Sorry for having skipped a beat or two in relating the events of the two week junket to the Ardèche and Paris. After these weeks of Michigan’s gloomy skies, those warm days and sunshine seem further away than ever. Suffice it to say that the remaining time in the quaint hamlet of Les Monèdes passed quickly. After the Saturday at Uzès, we were ready to stay put on Sunday. In a way we did, but we were not completely inactive.

From Jean’s terrace you can see a tiny stone chapel perched on a distant hilltop, a beginning of the Cevennes. I’ve gone to the chapel on previous visits, but always by driving a short distance to the village of Courry below and then walking up the path to the summit. Sunday, we decided to take the hike from Jean’s house along a rocky path and up through the woods. It’s a good hike and not the easiest of going in some places, but it was a gorgeous day so we decided to make the trek.

Equipped with our backpacks containing water and a couple of apples, we headed out. The path winds up through a neighboring hamlet and the along a trail among a mix of mimosa, French scrub oak, and chestnut trees. We managed to find a couple of branches to serve as walking sticks, which came in handy for some of the narrow areas on the path as well as for negotiating a few rocky ascents.

It takes well over an hour to make it to the top but the view and visit are worth it. The chapel was built in the 1700s as thanks to St. Steven for saving the region from a plague, which swept through the area. The chapel itself is not particularly spectacular, but there’s a very special feel to being there and to think of those days, so long ago, when modern medicine did not exist and death was a frequent visitor to the farmers struggling to survive.

The area around the chapel is clear and there is one spot where people come to do parasailing. Today was no exception and we were treated to watching one young man rig up his sail and go flying off into the valley. Whoosh…what an amazing sight! What was even more amazing was to meet him on the path about an hour later. He was coming back up from his airborne descent with his entire sail and gear strapped to his back! And to think we were feeling proud of sporting our small backpacks. All in all we spent five hours with the walk up, the visit, enjoying the scenery, and wending our way back down.

All along the path we could see evidence of the wild boars, the sangliers, who spend hours rooting out trees and shrubs in search of food. The truth is that they have become quite a nuisance in many areas as they have interbred with domestic pigs and the population has exploded. They are a favorite target of the many hunters, who prowl around the hills. We did, in fact, hear the bells of some hunting hounds, but managed not to encounter any hunters. Sunday is a favorite hunting day in France and it can be quite frightening to encounter a hunter with his gun along the path.

As we came closer to home, the sun started to disappear behind cloud cover, and it surely seemed we would get wet before we made it back. As it happened, we were only inside the door when the rain came down, and it continued raining the entire evening and on into the night. How lucky we were that the only rain during our two weeks came at night!

We finished out the week with a visit to a couple of wonderful spots in and around the hamlet and village including another market day, this time in St. Ambroix, about a 20-minute drive away. St. Ambroix is where we go to shop at the supermarkets. It’s a fantastic old town, which used to have silk spinning mills. The architecture is interesting, and the town itself is one of those old cities that still exist as centers of French life and not solely for the amusement of the tourists.

Suddenly, it was Wednesday and we realized that our week-long stay was coming to an end. We spent time organizing the house and apartment and packing up. Thursday we headed back to Nîmes to return the rental car and jump on the TGV. Destination: Paris! Jean was coming with us and her sister, Laurie, was flying in from Traverse City to meet us there! What could be better conclusion to our trip than a few days in Paris!

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 8:59 am and is filed under Letters From France. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.