This is my second visit to Tourbes, a tiny village in the south of France. I housesat Cassie and Nousha here in March of 2016 and the homeowners kindly invited me for a return engagement.
In fact, it was that invitation that set me off on this round of housesits. I had intended to stay in Canada through at least part of the winter.
The first time I traveled here, I meant to take the train from Paris to Beziers, about 20 minutes south of Tourbes. A rail strike was threatened, and my homeowners suggested that instead, I fly to Montpellier, from where they would collect me. I didn’t even know Montpellier had an airport. This time I was trying to find the fastest, most convenient and cheapest way to get here from Berlin. My ever helpful homeowner suggested I consider the airport at Perpignan, about an hour away. It turned out to be a better option than the other routes I was considering, although it did involve a transfer from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris to Orly airport. It took about 6 hours in total travel time to cover about 1600 kms and cost about $200. That was one way, with Air France, not a budget airline.
One of the reasons I’d love to live in Europe is the phenomenal ease and relative affordability of public transportation.
Little regional airports and budget airlines abound. Rail service goes everywhere at every hour, and in the cities you have a choice among trams, buses, underground, light rail – you name it. Even in tiny Tourbes, there is a twice daily bus that will take me to Beziers or to Pezenas for €1.60 each way – about $2.50.
In Prescott Ontario, if you don’t have a car, you’re not going anywhere except by taxi.
Tourbes is one of those tiny French villages that look like they haven’t changed much since about 1180. The streets are narrow and overshadowed by tall stone houses with shutters. Not a lot of light gets in. This undoubtedly makes them cooler in the very warm summers they have here (averages around 30 degrees).
Mysterious, dim alleys give glimpses of sunny courtyards.
My own room is up a winding staircase at the top of an 800 year old stone house. The interior walls are three feet thick. Old wooden shutters, wrought iron grills and a Juliet balcony add romance.
There is a terrasse here on the second floor, which personifies French charm.
The house opposite has even more French doors and balconies.
The older houses have randomly sized windows and doors and often, vines or old trees add to the ambiance. You expect Belle to come out from under that arch, reading a book and singing about adventure.
Even the sheds are picturesque.
The strong summer sun accounts for the faded colours of the doors and the window shutters.
We pay designers big money in North America to mimic this look but it’s never quite the same is it?
There are other styles of houses here. I think this one must be a few centuries younger than ‘mine’. I love the funky turret.
There are buildings on my street that are newer than my medieval house, but ‘newer’ is a very relative term here.
One door down from the 13th century house I am inhabiting, is the Place du Donjon, a building from the 15th century, with a common courtyard, where at one time a set of galleries connected the various levels of the dwelling. It is about 200 years newer than the house I am living in, but the style of architecture is not much different.
The well they used is still there.
Instead of gutters, there were dripstones below the windows, which directed the rain down their arms.
What I don’t understand about this system was that the decorative figures at the bottom were lamp holders, sculpted as armed men.
Wouldn’t the rain extinguish the lamps?
There are a number of signed historic buildings on my street. This gateway, dating from the 1200s opens into the Place des Trois Porches.
The sign here explains that this Place may well be the site of the original ‘castrum’ – the name used for villages such as this in texts as early as the 9th century. Tourbes was first mentioned in 990. I’m thinking these stone walls are close to a thousand years old.
The door on my street next to the entry to the castrum is modern. It dates from the 1600s.
Two buildings down, we reach the 18th century with this door.
The village church, St. Sernin’s, was built at the beginning of the 13th century, and is larger than one would expect in a village of this size.
It was constructed in the 1200s, after King Louis IX bought the village (Saint Louis – he who also built the Sainte-Chappelle in Paris). The sign beside the church said it was built to impose his authority on his newly acquired territory. I suspect, given the timing, it was also a message to the defeated Cathars.
Catharism was considered by the Catholic church as The Great Heresy. No wonder, since it propounded such dangerous ideas as the equality of men and women. Beziers, the first casualty of the Cathar Crusade, is only about 25 kilometres from Tourbes. In 1209, Beziers was burned to the ground and some 20,000 of its inhabitants massacred. When it was pointed out to the Papal Legate who was with the crusading army, that there were ‘good’ Catholics among those in the city under attack, he is reported to have said, “Kill them all. God will know his own.”
The Crusade went on until 1229, and a lot of huge Catholic churches were built in the aftermath, including the famous one at Albi.
Now that was a structure clearly built to intimidate.
It is difficult to convey the size – if you look closely you can see John, a minuscule figure at the bottom.
The interior of St. Sernin’s here in Tourbes has the authentic feel of a church which has remained more or less unchanged for centuries, although it was renovated in the 1300s I understand. And it may have had some touch ups here and there since then.
The roof vaults are quite lovely.
The pulpit too.
The whole village is surrounded by vineyards. The landscape is generally flat, with the occasional hill poking up. This beautiful house is set in the middle of a vineyard halfway between here and Pezenas.
The presence of vineyards implies wine, and in fact there is a “Cave” in the village; the Cellier Saint Roch.
This seems to be a very large wine producing operation. I know nothing about how wine is produced commercially, but the vats are huge and have all kinds of complicated tubes and pipes attached.
I’m more of an expert on the consumption end of the wine production cycle.
There is a restaurant at Cellier Saint Roch, La Table des Vignerons, where I had lunch this week. I posted about that on Facebook.
This week I intend to visit the other notable restaurant here called La Maison. I ate there last time I was in Tourbes and have been dreaming of returning. They served truly memorable food.
It is mentioned in the Michelin Guide and rated at 4.3 out of five. At €18 (about $27 Canadian) for three courses at lunch, it’s much cheaper than big city prices for really superb food.
Some might question why anyone would want to spend a month in such a tiny village. There are no museums or galleries, no cathedrals or neolithic monuments.
I really love the age of things here, and the pace of things here. When I walk past houses that look pretty much as they did several hundred years ago, it puts things in perspective.
It reminds me that all the strife and anxiety of life is just a passing moment. After all, the people who built these houses centuries ago no doubt had their irritations and frustrations too, and they are all long gone. But the lovely stone dwellings where they laughed and grieved and got on with their lives; the shutters, the balconies, the trees and vines they planted, linger on to remind us that the troubles of this world don’t last.
I think it speaks to my Irish soul. Yeats knew this feeling:
“And I shall have some peace there….”