Lost-in-France.com

Category: Barging Through France

Tags: France, travel, tourism, adventure, nature, destination, culture, La, Drome, Ferdinand, Cheval, postman, Haut-Rives, palace, construction, baker, Bernard, Ca

Host Richard Goodwin continues his adventure through France with a report from the La Drome area of France:

At the end of the 19th.Century, Ferdinand Cheval, a postman in Haut-Rives, constructed his ideal palace which was purely decorative. It took him 33 years and at the same time he was doing his postal round which was between 30-40 kms per day. Imagine coming back after walking all that way and then getting going on your passion. He said that while he was walking on the same route every day, it gave him the chance to dream. He had worked as a baker and was therefore used to working with dough so he knew how to make the shapes you see decoration his ideal palace. He really was a marathon man and had gotten used to people thinking he was quite mad. It is, however an extraordinary monument to one man's extraordinary vision and has become in own way a major work of art. He was a truly remarkable man and in his way a poet in stone.

Bernard Cathelin, who is another artist but of a much more conventional kind, had been a professor of art at the Beaux Art in Paris which is the top art school in the capital. He owes his artistic career entirely to his mother and the countryside of the Drome where he has this house and grounds. His simple paintings express the intercourse between man and nature. The countryside of the Drome keeps calling me back.

The countries that impressed him most were Mexico for the colour he saw there and Japan for its reflection. My roots are very strong from here. I had a beautiful mother who put me on the path to beauty. It talks moving about the mysterious properties of lavender.

The little village of Soyons is dominated by its castle and a beautiful Romanesque church. In the village is the egg museum created and run by Francoise She has minute eggs from the humming bird to giant dinosaur eggs 700 million years old. Of course I asked her whether the chicken or the eggs came first and she gives a very clear and definitive answer but you will have to watch the episode to hear her answer. Francoise shows the amazing things that you can do with an egg like making lace. Then she took me to her witches' garden where she has a number of strange herbs and other devices. This really is a beautiful place. She tries to convince me that these beans are the beans Jack used in Jack and the Beanstalk.

The castle of Aulan is a remarkable place because it has been entirely restored by the very amazing Count Aulan who told me that the castle had been in the since 1313 which is quite a hunk of time. The family nearly lost the castle in the First World War through some unscrupulous, dishonest lawyer. The robust octogenarian Count Aulan has many a good story to tell.

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