Further Afield

With a quieter week ahead of us, Lish and I had the leisure time to go out to explore the surrounding countryside.

Monday dawned beautifully:

We tried to retrace our path taken on Saturday to the picnic. Google Maps had other ideas, and we were taken by what is colloquially known amongst our family members as "The Squiggly Way". Which, because we were in no hurry, was actually very picturesque and pleasant. 

We were actually looking for a specific town, that I had seen on our way out on Saturday, where there is a goat farm and a shop selling mohair yarn.

Do I need more yarn?  

No, I do not.

Am I going to buy a bunch of souvenir French mohair yarn?

Have you met me? 

That said, the squiggly way was so very squiggly, that we ran out of morning in which to shop! French shops close at midday sharp, and don't open again until 2pm, or in this shop's case, 3pm. 

So we scrapped the mohair plan, found a village and went walking to see what there was to see. 

This is in fact two villages, holding hands by means of a bridge over a little river, called la Gave d'Ossau. The word gave is used specifially in this part of France, it defines a fast-flowing mountain river. Ossau is this valley.

Izeste-Louvie-Jouzon

Izeste is on one side of the bridge, and Louvie-Jouzon is on the other side 

This is the main street of Louvie-Jouzon. In the middle of the day. 

L'eglise de St. Martin

St Martin himself

You know these guys

Lish is repeatedly lamenting not having grown up in the Catholic faith. This level of frippery speaks to something deep within them 😛

The organs in the churches are frequently very small. However as you see in the wider picture above, the architecture lends itself to absolutely brilliant acoustics. You don't need a large instrument. You don't even need microphones, to be heard in every part of the edifice. 

Beautiful, beautiful stained glass - very difficult to photograph adquately. 

The light through the glass makes beautiful patterns on the floor.

On the Izeste side of the bridge, a bunch of architecture which looks like it was designed by an extremely novice player of The Sims! 

This, believe it or not, is the Chateau of Izeste! 

This is part church, part stronghold. 

We loved this little church. While the architectural style appears to be the same as St Martin, approx 18thC, they've rendered it and painted it a soft off-white, picked out with the light grey stone. It is less dark and oppressive. 

Lish tried out the acoustics. Click here to go to my YouTube to hear it. 

We walked through the town (which was absolutely, completely dead, did not see a single soul out and about).

This pretty wall treatment

These fun little guys on the wall at Place de l'Église

Cattle on the Louvie-Jouzon side of the river. They have trails down from their pasture, to the water's edge. There's a line of rope strung, to delineate where they may go. 

It was a lovely, tranquil day. The walk along the river in the sunshine was delightful. Not your typical mad-rush touristic day! - but that is the entire goal of this trip, to NOT do that.

We made it home in nice timing to pick up the kids from school.

I had prepped a pie filling in the morning, and all that remained was to encase it in pastry.

I should have taken a photo of a slice! - much more interesting than some boring looking pastry!

It is another of my go-to recipes - 

Credit: RecipeTin Eats - Samosa Pie

With red lentils added into the veggie mixture, it makes a deeply satisfying, comforting dinner. 

Pau

For our outing on Tuesday, we re-attempted Pau.

The trick is to get out of the house at a reasonable time, because of the midday closing of EVERYthing! 

We did the tour of the Chateau. It's got amazing history! 

It's the birthplace of the guy who became Henri IV of France.  He started out his life as Henry heir to the throne of Navarre (now part of Spain). He wasn't supposed to ever inherit France, having something like five people head of him in the line of succession, but they all died off. 

Try storming this castle! Go on! 

Outlook from the base of the fortifications

This is in fact not Henri IV, but Gaston Fébus, who was the Vicount of Béarn, and made significant modifications to the chateau to fortify it. He lived here once Henri had removed to Paris to king from up there. This statue is in the forecourt of the château. 

There are some beautiful 'simples' garden beds (poorly shown in this photo of a horse watering trough) - 

which would have been used back in the day to grow medicinal herbs to treat the denizens of the château. 

There were two gardeners working there while we were there. This whimsical beast was their transport!

H for Henri and M for either his first wife, Margaret, or his second wife, Marie

This forms part of the simples garden

We paid our monies and we joined a tour - which was all in French. So Lish worked hard at understanding what they could, and I worked hard at filling in the gaps. We did okay! 

In the servants' dining hall, there are these statues of
Henri IV

and his finance minister, Sully

The King's Dining Room, which could seat 100 people. The table was cleverly made to be demountable. They had removed it as there is some function taking place here. 

Statue of Henri IV at the far end of the dining hall.

Tons of symbology contained in it:

* wearing the fleur de lys to denote his status as king of France
*wearing armour to denote he is a warrior king (apparently he spent 40 years fighting religious wars)

* sword in hand, holding down the gloves of his enemies, denoting his victories
*small dog behind his feet, representing fidelity. The tour guide hastened to add that this represents fidelity to his kingdom, not to his wives, as he notoriously had over 50 (recorded!) mistresses. 

He does look like a bit of a party animal. 

detail of the arched ceilings in the grand staircase

Every panel of every wall in the main reception rooms has these massive tapestries. Each tells a story. 

The tour guide was saying they are "Gobelin made" - which, now that I look it up, is a famous tapestry-manufacture place in Paris. But I kept thinking she meant 'goblin-made'. I read too much fantasy 😝

Chandelier in the Salle d'Attente (waiting room - outer room to the throne room).
It has three shields spaced around it, of which you can see the crest of the kingdom of Navarre. Another is the crest of Béarn. The tour guide was talking about the 'cows' on it. Lish, trying desperately to keep up with the full stream of French, looked at the chandelier and thought 'those are dragons, not cows'. 

The throne room. No notes. Absolutely beautiful. 

The rooms are all sequential - one leads to the next. After the throne room you reach the ... I guess it's his games room?

Very spiffy billiard table

This is the Emperor's bedroom. My recollection of what the tour guide said is now getting haphazard. I can't remember which royal it was who slept here. This is a king-size bed - much wider than standard beds of the day. Apparently it was especially commissioned because the guy insisted on sleeping with his wife (something just not done in those days).

The desk is called a 'secretaire', which I always thought had to do with the word 'secretary', and possibly it also does - but the meaning of the word is because it had all those little pigeon-holes, to keep your secret documents. 

Lish wants a desk like this so bad!!

Adjacent to the Emperor's bedroom is the Empress's bedroom.

I love how immediately more feminine is the decor style. 

There is an entire collection of toilette items.

These are actually for going to the toilet. 
You can envisage whipping one of these little numbers under your pannier skirts and doing .... a number. 

A different colour for every day of the week, or to go with your outfit, or whatever!

They remind me disconcertingly of my fine bone china tea ware at home!

Next to the bedroom is the bathing room. That wooden article in the back of the photo is some sort of a combination daybed/bath - apparently you lift the top off and the bath is in underneath.
How nice to be able to dry off in front of a fireplace like that!

In the time of Empress Eugénie, bathing was a thing, but a hundred years or so later, people had taken on the idea that bathing was a very bad thing and not to be done! 

We followed through to the Salle des Peintures.

Picture of Don Pedro of Toledo kissing the sword of Jenri IV

Picture of the birth of Henri IV - and yes, apparently royal births were a spectator event and there would in fact have been that many people crowding in to watch her!

Picture of Antoine Bourbon of Navarre, who was Henri IV's maternal grandfather.

I can't get over the exquisite detail in this painting. 

Inlaid Backgammon table.

Catherine de Bourbon, who was the daughter of Antoine. She was the regent of Béarn in the name of her brother, Henri III.

Said to be the bedchamber of Henri IV's mother Jeanne d'Albret, but probably not as a number of things don't add up. There is Catholic symbolism on the bed, and she was a Protestant. 

Tapestry wall-hanging in the bedroom of Jeanne d'Albret; one of two, the other one is Winter, this is Spring. When all good French ladies get their gear off :)

Currently, there is a big campaign for Pink Month, in support of breast cancer research - I can't help but feel that an opportunity was missed to use this picture as part of the local campaign!

Translation: 

HENRY THE GREAT WAS BORN IN THIS ROOM

BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND ONE O'CLOCK

ON DECEMBER 13, 1553

BAPTIZED BY CARDINAL D'ARMAGNAC

HE HAD THE KINGS OF FRANCE AND NAVARREAS GODFATHERS

AND, ACCORDING TO TRADITION, A TORTOISE SHELLAS A CRADLE

EDUCATED IN THE HARSH LIFE OF WAR

CONSTANTLY THE FIRST TO CHARGE AND THE LAST TO RETREAT

VICTORIOUS THROUGH HIS COURAGE OVER ENEMIES

FAR SUPERIOR IN NUMBER

YET HE WAS GREATER FOR THE GOODNESS

OF HIS HEART TOWARD HIS SUBJECTS

THAN FOR THE SPLENDOR OF HIS TRIUMPH

HIS VIOLENT DEATH ON MAY 14, 1610

ROBBED FRANCE OF ITS DELIGHT

THE MONARCHS OF THE WORLD OF THEIR MODEL

AND EUROPE OF THE MAN

WHO WOULD HAVE MADE IT ONE SINGLE FAMILY

The afore-mentioned tortoise shell. It is symbolic of longevity. 

Unfortunately longevity doesn't take into account assassination. 

At the end of a very nice tour, we ventured back out into the 21st century...

and met a young woman walking her cat on a harness.

... 

We were recommended a café for lunch, which was indeed very nice, as you can see - Lish had zucchini fritters with poached egg, avocado, pickled something-or-other. Very much the sort of thing we would get at home, though. Apparently previously co-owned by an Australian woman, and it shows by the menu.
To be honest though, while here, I'd prefer to eat French food!

We absolutely have to reverse-engineer this apple crumble cake, though! 

Window with breast cancer support decorations. 

One more church to end the day: Égilse St. Martin, Pau - of which I did not get a photo of the outside.

I'm finding it really hard to get decent photos of the leadlights! They are so bright and wonderful, and the photos are just not doing them adequate justice. 

This one is better!

There are 24 circles - 12 on the inner ring and 12 larger on the outer right - and they depict scenes from the life of St. Martin.

In an 18thC church, there was a surprising amount of modern art.

I love this. It's at the monument to the fallen in WWI.

The sleeping guy is a soldier (from his helmet and [anacrhonistic???] sword.

The Christ is watching over him. 

Love it. 

Another easy dinner - spaghetti in pesto and spinach creamy sauce with pan-fried mushrooms; garnish of lardons [effectively bacon] or haloumi for the veggos. 

Since getting my knives sharpened, I've been cutting myself with embarrassing frequency #callyerselfaprofessional 

Mlle. Chloé is my in-house medic, in the absence of Lish.

It's happening so often that she's prepped me. I got up to my bedroom at the end of that evening, to find this: 

She's a comedienne! 😊

More fun coming up! Lish and I are going on the road in the next installment! 

I am spending an obscene amount on boutique teas. I am unrepentant.

We had croissants for breakfast on Sunday as a special treat (usually it's just baguettes. But not *just* baguettes. ) I don't like croissants. But I'm amending that to: I don't like croissants from anywhere except France. Croissants straight out of the boulanger's oven and onto my plate are a thing of joy and beauty. I horrified the French people by putting butter on my butter-loaded croissant. See above re: unrepentance.