Friday, 25 January 2013
Eastside trail of the BeltLine under development—rails long gone, but new surface not yet installed…. View to north from Park Drive bridge.
Despite predictions of freezing rain, I walked the park, and even saw maybe 30 seconds total of sunshine, in two reveals—enough sun to make shadows. Heartening.
Wednesday, 23 January 2013
I’ve been wandering lately (aka procrastination)—via satellite views on GoogleMaps. I found the Costa Concordia on its side next to the Isola del Giglio….
And I found a grey-face? Maybe? Is this an intentional distortion? An artifact of shadows?
This is on a partly destroyed cold war missile installation inland on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, called Tolchester. Still find the face mystifying.
Tuesday, 4 December 2012
Saratoga Springs. Yes. New York. (Can’t find web domain; like I note, soooo last century.)
Ah, so last century. In a good way.
Here at lunch time. Ate not here at the yuppie place, but down the street at a diner, serving breakfast all day.
Friday, 26 October 2012
The Indian name for this place, I swear, must have been something like “Rapids with herons and turtles downstream.”
Indeed, the post-Colonials who dammed this stretch must have been channeling (ahem) ancient times, when they named their flow-stopper Eagle & Phenix Dam (two majestic birds of reality and myth).
Of course, when they blew the dam, archaeologists…monitored…what was revealed….
And now, six months after the dynamite (or whatever they used), we saw many turtles, including one with a shell more than a foot long, and herons, including one that nabbed and swallowed a feesh right in front of us, just downstream of the old dam site (or dam old site).
Thursday, 11 October 2012
Sometimes when you’re traveling (or amidst life), you have to let serendipity prevail. We made a side loop to visit…Cadillac. Because it was there.
And discovered it’s a walled town, with some plain but impressive ramparts (if, indeed, that’s what they are).
Then we took another side loop to check out a cultural feature signposted as “Pont Eiffel.” There was no pullout nearby, and no way to see the lacy metal support structure of the small (like three car-lengths) bridge in any detail, and we can only guess that the tour-Eiffel engineer had a hand in this one instead of merely influencing it. So, no bridge pix—only this one of the mill just upstream (no public access). Moral of this story: serendipity is sometimes just for your eyeballs—and imagination—and not for your camera.
Sometime later, we passed through an area where the grape-harvest was well underway. The trucks from the fields apparently back up to the gate appropriate to the variety they are carrying. The smell of souring grape-juice and the busy insects were the most dramatic impressions/activity at the moment we encountered this cooperative.
We covered some territory today, and the agricultural crops and general landscape went through several noticeable changes as we left the coast and moved through inland zones. We are overnighting in Perigord, and it is nut/fruit country—no grain and olives are long behind us, as are the chateaux of Bordeaux.
We’re staying in a really small town—the only biz is our B&B—with several homes and a church getting major attention from historic preservationists. The cracks in the walls are being monitored as restoration continues, using these simple calibrated slips.
Wednesday, 10 October 2012
Descending from the heights, like many people through history, our first stop was Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Its medieval section is basically one main street, with perpendicular side streets (it’s not a hilltop town), adjacent to a river with a gorgeous little bridge. We saw school-bound kids crossing, stopping, as children will, to look in the water.
We were there early, and saw many shopkeepers opening for the day. You can tell that, although many shops catered to the tourists, people also live here—not many tourists buy apples by the kilo….
We detoured to Bidache to check out this ruined chateau. Without an appointment, we could only walk up to the front, but that by itself was pretty darned spectacular. We both found the tops of the stone window frames standing tall without their intended wall/roof partner-elements visually compelling.
How can this be last? Still, it was chronologically.
When we stood on the beach in the late afternoon, watching the surfing crowd trickle in (we theorized: after their day jobs), we knew we’d made tracks this day—from dawn in the Spanish Pyrenees to marine layer, late-day light on the Atlantic. What a great world.
Sunday, 7 October 2012
There’s a region near us, or where we’re staying now, called the Minervois, defined now as a wine region which historically was centered at Minerve. Many of the towns in this area have a version of Minerve in their names, a pattern I don’t remember from elsewhere in France. We looked in vain for a dolmen in the shrub-dominated garrigue on the ridge above town. Instead we discovered an incredible view, tinted in gorgeous shades of blue.
Several dolmen are known across the Minervois. This one is called Dolmen des Fades (or some variation thereof). Dolmen are, at least in the original definition, Neolithic-period megalithic tombs built across a broad swath of Europe. Seems to me that most of them are “empty” by now. We could tell there was quite a bit of reconstruction on this one, but the big stones did not appear to be from this hill. That’s a quick assessment, though.
A bit later, we arrived at the east gate of the Cité, the fortified old town of Carcassonne (history in summary here and detailed here). The fortification has (at least) double walls, many towers and shooting positions, and encloses a separate fortified chateau (had a moat? now filled?)—look here (43.20731,2.36313).
I haven’t mentioned the Canal du Midi—we saw it yesterday (near Beziers first), and have been seeing it here and there as we cruise the countryside. Okay, here are the boaters at Homps, the “port” for Olonzac (our present home). The canal was built to facilitate a shipping route that avoided the Iberian coast, including the Barbary pirates.
I knew I could get us back to the political economy.
Saturday, 6 October 2012
Roman Bridge at Saint-Thibéry, with me aboard a more-intact part.
We revisited the Via Domitia. There’s a later mill immediately upstream from the remains of this structure. We saw pretty small fishies in the water, and slightly larger fishies keeping them company. Seems like there should have been even larger ones, but we didn’t see them.
Étang de Montady, view from Oppidum d’Ensérune‘s hill.
This is the strangest anti-irrigation engineering feat I can remember encountering anywhere. These radiating (actually pointing inward) canals brought water to the center of this circular area, sending the flow out through a drain, making a large marshy area useful for agriculture. This was done in the…13th C. I can’t tell who masterminded this project, or who funded it.
Thursday, 4 October 2012
Reminder: pain in French means terrific bread; it is not painful to eat!
By the time this was built, estimated to be between AD 10 and 25, the Romans aimed to construct a complete architectural façade against which to stage their theatrical performances. As I understand it, the thrust of this was not only to be massive (see the tiny people to the far right of the frame) but to promote their vanquishing of this region. The formal name these days of this wonder is Théâtre antique d’Orange, and it is one of two that survive in this detail. Back in Roman days entrance was free; today you pay (that’s okay, your funds support maintenance), plus have to exit a winding trail through their junk shoppe.
Wednesday, 3 October 2012
Stunning. This aqueduct, the Pont du Gard had a drop of 12.83 meters over the 50-km length of the run between the spring that fed it (we tried to get there and couldn’t—private property) and the catchment in Nîmes. The Romans of Nemausus wanted more water, and this is how they got it.
By observation, we would note that single kayaks, like this, carried quiet people, but if the kayaks passed by in clusters, yikes!—the noise.
Châteauneuf-du-Pape is so named because the popes of Avignon came here back in the 1300s and developed grape-growing to have wine for their tables and to “share.” Now it is quite the wine center, with tasting places frequently encountered, both in town and along the feeder roads. The castle looming over town is a shell of its former self. The upper level has what look like machicolations that resemble those of the gothic Palais des Papes in Avignon.