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| A sunset from our new apartment; a quiet, peaceful sunset, not like the one described in the text... |
The Sun was an angry flaming orange ball in a pissed-off flat orange sky. It was shortly before sunset and the temperature was still in the mid-30s (mid-90s, for you Americans), down just a few degree from mid-day. A forest fire somewhere near gave the air a yellow haze.
We were pretty annoyed ourselves. This was the third (fourth?) week of the canacule, a fierce heat wave that cools but little at night.
We moved a few weeks ago, at the start of the heat. It could have been an easy move—just a couple hundred meters up the street, to another building in the same complex. But it was hot. Hot and humid, and everything seemed difficult.
Yeah, the move could have been easier. We could have had a lot less stuff! When we moved in, five years ago (The first of May—our anniversary!—in the midst of the pandemic lockdown) we each had a big suitcase, a small backpack, and a laptop. Now, a short five years later, there was this endless pile of boxes to be trundled up the street in the hand cart we'd borrowed. But that was the easy part.
Harder was watching our home disappear, to be (painfully) reassembled in someone else’s apartment. Well, hard for me, anyway. Paula seemed to roll with it, doing an excellent job of reassembling all those boxes of stuff.
Now, a few weeks in, it feels more like “our” place than where we’d spent the last five years. Our new landlord left less stuff than the old one did, so we’ve got more flexibility in decorating. And Paula is doing a great job of making it ours!
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| The harbor in the town of Méze, where we spent my birthday. |
But it’s still hot. We cancelled our summer get-away plans to focus on our move, and the weather in Montpellier has not been kind. So, we’ve been taking weekends off.
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| My Life as a Fish. On the beach at Méze. |
For my birthday (the 11th; mark your calendars for next year!) we went to a nearby town on the Étang de Thai, a huge salt-water lagoon separated from the Med by a long sand spit. It was only marginally cooler there, and even more humid, but our room had central AC and there was a courtyard with a small pool and a very shady tree. We spent the evening there drinking wine and getting very well acquainted with other guests!
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| The very welcoming pool and shady patio at our lodgings in Méze. |
But this weekend we finally found the relief from the heat we’ve been craving. We drove a couple of hours north, up into the mountains, to the small town of Meyrueis. At an elevation of 1000 meters (3300 feet) it certainly was cooler!
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| Clock tower and bridge over the creek in Meyrueis. |
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| The main street of Meyrueis.(Not much to it!) |
It’s a cute tourist town, with one main street lined with hotels and restaurants, and filled with people wearing backpacks and carrying walking staffs. Hiking country!
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| A restaurant over the creek. |
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| Having dinner at a different restaurant, over the creek! |
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| Looking our our hotel window at night. We enjoyed the sound of the creek all night! |
And, like all small towns in France (and Europe in general), there’s a long history, and interesting architecture, to explore. Significant—to us, anyway—is that the town is on the boarder of two interesting geographic regions: the Parc National des Cévennes, and the Parc natural réginal des Grands Causses.
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| A view from a side street of Meyrueis. |
We’ve mentioned the Cévennes before, and our (limited) explorations. We’ve also (probably) talked about the Causses. (Yeah, we did, here.) These we find particularly intriguing.
Long long ago, long in geological terms, this area was a huge plateau. But fast-moving rivers got to work, and today it is divided into numerous smaller plateaus, the causses, separated by steep ravines with those fast-moving rivers at the bottoms.
While superficially similar, each plateau has its own flora and fauna, and local weather. It’s very rural, transportation is limited; there are few roads and fewer towns. Lots of nature to explore!
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| A view from the road on the causse Méjean. |
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| 130 square miles of dry, rolling hills. |
After a fine night at our hotel in Meyrueis we followed some tips from a knowledgeable fellow at the tourist office and drove up to the Causse Méjean. The road was narrow and winding, following gentle rolling hills brown in the summer sun, and mostly deserted. We enjoyed the solitude, and eventually came to the town—er, hamlet?—of Dirges, where we left the car and headed out on foot.
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| Ah, our goal, the hamlet of Hures and it's church. |
It was sunny, dry, and deserted, except for a flock of sheep in the distance. We plunked along and eventually (30 minutes?) came to a church with a very pretty churchyard (fresh flowers on the graves!)
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| The Eglise Saint-Privat de Hures and its graveyard. Fresh flowers! |
We sat in the shade and enjoyed the sandwiches we’d bought earlier. Off to the side we noticed a few tables with a small sign that announced the SOS BAR. Well, that seems appropriate, we felt like we were at the end of the world, and just might need saving. Finishing our sandwiches we went over to ask about a bit of coffee. Well, of course! We seated ourselves, and when the server brought the tiny espresso cup, we asked about the name of the bar.
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| A house across the street from the graveyard. |
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| The SOS BAR, next to the church. |
See, when we got closer we noticed that the actual name was the 909 BAR. What’s the significance of that, we asked? Well, the answer got complicated.
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| When we got closer, we saw it was actually the 909 BAR. |
The 909 is a nod to the ROLAND TR-909, an early music synthesizer. A drum machine, in fact; or, in French, un boîtes à rythmes. And that’s where BAR comes in: it’s an acronym for Boîtes à Rythmes. We’d stumbled upon a music collective that specializes in synthesized music, and named their gathering point after the venerable TR-909.
Many years ago, early in our travels, we discovered the distinction between moments and monuments. We found that while we may have come to see a monument, what we remember are the moments. And this was certainly a moment!
We chatted a bit longer with the woman who brought the coffee—one of the musicians, it turned out—and then headed back up the trail, minds blown.
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| Paula starts on the train back to Dirges, and the car. |
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On the trail we found this beautiful thistle plant. Paula was very tempted to take it, as it is reputed to bring luck; however, it is also an endangered species. Paula wisely decided digging up a protected plant would not bring the kind of luck we wanted!
(It appears to be a Carlina acanthifolia, aka Carline thistle.) |
(When we got back I found that tiny place had a surprisingly extensive Wikipedia entry. [Caution— this entry is in French; the entry in English is far less interesting.] It mentions in the "Histoire" section that during the pandemic lockdown in 2020, the region became somewhat infamous for a rave held there attended by some 10,000 people. And I can picture that, 10,000 people writhing and dancing — to music synthesizers, of course — on those hundreds of acres of empty fields and hillocks…)
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European trail signs in red and yellow prevent getting lost.
Note the lower sign: "X" means not the trail!! |
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| A farm house we passed in the hamlet of Dirges. |
The next day we slowly made our way back to Montpellier along winding canyons (and those fast-moving rivers) through sprinkling rain. We were pleased to find the canicule had ended, and temperatures were cooling.
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| La Jonte river as it flows through Meyrueis. |
