A Trip to the Countryside

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.

The town square

Overlooking the square

St Guilhem was founded early in the 9^th 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.

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.

The Cloisters, in Manhattan, NYC
(photo by Elisa.rolle - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28159908

I think the cloisters that are now in NY went along this wall...

Looking out to the gardens, St Guilhem

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.

Looking back at St Guilhem

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.

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…

Ruins of the Castle of the Giants look over the town