A Healthy Few Hours at the Hazelnut Festival.

  Because our choir had a date in church at 4:15 p.m. (see a later post) we broke with tradition this year by not attending the afternoon-long lunch that's the high point of Lavelanet's annual hazelnut festival. 

    But we couldn't miss out on the event itself so after a successful trawl of the vide grenier in Chalabre, we drove the few miles to Lavelanet where we ran into friends and had lunch. 

   Close your ears, nutritionists, because what we ate is so dietetically incorrect it doesn't bear thinking about. We crowded around an open-air bar watching a man grill sausages and pork belly over charcoal.  Once crisped but still with plenty of good juicy pork fat present, the belly slices were slapped into split baguettes, and topped with frites. Three large dispensers held ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. As we leaned on the bar munching away, we reckoned we'd hit all the four food groups--pork fat, baguette, frites and mayonnaise--with the plastic glasses of rosé meeting our fruit and vegetable needs. Meanwhile, the band played on...

   Not far away, a display of an old-fashioned classroom showed modern kids how their grandparents learned their ABCs. Other teaching aids were the posters showing the importance of good health and what happened to your body if you took the wrong route. 

    

A Medieval Weekend

July and August the village's main street is barricaded every Friday for the weekly night market. This week it was closed all weekend to make space for one of Léran's major yearly celebrations: tah=dah-- Lérancestral. 

   Stalls selling crafts, food and food line the street and kids play medieval games but the  high point is the spectacle in the meadow below the chateau, a 90-or-so-minute pageant that recounts the early history of the village. This year the choir was invited to take part so Peter and I, along with maybe 15 other members, dressed up in medieval gear and sang our little hearts out. 

   All year long, a group of village ladies sews costumes and the results are truly magnificent. Mine was a deep purple with floor-sweeping sleeves, and a veiled hat to match. Peter was a picture in a scarlet knee-length tunic. The person behind all this immense amount of work is Anne-Marie. She's the lady with the basket over her arm in the shot at the top of this post. 

    Saturday afternoon, some of the participants paraded through the village. 

What's wonderful about the spectacle--no, two things are wonderful about it--is that first the realization that the scenes you are watching (or, in our case, taking part in) might well have happened on this very spot hundreds of years ago. The second is seeing people you know, Cecile from the boulangerie and her son, Matthieu (in silver and black), our mayor, Henri (in the saffron-and-garnet coloured costume) and his wife, and countless others, playing different roles. In a potentially Oscar award-winning performance. Matthieu, for instance, was scarily realistic as a plague victim, then, magically revived, showed up some 20 minutes later, as a young noble. Meanwhile, Henri pulled the "bring out your dead" cart but also acted as a noble.

   The choir's role was to be wedding guests. We walked on to the meadow, basses, altos, sopranos, tenors, sang our "Non nobis, domine.." then mingled in with two other processions and paraded to the rear of the performance area. Where we danced. Let's be frank here.  It wasn't exactly choreographed. Instead, French and English, we all dredged up memories of whatever country dances we'd learned as kids--and winged it. That over, we became the audience for a tournament. 

    Finally we paraded to the front of the meadow and sang the unofficial Occitan national anthem before applauding the audience who applauded back. We then lined the exit route so that we could each applaud each other all over again. Oh my, it was fun. 

A "wall" of violets.

Midweek, Peter is leading the group on a walk we took several years ago. So, because it was several years ago, we did a practice amble on Sunday afternoon. The route starts in Caudeval near a solidly built chateau (around here, these tend to look more like fortresses than fairytale castles and this one is no exception). 

   The track led uphill, deeply rutted and extremely squelchy. It was almost, but not quite, raining adding a gauzy screen to our view of meadows, hills and trees.

  This is the season for violets. (We missed the Toulouse violet festival a couple of weeks back so must mark that on the agenda for next year.) Tiny purple flowers are all over the garden of our first house. And, on this walk, we saw them growing in large clusters at the sides of the track which descend so steeply into the ditches below that what you see is like a small wall of violets.

Carnival Time in Limoux

Held every weekend from mid-January to the end of March, the Carnaval de Limoux is said to be the longest-running carnival in the world. Possibly originating in a pagan winter festival, its language is Occitan and its traditions are embedded in the heritage of this Languedoc town.

We drove there Sunday morning, arriving shortly before the first of the three sessions held each day. Brass instruments signalled the arrival of the first group, its costumes owing plenty to Disney (the event may be centuries old but it's always evolving). Mickey Mouse, the seven vertically challenged people.  Cruella De-Ville, they were all there. But innocent though Disney characters may look on film, they become definitely sinister as masked characters, the still faces concealing all, including whether it's a man or a woman--and women have only been allowed to take part since the early 1970s. Even small children have a creepy look to them 

Flinging confetti until the place is ankle-deep, performing the traditional swaying Fècos dance, and interacting with the crowd, each group goes around the main square under the arcades visiting most of the cafés for a restorative drink. We were well into our pizzas and vin rouge by the time the pink-and-black bande shown at the top of this post came around. Events become more traditional on the final night when the Carnival King is burned at the stake.

The Foix Spectacle

This event didn't start until 10 p.m. It was dark. The action was fast. To be honest, the few shots I took weren't that great. But this (i.e. those three towers) was the backdrop to Foix's annual spectacle. For more, go to www.ariegeaufildutemps.fr and click on the poster. Next, click on the video screen to the right for a small taste of the music, sound, light and excitement.

Using a trio of "time explorers" the two-hour show covered the high spots of Ariège history between 1208 and the present. Cathars, French revolution, the Second World War (complete with a papier mâché airplane strung on wires that "flew" dramatically across the arena from somewhere high above us to crash into a forest in "flames")--all got a look in. Music ranged from Zorba the Greek (complete with Greek dancers) and Ave Maria to (huh?) "Money Makes the World Go Around" from Cabaret. Add in dancing wood sprites, a song by Fauré, who was born locally, and you had something for everyone.

A high spot for me (just call me paysanne) was a bucolic farmyard scene complete with dray horses, yoked oxen, donkeys and a woman the size of a barn shooshing along a flock of geese. 

The stage was several hundred feet wide, long enough for galloping horses and, covered with sand, safe enough when their riders deliberately fell off and were dragged along the ground. 

Lighting transformed the three towers of the chateau into different cities, and wrapped them in psychedelic effects. Fireworks showed it in all its stark beauty. 

Earlier, with friends Bea and David, we'd stoked up on steak-frites but still found it cold as the evening wore on. As we left, the crowd a swarming mass, the cast lined the exit pathway (as they did in Léran last Sunday) to applaud us.