The Trail Quillan run has been on my to-do list for years. This year, I finally did it.
The run starts and finishes in Quillan, down by the Aude river, but goes a way up high onto tracks above the cliffs where Griffon vultures roost. They have a history of occasionally eating people who fall in the Pyrenees. I had paid for the post-race lunch and was determined to not be lunch.
Today’s outing on foot took me along quiet roads in a rural part of France’s Aude region in the foothills of the Pyrenees. The area is gorgeous in the winter sun. This would make great cycling country. Walking, it would be too far for most people. It’s a nice drive, especially if you’re not confident on French roads – almost zero traffic – but take it slow, as the roads are narrow. I jogged it and loved it. At 19 km, it’s a long run for me – further than my jet lag-busting trail run a few weeks ago.
Continue reading A 19 km road circuit in the Aude: Laval, St Julia, St Just, Granes, and St FerriolThis week I returned to one of my favourite cinemas: La Familia in Quillan. I was there to see The Spy Gone North.
Earlier, I had browsed the schedule of films and seen two that tempted me. One, in version orginale English was Bohemian Rhapsody – that’s tonight. The other was The Spy Gone North. The precis sounded good. A man is recruited as an agent for South Korea, and given the task of getting close to Kim Jong Il. It’s the mid-1990s, the north is developing nuclear weapons and there are suspicions of an imminent attack on Seoul.
It occurred to me that there ought to be more spy movies set on the Korean peninsula. Maybe there are and I just haven’t noticed them. This version was advertised as Korean with French subtitles. Someone assured me that, whatever the advertising, the film must contain plenty of English because the leading actors are from English-speaking countries. More on that shortly.
La Familia has a rule that screenings only proceed if at least four customers turn up. I arrived 10 minutes early and was the first. Three minutes before the scheduled start, a second customer arrived. At T minus 60 seconds a third arrived. Bang on start-time, a fourth arrived and we got the green light to proceed.
Here I describe my run-walk outing with a local companion into the spectacular hills above Laval.
Mr D, a neighbour of ours, generously offered to show me some of the harder-to-find tracks up into the hills above Laval. I had already done a fair amount of exploring myself but had not found the route I guessed would be there. I sought a track, or at least a marked route, connecting Laval with Quillan in the Pyrenees in southern France. Laval is not far from Quillan as the crow flies and my guess was that there would be in the hills an alternative to the 6 km on the flat road route. Continue reading A hill route between Laval and Quillan
One of the things we like most of all about France and the French is their enduring love affair with cinema. The beauty of life In Quillan (and one of our criteria for a place to live) was the local cinema just 2 minutes’ walk from home. We were there as often as we could make it and promised ourselves we’d continue with this tradition back in Wellington. So when the annual French film festival rolls around, it’s an easy excuse to indulge.
In early 2014, we took our family, including our two school-age boys, to live in France for three months.
Probably the single biggest factor in our desire to live in France was to give the boys a French school experience.
It’s now coming up for four months since we returned from the Pyrenees and already our life in France feels like something in the distant past.
There’s an inevitability about this when life in the present is so all-encompassing. What isn’t important doesn’t get done. What isn’t front of mind doesn’t get thought about.
To help keep our French experience closer to the front of mind, we promised ourselves the odd ‘treat’. Aspects of life that we enjoyed most about our trip and that would remind us of the time we spent in Quillan.
Probably the one we succeed at most is the French breakfast. Sundays are about the one day in our house that we don’t have something pressing to get up for. So we enjoy croissants and baguette with coffee, accompanied by French music most Sundays.
Less successful is the aspiration to get to more (French) cinema and to take the time for a regular family aperitif. Daily life with its relentless pace of activity too easily gets in the way.
This week our set of coffee table photo books from our trip arrived by courier though, a perfect memory jogger permanently under our noses.
Must be time to sit down for a drink and a browse…
Sante!
It’s been three months since we returned from Quillan. We’ve now been back as long as we were there, and although the time has gone fast, paradoxically our experience already feels like a lifetime ago.
In fact, it feels like another whole life time. It’s quite surreal to think that, only three months ago, we were living in France, the boys attending school, operating completely in another language.
I’ve recently been reading a book written by an Australian woman who took her young family to live in France, initially for several months. Now they spend six months of every year in France, with the other half back in Australia.
I love these books and will never tire of reading them because they remind me that such a life is possible – if you want it enough. This is the life I would love. It’s just a question of whether I want it enough to make it happen.
I’ve been contemplating for some time that we are already living our lives in parallel. On the one hand, we are very much present in our lives in New Zealand – and yet we always have half a mind thousands of kilometres away in a French village. We find ourselves randomly rambling in French at odd times of the day. We dream of baguette and croissants – fresh, warm and crusty from the boulangerie.
So imagine my surprise when I realised that we really ARE living our lives in parallel – on the 42nd parallel to be precise. The Aude is on the 42nd parallel North. Wellington is on the 42nd parallel South.
Karma.
In early 2014, we took our family to live in France for three months. It was great, but if we hadn’t been absolutely determined, it wouldn’t have happened. Aside from sheer inertia in the face of the relentless reality of daily family life, probably the greatest barrier to going was the cost. Continue reading What price dreams?
