Getting the Arch out of Ardeche.

Well, I’ve left the Art Farm, and with it the Ardeche. It was a good fun learning experience, experiencing mortar work for my first time, and it was great to be able to do a little bit of walling again, but the cold was getting me down and I was luckily offered a ride and a place to stay in the Dordogne, especially because it is in a “plus beau village,” named Domme.

Haven’t been unable to wash my clothes, or my body for that matter, for weeks I was longing for the comforts of central heating, showers, and laundry facilities. I’m all for camping and roughing it, but after a few weeks of it I’ve usually had my fill.  Particularly when you don't get the benefits of camping in the open air.  I was waking up to the cold frosty mist of my own breath each morning, our only wood was scavenged from scrubby land and was too wet so it smoked rather than gave off heat, so around day 20 it got to be enough. I quickly finished pointing my newly constructed arch, finished the stone staircase going around the side of the house, and I built up the terrace/retaining wall from a 6 foot corner to 9 feet, including returns.

You can see what I built in the before and after photo. I built the wall to the right to create a sense of harmony, an echo of its mortared brethren to the left. I decided to simply level off the terrace at the back to create a more restful look. Johnny wanted a staircase on either side, but there weren’t enough appropriate stones readily available for the right hand staircase. He had some stones but they needed to be dug out of the barn floor – no time.

Before building the arch we first had to dismantle the mess that was already there.  However, only having one proper support strut I decided to improvise.  This is where modern appliances come in handy, A fridge with a tire and a stump of wood with wedges held one floor joist while a strut held the other.  An oil drum cut in half was our falsework, which was in turn supported by a bar-fridge with a washing machine on its side.  Since Johnny had left us with almost no wood, and a hungry fire that barely kept the house at 9 celsius, we knew that precious lumber could not be spared for false work or struts.  This was our answer:

To get to Domme, Dordogne, we needed to drive from the Coiron plateau in the Ardeche, across the southern Central Massif, a 6 hour drive fuelled by the desire of two men to get sun in their faces and warmth in their bones. When we left the Art Farm, with its 1000metre elevation, it was 1 celsius and blustery and cold. When we arrived at Dordogne it was 15 celsius! What a difference, while the Hellebores were beginning to grow at the Art Farm, here in Domme, at the top of a limestone hill surrounded by stone buildings and fortifications, bulbs had already popped! I can smell life all around me, grass is sprouting out, Snowdrops have been blooming for quite some time. Daffodils, Crocuses, Irises, and even some Forsythia are flashing their colours with the same exuberance as inner-city gangs at the local baseketball court!

Dordogne is one of the richest areas of France, it has a very high concentration of “plus beau villages” a designation that only villages under 1000 can attain, and it is one that is highly desirable for the sake of tourism. However, why I consider it to be one of richest areas in France is because it specialises in the most important things, listed in order from greatest to least importance: Excellent gardens with Bories (or dry stone Cabannes), the fine wine of Bergerac and Cahors, Orchids, foie gras, truffles, and fairy tale castles.

The Necessity of Boiling French Wine

An evening after Johnny left, master of the art farm, before the builder Brit Andy arrived, someone needed to do some cooking. Well, I decided to get cracking at it. I thought about a soup. A soup to end all soups, really, and it was fantastic. Unfortunately, one thought usually begets another, but not necessarily good ones. “Well Nick, how about we continue this soup? What do you think, we could add some beans and fire this thing up again tomorrow?” Nick enthusiastically agrees. Neither of us know what we are in for but we dump the can of white beans in nonetheless. We bring them to a short boil and assume that would suffice.

The next day, after a good few hours of laying stone and shoveling mortar, we get set for some nutritional uptake. However, the beans are strangely, “Al dente.” For those not culinarily savy enough to understand this, it means to the tooth - a bit of a crunch. It usually refers to pasta, and a pleasant texture, but with beans its not a good thing. Nick and I ended up sucking up the noodles, soup, and veggies, but we moved the compost bucket in front of the fire and spat the watermelon seed-like beans out of our mouths all afternoon long.

Moral of the Story: Cook your beans before you eat them.

Other culinary oddities here at the art farm include boiling bottles of red wine before drinking them. Most of the house sits at about 5 celsius, except around the fire. To get a bottle of Bordeaux to room temperature takes a bit of coaxing.

Constructions to Present.

I will only be able to write this blog once a week or so, internet access is difficult to find sometimes, I am writing from Aubenas today.  

Mostly I wake up in the morning and get the fire started, make myself breakfast and wait for my joints to thaw before I set to work.  There has been too much snow and frost to wall, however here is a picture of a small section that I was able to finish, too me a day and a half because I have to bring stone up a steep rocky slope to this location, there is no wheel barrow and it wouldn't work on this terrain anyways.  the lower third is mortared, and I decided to drystone on top of it to echo a similar wall across from this section.  The other wall is lime mortared and doesnt look nearly as nice as this.    

To me, it looks like its been here for years.

About a ten minute walk up the volcano side, when the slope begins to level out is a drystone ruin.  It looks to be an old farm shed/animal hut.  The gable ends and walls are intact, but the roof has long since deteriorated.  It is surrounded by miles of terraces, all around 2-4 feet tall, roughly built with vertical joints etc; not the prettiest construction but functional.  These terraces stop soil from eroding for the wheat of the Ardeche of the past and then for grass for the present-day cows.

Generally, the principles of bonding have been adhered too, there is the odd running joint or zipper joint though, it has mostly been well hearted which accounts for its survival well past its timbers.

The wispy greenery is bracken, a delightful stunted pine-looking plant, I've also noticed Hellebore already beginning to grow up here.

Because of the snow I'm not doing any drystone work right now, instead Im helping repoint the inside of the house using lime mortar.  As soon as Johnny Left we decided to rip this section down.  We've supported the floor joists and the arch construction is underway, using a half sawn oil drum as a form.  

I've done dry-arches before but to jump into this mortared arch, keeping as much of the surrounding walls intact has been a slow going process, more to follow.

Arrival at the Art Farm, and miscellaneous.

So, I left Paris on Day 6, Jumped on the train to Valence, then hopped on a bus to Privas.  I saw some unique use of conifers as hedges/ backdrops to properties, they would mix up-right feathery junipers, with spikey junipers and musky cedars, all with a slight variation of dark green, some slightly metallic, all wispy and it created a real rich visual texture.  

  But I digress.  Sandra and I went for dinner with Bruno, her brother, and her friend Sam a few nights before this.  It was a great fun time in a cozy little restaurant near Hotel de Ville in Paris.  I did Notre Dame de Paris, the Louvre (which was intense), Saint Chapelle, and Versailles - Im a very hard working tourist to have done all this and read all of Jpod,  Coupland is my new favourite author.   Friday night I ran into Dave, a guy who was in my 19th century philosophy class, someone I didnt know well and I hadn't seen in over a year!  Funny enough I ran into him in Paris' only Canadian bookstore (yes, I know, they have one) and he was with two lovely kids from Bristol.  So we had a night out on the town, and Sandra met us and took us out to the Bastille.

But, now to the Art Farm, I arrived slightly parched, due to self-inflicted dehydration the night before.  I arrived at the best time, so Johnny the mastermind behind the Art Farm and Nick, a man of indeterminate origin, undecided passport, who has been travelling for years despite only being 22.  You see, the Ardeche, the region I'm in, has been hit with more snow this year than any before.  Of course to me it was pleasant having come from -20 Toronto, its just a brisk fall here really.  But there was snow, and the heater stove in bedrooms had just broke last night, and it's hard to patch together a new glass pane 3 feet by 2 feet.  So I smother myself in blankets at night and my misty breath puts me to sleep.  Also, the internet is down, and the only toilet is outside.  It's called a dry toilet, basically an outhouse, but without the house part.  I decided to just hold it all in at first, but then last night we had a full moon, I gave it a test drive and it ended up being the most liberating experience I've ever had.  A fully exposed toilet on a mountain side.  Brilliant.

     To the stones, the Coiron is a mostly basalt plateau, but there is limestone in other areas.  We have some sandstone, very few and they are finely worked quoins, and some limestone that was stolen from a church ruin in the area by all the local peasants.  Mostly it's basalt, nicely rounded, some squarishly shaped, and some with nice seams for spliting.  

This picture is from one side of the storage barn.  You can see what looks to be a sheep carcass above the barrel vault, but in fact it's a destroyed mattress.  These barrel vaults are huge, 20-40 feet deep some of them, and 10 feet wide.  

While in the Rodin museum everyone else was really interested in the sculpture, I was too, but I also couldn't stop staring at the finely wrought floor and these beautiful fire places.  I particularly like the herringbone brick pattern here.  Don't mind the contemporary bug-like art sculpture in the mirror, it was tried to shock/inspire, it failed in both.

I have been reading about this cathedral, St.Chapelle, in Paris, for years.  I made my sister visit it last year, and it wasn't disappointing in the least.

This is a picture of the storage shed beside the house.  It has two barrel vaults side by side which support floors above.  The house is designed with the same principal.  Both buildings were completely parged outside in cement in the 50's, and the interior of the house was parged as well.  I decided on this photo because the storage shed shows more of the stonework, the cement having fallen off.  Johnny and Nick, and me during the evening, are in the process of ripping this hideous material off and repointing with local lime mortar.

I would like to continue writing more but Im at Mc Donald's right now, stealing their magical sky internet, and my computer is running out of batteries.  Jo-knee and Nick are waiting for me too.  More to follow soon.

I never thought I'd actually eat a croc, and then like it.

Paris - Day 2

I awoke ravenously and went straight out for a coffee and croque madame. I asked for a café and the startled man, clearly unsure about my accent, asks if I would like a café au lait. I respond, “non, café seulement,” I just want a regular old coffee. Only coffee. Simple? No. He brings me an espresso. I suppose it does make me look classier in this dingy café playing terrible American club pop at 8am while I’m wearing my rough working jacket. I begin to read Jpod and laugh out loud, everyone looks at me but I keep on reading until I feel that its time to explore.The metro takes me to the Bastille and I realise when I exit the metro that the Bastille was ripped down hundreds of years ago. I also came to this location to the see the old Paris opera house – I found the new one instead. It is supposed to be the closest space to acoustical perfection in the world, and built by a Canadian, but it definitely lacks that belle epoque sort of grandness of the Garnier Opera house. Feeling cheated, but glad to be out of the metro at the very least, I walk in a random direction. This is a good time to add that everyone, everywhere around me, always looks good. It’s fairly cold out, particularly with the wind, and I have my hood up to keep my tete warm. However, no one else seems willing to sacrifice their hair style for something as banal as warmth or comfort.

I stumbled across the Gare de Lyon, which is a beautiful stone building with a gorgeous clock tower. Took the metro to the Hotel de Ville, where I bumped my knee on wrought iron fence.  I was too busy to be bothered to look where I was walking, neck craned upwards and jowls drawn open, and my knee has been sad ever since. Walked onwards to Notre Dame de Paris where I must have spent at least an hour walking through. The most interesting part I found about the Cathedral was that it’s checker patterned floor, of marble and some other black stone, was of slightly (barely perceptible) heights. I figure this is due to the fact that marble wears much faster than any black stone like some diorites, granites, or basalts.

This sinister looking building, with its french stylisation of the renaissance is responsible for my hurt knee.  I decided not to go to Versailles today (I'm writing this on Wednesday) because of the Hotel de Ville, if you ever find yourself here - beware.

The Pantheon - in all of its nationalistic glory, an anthem to the great men who founded France as a country politically and intellectually.  Of course they didn't let a girl in until the 90's.  That Marie Curie was a bright one though.

I then walked on, enjoying smaller churches, cloisters, narrow winding streets, those old, stuffy, but of course highly prestigious, institutions of l’academie Francaise, la Sorbonne, and l’Ecole normale superiore (oxymoron, anyone?). The Pantheon was definitely the best part of this trip, I feel as if I visited both Rome and Florence in seeing this epic building. Over 200 feet inside from the floor to the top of the dome, pure classicism, and gorgeous attention to details makes this church of nationalism a must see! Of course, if none of these attributes grabs you, those of you who read Dan Brown would at least like to see Foucault’s pendulum.  However, neither I nor the french can give him our approval of Dan Brown. Sorry, his writing is as painful as a thousand baboons scratching my leg with barbed metal nails.  Sandra, my sister who is putting me up, at the l'Hotel Matos, refers to Dan Brown's writing style as, "ecrire avec ses pieds," alternatively his novels (if you are willing to call them that) are sometimes named, "les romans de plage ou roman de gare."

 

More café stops ensue, Douglas Coupland becomes funnier and even more laterally minded in his references, and I continue on to see le Jardin des Plantes. Cedars of Lebanon and a whole host of trees that turn their bracts at the thought of living in Canada are all here. I could tell by the variety of plants, the level of maintenance, and the over all design that this is one world-class garden. It is completely surrounded by powerful, formal, and grand neo-classical architecture that the French love so much. At this point, only 3:30pm and having walked really far, I decide to head home, jet lag has set in and when I see a bed at 4:30 I pass out.

Being impressed, first impressions.

Day 1

 

I am unsure of when this day began.  You see, I didn’t actually sleep on the plane.  I had way too much excitement, adrenaline, anticipation, and pressure on my ears from flying thousands of feet in the air.  On arrival in Paris, hour number 24, Sandra joyously greeted me, both of us jumping up and down like children.  

However, first thing is first (the most obvious of expressions).  Paris is the most convoluted airport I have ever seen.  On landing, the airplane homes in on one of the many airplane pods that are scattered about, we then disembark and are shuttled through a maze of these circular pods before we arrive at the mother pod.  I know that France has always been a revolutionary country, filled with radical ideas and the spirit of freedom, but does this world really need an airport designed with the same principles as an anarchist collective?  I hand my passport in to a very bored looking guard.  My heart is racing wildly.  My return ticket is scheduled for 4 days after the 90 visitor limit in France, are they going to whisk me away, lock me in a window less room and subject me to the silent treatment for hours, grill me under a hot lamp, strip search me with cold, uncaring, and sterile rubber gloves? Unfortunately my most secret desires are not fulfilled.   He is completely unconcerned about the hammers and chisels hidden away in my pack, says not one word to me, and with utter disdain and boredom he motions me off to discover this great land of wine, fine foods, and perpetual strikes and riots.

We went straight to her place and talked and talked and talked.  Topics ranged from the celebrity-ness of Sarkozy the wicked to the French use of the word pragmatic (which is highly pejorative).  The bags under my eyes were slowly swelling and I was running on pure fascination at this point.  I still needed to fight back against that lurking devil named Jet lag, so we decided to go for a walk around the Louvre, and pick up my metro and museum passes.  We went to the Louvre and walked about, visited the obelisk of Luxor (one of the few that wasn’t just plain stolen from Egypt), and then took a brief walk down Champs de Elysses singing that famed song all the way.  Sandra told me many important things about Paris, including the fact that the Eiffel tower is one of the few monuments of the world that is, "free of rights."  You see, Sandra hasn't spoken English since my sister Erin visited her last year, her English is usually impeccable, she watches alot of english television, but the odd time she makes up wonderful phrases that leave me flabberghasted.   I assumed this meant that anyone can enslave the eiffel tower, withold its freedom of expression or this tower's right to practise any religion it chooses.  But in Sandrish "free of rights" translates as no one owns the rights to the Eiffel tower, meaning it is not trademarked!

At this point I should let the reader know that this is my first blog, and errors are to be expected.  I have been wary of blogs until this point in my life.  Firstly, I have always thought that blogs are glorified picture books that float about cyberspace, which they are, but I've gotten over that as a negative.  However, for this reason my first post shall remain without photos.   Secondly, I always thought that blogs were for EMO kids.  I have nothing against over-emotional pubescent poetical waxings, but do they need to be displayed for everyone to see?   The theatre of the deep personality is a distasteful illusion.  Thirdly, doesn't Obama blog?  I mean, how can I compete with Obama?  Nonetheless, I will try tenacity, and see if I can make this thing work.