be the pwettiest bollard in the world!

  



Lillian : Well, Vézelay is on top of a hill - I  think it is the core of an ex-volcano because it juts up out of the landscape and there are parts where you need railings like that to stop you falling off!  The views are stunning.

Audrey :  To Australian dollies like us, that is amazingly green!

Lillian :  But now back to Vézelay itself : Another preventative to rolling down the hill-side was this gorgeous dry-stone wall - tulips growing wild on one side.

Lillian : The building with the bake-house was being restored - this carved bracket looks modern but may have replaced something quite similar.   

Audrey :  Well, I think that person can quite adequately defend herself against the naughty demon!

Lillian :  Every French town has cats - this one was a bit upset that we had seen him!

Audrey :  But what about the little doggy?

Lillian : We were worried that the dog was going to jump out of the window - he wanted to join the UNESCO workers doing maintenance on the tower & portcullis - one of the ancient gates in the old ramparts. 

The Town-side, the dog was in the house on the left

The out-side

The whole town and the Basilica are designated UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Audrey :  Only lacks some Knights in Shining Armour!   Let's see some detail of those towers ...

 

Audrey : Very large mouse-holes ... I don't think those maintenance people are doing their job very well.

Lillian : No you silly thing.  Those were holes for the soldiers to shoot through.  

Another picture looking back into Vézelay - and a close up of the guard-house over the arch, from the inside.

  Lillian : There are quite a few touristy boutiques in Vézelay which is fair enough - it is such a pretty place that you want a souvenir or two ... in one of those shops our stylist found some gorgeous mohair knitting yarn.

 Audrey : And those are the colours she was completely obsessed about.  "The colours of spring in France, the fresh new leaves on the trees against the freshly washed blue of the sky" ...
 Lillian : Yes, she did go on rather a lot about it all.  But the lady in the shop was the breeder of the mohair goats and even showed our stylist the 'family album' with photos of the animals.  Very sweet.  And the yarn is quite gorgeous - really mo-Hairy and lustrous. 

 Audrey :  Shall we show the people the cowl / scarf our stylist made with the yarn she bought in Vézelay ?

A close-up

Lillian :  Luckily, you don't have to go to Vézelay to get this yarn - they've an on-line shop and a blog - in Frence naturellement but the pictures are in English!




Audrey :  Time for one last photo of lovely Vézelay?

Lillian :  Yes, and this encapsulates just about everything - wisteria, lovely old buildings, hilly cobbled street, an old water well and for that touch of modern France ... a motor scooter!

Avallon - Walls & Towers / Remparts & Bastions

Lillian :  Avallon is a hilltop town with ancient walls & watchtowers & gates - "perhaps 50% of the town's original circle of fortifications are still intact."

A Promenade in Avallon

Audrey : Gates and Tour Gauchard - 1438 ... on the other side of that tour (or tower) is a wonderful Promenade.  So we did - promenade that is.

Lillian :   And over on the other side of those gates - Remparts and the Bastion de la Petite Porte ...

Audrey : When we returned  - this lovely old car was parked there.

Now isn't that just about perfect!






Lillian : It is a Citroen - probably a 1950 Citroen Traction 11BL.  You simply have to love a car with curves!

And of course, that's the Tour Gauchard again.





Audrey : And again - with you wearing your brand new LBD Lillian.

Lillian :  Oh - that's my Paris dress.  Très chic?   But let's have another look at Tower Gauchard - built in 1438.
 

Audrey : 1438 is such a long long time ago but I rather fancy that Rapunzel lived in a tower just like this one.

 

Lillian :  Let's see some more towers ...

I'm not sure but I think the tower on the left is called Tour du Chapitre - the one on the right is the Tour de l'Escharguet  (Cowherd's Tower) and yes, it was used to lodge the town's cowherd.  In 1522 the town surgeon, brought in to look after plague victims, was lodged there.
Audrey :  Oh - they locked the doctor in the tower so he couldn't run away?
Lillian :  Perhaps.  Of course our people had visited Avallon before - in December 2007 and they kept saying how different the light was, how all the colours were different ...  We were there in the spring-time and their previous visit was in winter.

Spring-time and the Tour de l'Escharguet

Tour de l'Escharguet in the winter light - Dec 2007

Audrey : Hmm that looks rather cold.  I'm glad we went in the Spring, when the weather was warmer.
Lillian : Spring-time means flowers;  there are lots of plants growing in and on the Remparts (ramparts or walls) many of them were in flower...

Lillian :  The yellow flowers are Wallflowers

Audrey :  Yes Lillian - they are growing on the walls ...   

Lillian :  Which could be why they are known as Wallflowers - possibly Cheiranthus cheiri.  The French call these flowers giroflée or revenell.
Here are some ferns, mosss, lichen, succulents ... all growing in the walls

Audrey : Even the rocks were pretty - lots of salmon and coral pinks.

 

Lillian :   That's the local granite - Avallon is on top of a granite hill.





Audrey :  All those Remparts must take a lot of maintenance  ...




but we had a giggle at the Warning Sign underneath

Lillian :  D'eboulement does sound (to an English speaker) like a nasty form of torture - it translates to 'land-slip'.



Now let's look at the Bastions because they are all slightly different,

This one is known as Eperon Gally - built in 1591.

Bastion de la porte auxerroise (1590-91)

Bastion de Baudelaine 1404 - 1590  Église St Lazare in the background

Audrey : And finally another pair of photos to show the contrast between the seasons.  These were both taken in the lane-way behind the Bastion de la Petite Porte.  Laneway, rempart, bastion and a little building with a gambrel roof.

Spring 2011

Winter 2007

Avallon - with 2 L's

Lillian :  The Avalon of the Legend of King Arthur has one L but some historians think they are the same - see here.   Avallon was originally called Aballo  -  'apple' or 'apple tree'.  At any rate, our people love this little town in the heart of Bourgogne (Burgundy) and they think it is quite magic.

 

Audrey : I think they would like to move to Avallon! 

Lillian :  It is a very pretty place - the old town is on top of a hill, surrounded by remparts (ramparts) with watchtowers ...

  

 

Lillian :   The river Cousin runs at the bottom of the valley and it is full of fish.

Audrey :  The French people don't say 'cousin' like we do.

Lillian :  No - and they say Avallon in a rather unexpected way too.

Audrey :  The hill-side is covered with little walled gardens where the locals grow fruit & vegetables and some flowers.

 Audrey :  Avallon is quite a sleepy little place where men play boules in the parks in the afternoons - the men in the background here were quite young.

 

  

Lillian : There are winding, narrow streets with over-hanging buildings; many of them maisons à colombages (half-timbered houses) and as we noticed at Marie-Antoinette's Hameau  the French don't paint these buildings black & white but use more natural browns for the timbers and soft cream or apricot for the cob or torchis (a mix of clay, chopped straw, lime and sand).

 Audrey :  There are also a lot of cats ... tres francais!

Lillian :  Yes, and that kitty had been visiting the Costume Museum;  it is a private collection, very large - our Stylist went there and was amazed and delighted. 

 Audrey : Perhaps that is why she loves Avallon - a town with a population less than 7,500 and yet there is a costume museum and a Chapellerie (hat-shop)!  Our tour-manager nearly bought himself a very stylish Borsalino!

 

Lillian : We stayed at Les Capucins - very nice and the restaurant was great but I thought the garden was the best part.  There was muguet (Lily of the Valley) in flower!

Audrey : And this pretty flower, which we had never seen before;  it looks rather like a row of pink wigs from a production of "Hairspray"!   What is it Lillian?

Lillian : I had to research this one - the French call it
Coeur de Jeannette - the Latin name is Lamprocapnos (formally Dicentra) spectabilis - the English call it 'bleeding heart' or 'Dutchman's trousers'!

Audrey : Very cute - more about the lovely town of Avallon in our next post.