Rouvenac – Taran's Tales

Home-exchange newbies, experiencing life in a very small, very rural French village.

Our European saga was nearly half-over by the time we arrived in the little village of Rouvenac, deep in the countryside of western Languedoc-Roussillon (now part of the recently created Occitanie region), and close to the foothills of the Pyrenees. Up till then, we had experienced big-city living in Lyon, spent six weeks exploring Provence, passed six glorious days on the Italian Riviera, cat-sat in Montpellier, and had another enjoyable week overlooking the Mediterranean Sea in Spain’s Costa Brava. Each experience was different in its own way and we were beginning to get a better idea of what it was we were searching for; we certainly had found out what we didn’t want, though as you continue to read our story you may begin to wonder if even that is true! [See my post “On finding somewhere to build a new nest . . .” published May 30, 2017]

Celine and her sister Dagmara admiring the Christmas decorations in Rouvenac

Whilst making the initial grandiose plans for this voyage of discovery, we had quickly realised that to be able to travel so extensively involved either unlimited finances or more judicious planning and, in the absence of the former option, researching the latter had led us to discover two new worlds, those of the house-sitter and of the home-exchanger. Our initiation into house-sitting, looking after a cat named Mr Darcy, had been a great success, and is certainly something we would be very happy to do again; it just requires finding the right host in the right place at the right time, and Montpellier had proved ideal. Now, in Rouvenac, we were about to experience our first entry into the world of exchanging homes, having met on Home-Exchange.com, Barbara and Michael, a pair of artists originally from England who had a yen to go and visit California at just about the same time as we wanted to be near to our sister, Dagmara, in their remote corner of France. The process was simple; we interviewed each other on Skype, came to the conclusion that we were compatible and sufficiently honest to trust each other with our homes and all our possessions, and finally met in the flesh the day before they started their journey westwards. We knew very little about Rouvenac, except that, to an Englishman’s way of thinking, it was no bigger than a small hamlet, and that it was a short ten-minute drive from Antugnac where Dagmara lived with her family. Our new temporary home overlooked the village square and after getting the Cook’s tour of the house from our hosts we quickly settled into this very different life.

Winter was approaching, cool winds whistled along the valley and through the village, and we were very glad of the large wood-burning stove in the living-room, along with the ample supply of firewood that had been left for us, and we soon learned the necessity to stock up on kindling during each walk into the surrounding countryside.

The family all helped with the vital job of collecting kindling.

My long-stated interest in living in a small French village was definitely being put to the test!

It’s difficult to know how we would have reacted to this new life if we didn’t have family living so close by, but with the holiday season fast approaching we found our days well-filled with visits to each other’s homes, as well as numerous forays together into the countryside and visiting the local towns and villages. We also had our eyes opened by experiencing a bit of the alternative life-style that is the reason so many ex-pats move to these quieter parts of the world [see my recent post, “It takes all types! An alternative view of the other South of France.” published January 4 2018].

Although we were deep in the countryside, there were many fine places to visit within a day’s drive. One day we visited Celine’s niece Martynka, in Toulouse, France’s fourth largest city and in spite of it’s size and being the centre of the European aerospace industry, we enjoyed walking around the partially pedestrianised city centre, which, like Montpellier, is very student oriented. The main church in the city is the enormous Basilica of Saint-Sernin; constructed at the end of the eleventh century, it is the largest remaining Romanesque building in Europe and has lots of superb sculpture of that era.

A very different city is Carcassone, famous for its medieval hilltop citadel, La Cité de Carcassonne, with its many towers and walled fortifications that watch over the newer city on the other side of the river. The Cité was extensively restored in 1853 by the French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, whose fanciful designs and slate roofed towers are sometimes criticised for their lack of authenticity to the original structure. The new town was full of Christmas markets and amusements when we visited but we weren’t overly impressed.

The small market town of Espéraza was our main shopping venue, with a gas station, a decent supermarket, a very good Bio store and a couple of boulangeries that well satisfied your scribe’s needs for tasty carbs. It is also the home of an interesting museum, Musée de la Chapellerie, that celebrates the town’s past connections with the millinery trade.

Enjoying our new headgear after a visit to La Musée de la Chapellerie.

Somewhat further afield was Limoux, famous for the vineyard that produced the world’s first sparkling wine known as Blanquette de Limoux, originally made by the monks at the nearby abbey in Saint-Hilaire; it might not be champagne but it’s a pretty good, economical substitute! Limoux was also where we found a very accommodating young dentist who, finally, satisfactorily resolved the nagging toothache that had plagued me on and off since our stay in Lorgues; and he did the work at short notice and provided all the necessary prescriptions at a fraction of the price I would have paid back home in California.

Always wanting to see the seaside, one day we took ourselves down to the Mediterranean coast near the Spanish border, for a return visit to the little towns of Banyuls-sur-Mer and Collioure.

Pretty street in the old town of Banyuls-sur-Mer

It was a grey day with rain threatening but we still found Collioure in particular to be every bit as attractive as we remembered from our visit three years earlier. Not as quaint as Calella de Palafrugell, seventy miles south on the Spanish Costa Brava where we had spent a wonderful week in early December, it nevertheless appeared to be a much more liveable town, quite busy with locals on the streets, in the shops and dining out even at that time of the year; Calella had been virtually shut down for winter with 75% of it’s homes occupied only during “the season”.

The foothills of the Pyrenees make for some very attractive countryside in and around Rouvenac and we visited many beautiful villages; some, such as Ginoles, Quillan and Puivert, nestled like Rouvenac at the bottom of valleys, and others, such as Rennes-le-Chateau, were perched on top of one of the many hills with beautiful views of mountains and valleys in the distance. One never lacks somewhere to go a for a strenuous hike, or a gentle amble in nature.

A frosty morning along La Vallée de l’Aude.

For ski-bunnies, the slopes are not far away either, and another day Celine, Martynka and I had a fairytale drive along the Vallée de l’Aude, among frosty snow-covered woods, alongside the partly frozen river Aude which has cut itself a rocky ravine as it tumbles down from the mountains, up to Formigueres and thence higher again to Les Angles. We stopped for a picnic on the edge of the village, enjoying what little warmth the January sun still had at that altitude, the snow-covered slopes above us, a grassy plateau and a lake below us, the high Pyrenees in the distance and cars with ski racks everywhere.

Most country people keep guard dogs. Our neighbours were the exception!

In many ways the Languedoc is a magical environment, well removed from big-city life, full of eye-appeal, and well capable of satisfying your scribe’s desire to lead a quiet life close to nature. Real estate is very affordable, all the services one requires to ensure one’s comfort into old age are reasonably close at hand and we would even have family close by. It was a great experience for two newbie home-exchangers and we have nothing but good things to say of our hosts, Barbara and Michael, and their interesting artists’ pad in the boonies. But the lifestyle we led there, lacks most of the attractions of big city life, offers few, if any, cultural activities and requires a high degree of self-sufficiency that doesn’t suit everybody. So Celine and I realise that it is most probably not an option for future nest-building if we are to both be equally happy, which is a prime requisite to be satisfied by this long-term search we are on.

Heading west . . . the Pyrenees to our left!

After six weeks or more of this rural life, we were eager to experience another region we had read so much about. January was two-thirds gone when we picked up sticks, packed our life back into the car, and drove off in a westerly direction, keeping the peaks of the Pyrénées to our left. The morning drive to Foix can only be described as glorious, the countryside steaming gently in the morning sunshine. The route got even better as we climbed higher beyond Foix and continued to follow the sun till the countryside flattened out and we passed through lots of fertile farmland until we finally reached the city of Pau, and our first taste of French Basque life. That city is in a beautiful setting with the ever-present Pyrénées as its backdrop, some fine architecture and a very walkable city centre, the Boulevard des Pyrénées leading past elegant hotels and apartment buildings of an earlier era and up to the castle of Château de Pau.

We still had a long way to drive to our destination near Bilbao across the border for our second excursion into Spain, and we were only had enough time to get a cursory glimpse of what the city had to offer. This was a shame as Pau had been on our bucket list for a long time and deserved a closer look. (And to add insult to injury, every single photograph that we took of Pau disappeared in the hard disc drive disaster – see my earlier post of October 30 2017, “Mense horribilis!!” Or “I wish I had backed up my photos earlier!!”) Thus, after a necessary pit-stop at one of the many cafés, we strolled back down to our car parked alongside the river in the shadow of the castle, and, as the sun sank behind the distant mountains, (armed only with our mental photographic memories) we drove towards our next, very different home-exchange experience in the small town of Gatika, in the province of Biscay, in the autonomous community of Basque Country.

It takes all types! An alternative view of the other South of France.

It is Sunday morning, market day in Espéraza in the Aude department, the day of the week when the alternative population of this small corner of Languedoc gather together, come rain or shine.

Like many of the local markets in the area it can be an eye-opening experience to visit one of these colourful events. If you believe the hippy culture ended along with the closure of the Vietnam War, you’ll think again when you go out for your fruit and veggies and artisan loaf of bread, whether you are in Espéraza or Mirepoix, or any of the other gathering places of those who like to turn their backs on conventional life, and wear their old bellbottoms, afghan coats, tie-died T-shirts and hand-knitted shawls. They come to the market to sell to each other, as well as to delighted tourists, home-made soap, soup, baked goods, paella, sheepskins, and cute stitched, knitted, woven, carved, and forged objets d’art. The stalls are a cornucopia of eye-catching, as well as mouth-watering goodies; but even more interesting is to wander round and observe one’s fellow humans, basically made the same as oneself, but now seemingly living in a different world.

Celine and I were staying for part of the winter in the tiny commune of Rouvenac (population around 200), where we had been able to arrange a house exchange for five weeks with a couple of English artists who lived and worked in a small three-storied house overlooking the village square. Exploring that rural area of Languedoc was part of our search to find somewhere to build our nest in the future, but, more importantly, we were staying there to celebrate the holiday season with Celine’s sister, Dagmara, and her family who, very conveniently, lived a ten minute drive away in the much larger commune of Antugnac, population about 325.

In France a couple of years earlier, we had our first taste of the alternative lifestyle, when Dagmara had taken us to the market in Mirepoix, a sizable commune of more than 3,000 people. There, we had our initiation into the world in which Dagmara and her partner Willie live, though little did we realise then just how extensive that world is. The market is held on Place Marechal Leclerc, three sides of which are bordered by 13^th to 15^th century buildings, creating what is said to be one of the finest surviving arcaded markets in France. The multifarious stalls filled the square, actually a long rectangle, and overflowed into some of the side streets, and as we wandered around, fascinated by the plethora of colours, tastes, and smells, of foods, incense, carved woods, fresh-baked goods, clothing and knickknacks, we often lost sight of our dear sister as she stopped to talk with anyone and everyone. For someone who had arrived from another country, Poland, just a few short years before, speaking hardly a word of French, she had assimilated extraordinarily well and seemed to know nearly everyone there. For such is the goodwill to be found in this community, that no-one is treated like a stranger, everyone is made welcome, and all look after each other in one way or another.

So we should not have been surprised that cool December morning in Espéraza, to witness once more this bonhomie that we found all around us, as we stopped at one stall after another, being introduced to yet more of Dagmara’s and Willie’s friends and acquaintances, from all corners of the globe and all walks of life, all having one thing in common, a lively disdain for “convention”.

One friend of Dagmara’s, a Turkish lady, was hawking her delicious soup, which she kept in a large insulated tureen resting in a baby carriage. We had a long interesting discussion about life in general with Marcial, Willie’s martial arts teacher, a young Frenchman with a Taiwanese wife, who had a table filled with garlic. And we took home with us two large portions of steaming paella, from a Catalan man who is a regular favourite of our hosts. From another friend, Celine was strongly tempted to buy yet another sheepskin – we bought one the previous year from the Scottish Wool shop at Chatsworth House, one of England’s grand country mansions – and then we were both fascinated by one of Dagmara’s soulmates who had a small stall selling three types of very tasty dairy-less cheese, a product she had developed when she realized her son had a serious allergy to dairy products.

Wooed as we were by so many friendly people selling so much interesting stuff, the people-watching was still the most fascinating part of the experience. The stall-holders tended to be on the younger side, well, less than sixty anyway, but our fellow shoppers were of all ages, the older ones obviously clinging to a genuine 60’s youth. There were also several gents of more dubious age and lineage, who we often saw sitting or standing around outside the two or three cafés on the square, that the average American tourist might have mistaken for homeless, but they never begged for money and they troubled no-one. We did have an amusing incident another day, as we were walking back to our car after buying our daily baguette from the boulangerie down a little alley off the square; one of these gents got up as we walked past and said in French, slightly menacingly, something to the effect “You know this is a dangerous place?!”, but he just laughed when I retorted with something like “Why, because you’re here?” They just seemed to be locals down on their luck, with nothing much to do, except, drink beer, smoke pot and maybe bemoan the state of the world!

We were fascinated by the many ways these good people found to make a small income to supplement whatever handouts they were able to get from France’s social security system. Our sister, although very cautious about some aspects of modern technology – she and Willie refuse to have a micro-wave oven in the house – made good use of the internet and Skype. She seemed to have an effective way of talking to women who were having difficulty conceiving, and were willing to pay good money to have her calm their inner selves and help them realise their dreams. Willie believed he could help those with aches and pains, with hands-free massage therapy, and again he found people who also had faith enough in his abilities at €xx a session. On a more practical side, as winter drew in and night-time temperatures went negative (deg C), we were looking for a cheap source of firewood to feed the very necessary log-burner in our little house in Rouvenac. Dagmara and Willie led us on a walk up Sentier des Plâitres, an ancient track, used a couple of hundred years earlier by the lime quarry workers to bring lime down to the windmill on the brow of the hill. Half a mile up the track we turned off, went through an old farmyard where the buildings were in various states of renovation and repair, and arrived at a ramshackle bungalow that appeared to be half wooden chalet and half lean-to garage. This was the home of their friend, Antoine, a gent of Germanic origins, who made some pocket-money with a bit of woodcutting on the side. Alas, his prices turned out to be even higher than the local wood yard, and he didn’t seem inclined to socialise, so we didn’t stay too long.

The history of his home was however more interesting. Originally Antoine and his partner lived in an old bus that they parked in the woods below the farm, and over the years they extended their accommodation over and around the bus, which was still part of their living quarters and was what we had seen in the “garage” part of the building. Probably not totally built to planning regulations, but definitely in accordance with the norms of an alternative lifestyle. Anyway, our walk wasn’t entirely in vain as Willie helped me to collect armfuls of fallen dead twigs and branches, to supplement our store of kindling, another essential item for the never-ending job of “keeping the home fires burning”!

Walking in the lovely countryside above Antugnac

The alternative life in a valley near to Antugnac

Another day we learnt about some people who had taken to living really rough in a sunken valley set in the hillside behind Antugnac. Unknowingly, we had driven past the wooded end of this valley many times, but only when we hiked above the village and saw all the little huts and rusty old camper vans distributed in that small valley below us, did we realise people were living there, people who were, no doubt, among the crowd we saw at Espéraza market. As expected, Dagmara had already befriended several of these valley dwellers, who were just another part of her social scene, equal in many ways to all the others, however they chose to live.

Donkeys are also a big part of life in the Aude. One bright sunny afternoon, Celine and I were hiking up a track outside Rouvenac when several pairs of pointed furry ears poked up behind the rocks. Establishing that we offered no threat, half a dozen very tame donkeys then ambled out to us, eventually all vying to be stroked by these friendly strangers. They were quite delightful and we spent a good fifteen minutes with them before realising the day was drawing in and carried on up the hill. One particularly friendly little chap decided to adopt us and followed us until we finally managed to convince him that, even though it was the Christmas season, we were just a passing pleasure and not friends for life.

This little chap was quite determined to stay with us, and looked so forlorn as we explained we couldn’t take him home!

Local character with his lantern in Puivert.

Home-made lanterns were the order of the night in Puivert.

A few days before Christmas, the slightly more upmarket commune of Puivert (population around 500) held a festival des lumières. As the afternoon sun disappeared behind the surrounding hills, all the villagers and other locals, including many who would have looked quite at home at Woodstock all those years ago, gathered in the old market hall where we lit up our glorious mix of simple candles and crêpe paper lanterns. The master of ceremonies then led us off on a colourful procession through the village, lit simply by small nightlights in home-made paper cups placed on walls and on the parapets of bridges over the little stream. Stopping two or three times on the way, for story telling, poetry recitations and folk songs from other lands, we eventually arrived beside the lake in the park outside the village, where a bonfire was ready for lighting, and hot wine and pastries, prepared by the ladies of the village, were on sale to ward off the wintry night air. The pageant already had a slightly surreal feel about it, lit only by the flickering of hundreds of candles, but that became even stranger when the revelers set fire to a string of brushwood laid out on the grass in the shape of a star, some twenty feet across.

The fiery star burning in the field outside Puivert.

Finally, we all took Chinese lanterns and, once lit, they were released up into the dark night sky to drift slowly away over the lake and into the darkness beyond. A beautiful ending to a quite zany evening, well suited to the alternative world we were experiencing in our little corner of Languedoc.