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| A panorama from above the St Guilhem, seen in the lower left; to the right is a box canyon |
When we were
here three years ago we went with some French friends to Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert.This
medieval village is about an hour’s drive from Montpellier, and, as the name
suggests, it’s hot and dry. Our visit that summer confirmed the first: it was,
indeed, hot. Now, we’ve just come back from a second visit, this time with our former
host, Nicolas (we stayed at his apartment last spring, when we were last in
Montpellier). We were pleased to go with him, because it is not easy to get
there. On a previous attempt to take public transport we got only to a nearby
town before the threat of rain and an unaccommodating bus schedule sent us back
to Montpellier. This time we were able to visit in cooler weather.
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| The town square |
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| Overlooking the square |
St Guilhem
was founded early in the 9th Century, and was a stopping point for
pilgrims on their way to Spain along the Santiago de Compestela
Way (le chemain d
Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle, aka the Camino
de Santiago). Today it’s a delightful picturesque stone village with a
Romanesque church, rare in France.
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| View from the cafe where we stopped for coffee, past the church to the gardens |
Back in the
1970s, shortly before I came to Europe for the first time, I visited New York
City with a friend who took me to the Cloisters Museum (it’s in Washington
Heights, Manhattan). I remember being impressed, and somewhere along the line I
heard that the cloisters came from France. Now, just a few days before our
recent trip to St Guilhem someone mentioned that the cloisters of the church there
had been sent off to New York. Ah ha! Now I had to see this church and
its cloisters—or what was left of them.
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| I think the cloisters that are now in NY went along this wall... |
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| Looking out to the gardens, St Guilhem |
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| Inside the cloisters |
Nicolas
introduced us to another aspect of the village: it’s the starting point for a
number of hiking trails through the hills that surround the town. Every
Christmas Day he joins some friends of his, avid hikers, and they
make a 5-hour circuit. We weren’t nearly that ambitious, but we did spend an
hour or so walking up the well-marked trail.
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| Looking back at St Guilhem |
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| Nicolas stops to admire the ruins on the peak across the valley |
We got a
nice view of the village, and the surrounding peaks, some crowned with
astonishing ruins of ancient fortifications. I was particularly drawn by the
fall colors on the hillsides. Spotted around among the subdued greenery were
splashes of yellow and orange, bushes that were in the process of losing their
leaves. The colors and textures of the landscape seemed a perfect complement to
the textures of the village itself.
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| The church, on the way out of town |
All in all
it was a delightful fall adventure, complete with cool but not really cold
weather. Oh, and a little splash of rain as we were leaving…
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| Ruins of the Castle of the Giants look over the town |
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