Excuse me friends for I have not been paying you due attention. It is eleven days since my last post, and this is what has transpired.
When last we met, Paul and I had just arrived in Cannes for a week "face en mer" - in front of the sea.
As it turned out we found ourselves to be pretty much exhausted after a week circumnavigating Corsica in a manual car (albeit at the current Citroen C4) that Paul affectionately referred to as a box on wheels, and where there was not a metre of straight, flat, wide or safety-railed road.
Cannes is an interesting city. Not at all touristy, although there are plenty of French tourists there. Very much a high end resort but without it showing. Extremely sedate, refined, serious, responsible, organised - everything that cosmopolitan, noisy, brash, beautiful and flamboyant Nice is not.
Paul enjoyed his daily swim in front of our apartment.
There was a good beach, although it was not very wide, but it did have sand - at least on one side.
The other side was rocks. If your intention is only to swim and not to sunbake, rocks are great. No sand in the swimsuit.
But sandy beaches are rare because this is region of Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur where the mountains tumble down into the sea and most access to the water is by way of rocky cliffs. Not for the elderly, unless you can afford to live on a rock with a chair lift into the sea.
This is the next town around the bay from Cannes, called Théoule-sur-Mer. The megalithic cruise boat is anchored off Cannes.
One night we had a wonderful view of fireworks over Théoule-sur-Mer but we couldn't discover the reason for the celebration.
The huge boats cruising the Mediterranean never stop. Every day another one appeared on the horizon. Not only is their impact on the natural environment enormous (an ongoing history of contaminated waste discharges to both air and water) but there is little benefit to the cities that host them, other than a lot of pressure on overstretched, local facilities and the clean up bill.
Imagine the impact when 2,000 or more people all descend at once. Everyone wants to visit the same attraction/s on foot or by taxi, use the toilets, buy coffee, buy water, sit in the shade, dispose of their rubbish, and finally get back on board and sail away. Next day, next boat. Completely unsustainable.
The most interesting part of our lazy week in Cannes was a visit to the Abbaye du Thoronet.
Nestling in the wooded valleys of the Var countryside, behind the madness of the Cote d'Azur, Thoronet is one of the most remarkable Cistercian abbeys in Europe. The impact of the architecture is the result of its extreme sobriety, with stone and light working in perfect harmony.
We visited another Cistercian abbey in 2011 in the Champagne region, called Fontenay, which was amazing.
Fonteney had been privately restored and included a water-wheel driven foundry. This abbey, Thoronet is a national monument and presumably has to fight for its share of scarce public funds.
Understandably, they have concentrated the available funds on the roof, the cloister and the main cathedral. Other areas of this large complex leave something to be desired.
There is no artificial light inside the cathedral - it is all naturally lit.
The Cistercians were an offshoot of the Benedictines The original emphasis of Cistercian life was on manual labour and self-sufficiency, and many abbeys traditionally supported themselves through activities such as agriculture or brewing.
Le Abbaye du Thoronet was constructed in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, as you can see from the elongated figure of Christ.
I'm currently reading 'The Accursed Kings', a series of five novels by Maurice Druon, set in France in the early 1300's so I felt quite at home here and could imagine Phillipe the Good or his son, Phillipe the Fair or even his grandson Phillipe the Long, all walking in these corridors with their unfaithful wives, their corrupt advisors and their eminently more corrupt clergy. Plotting, planning, politic-ing, intriguing, deceiving, promising, cursing and whatever else kings did to gain, wield and retain power.
Over 800 years later, and it all remains straight and true and fit for purpose. What greater legacy could a faithful Cistercian have hoped for.
Though probably not 800 years old, the trees in the courtyard in front of the church have been here for some time and seen many feet, and indeed many souls, pass through this door.
Stone.
Sunlight.
Water.
Simple.
Beautiful.
The epitome of Mediterranean Europe.
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