Going Way, Way Back … Cave Dwellings

So … in 3 B.C., Roman masons built a three-arch, interlocking-limestone-block bridge over the Calavon River. At the time, northern Italy and Spain were connected through southern France by the Via Domitia, of which this bridge was a part. As we tooled around Provence, we saw signs indicating remnants of the Via Domitia. And the bridge, Pont Julien, named after Julius Caesar, still stands a few miles outside Bonnieux. Pont Julien carried traffic for more than 2000 years, but today is reserved for bicycle traffic.
 

Before the village of Bonnieux came to be, settlers in the Luberon Valley lived down by the Pont Julien. At some point they felt the need to protect themselves from enemies, so they moved into limestone caves on the nearest hill.

Our Experience Luberon group got to tour one of these caves! Our first Sunday in Bonnieux, we walked down from the old church at the very top of the hill to the home of a friend of Kathy and Charley. Their friend, Michelle, gave us a tour of her family home whose bottom level (the cave) was built in the sixth century, the next level in the twelfth century, and the top level in the eighteenth century. She had learned from archeologists how the cave dwellers had lived there.

Into dim golden light, we ducked our heads through low tunnels and gingerly placed feet on uneven rock to hear Michelle tell about the early inhabitants of her family home. She showed us where spring water would have come in from a spot high on a wall. People had dug trenches to direct the water where they needed it. She showed us a little alcove where they would have hung game they had hunted. Again, trenches would have directed animal blood away. A cool pit carved into the floor would have preserved meat. People probably would have slept on a slightly elevated more-or-less flat area in the same “room.”

This beige cave led into another, and then another, all paths and walls very roughly hewn inside the mountain. In this higgledy-piggledy cave arrangement, early inhabitants crushed grapes, ground grain, skinned animals, tanned hides, and cured meats. Imagine the smells!

At some point, probably the early 1100s, the Knights Templar lived in Michelle’s caves. I am not sure if it was they who built the second level, but whoever did carved the year 1130 into the wall. Front-line soldiers lived in the bottom caves and officers lived on the next level up. A hole in the bottom-cave ceiling was a “shouting tube” through which officers could shout down orders to their men. Upstairs, the shouting hole had a stone plug in it.

Michelle’s grandfather was an expert ironworker. She showed us a model he had made for a railing he was commissioned to make for LeTrain Bleu restaurant in the Gare de Lyon in Paris. His ironwork’s ornateness was quite the contrast to the crude, but effective, chipped, gouged limestone of the cave dwellers.

Bridge photo credit: www.editionsaris.com. I bought this bridge postcard.

Goats!

Don’t ask me why I’ve wanted to milk a goat—no logical explanation can possibly exist, especially if you know me at all. Put me in an organic garden, and I’m a farm girl, mud up to my elbows, yeeha. Put me around farm animals, and I’m a suburban spectator, placing one finger gingerly on the animal, declaring it eew-bristly, and backing away. Yet this bizarre milking-a-goat dream lives in me. When Kathy and Charley Wood of European Experiences announced we’d go to their friend Marianne’s goat farm, Cabriole, and there might be a possibility of milking a goat, I was excited. A wee bit apprehensive, but kind of giddy too.

Next to Marianne’s driveway, about forty goats grazed in a field of poppies! One goat came over bleating up a storm. Marianne explained she (that momma goat) was crying because she had lost her baby; it had gotten loose the other day and hadn’t come back. Our group felt sad and offered to form a search party, but Marianne said a wolf had likely gotten it. And here we’d been worried about mosquitoes when wolves roamed the countryside. Hah!

We fed leaves to some goats and met three males, kept separately. They had been born on that farm and had big curved horns and long black (eew-bristly, I imagine) goatees. Marianne explained her goats live about ten years. 

Alas, our visit did not coincide with the milking schedule, but we did get to see the clever contraption used for daily milking. A goat stands on a table and sticks his head in a slot to reach a wooden food trough. The slot keeps him in that position while food pleasantly distracts him from the fact he’s being milked from behind. I took a close look at the milking tubes, and by gum, I think I could do it.

Marianne introduced us to three two-day-old babies. Okay, I did pet this one, who was the cutest, softest, sweetest little thing.

Slipping blue plastic booties over our shoes, we then entered the cheese-making room. Marianne showed us how she makes cheese and then prepared a tasting for us. She makes fresh, creamy, and dry from the same cheese. Some she coats with pepper, ash, tomato, herbs. My absolute fave is the just-plain, one-day-fresh one for its smoothness, although the tomato-enrobed one tingled the tongue with such a bright tomato flavor, I hesitate to relegate it to second place.

Interesting and very personal tour. We were delighted to see Marianne at the Friday Bonnieux market with all her cheeses and yogurts. And I still have my dream. :-)

 

Three bells in Bonnieux

Bonnieux is a village perched on a hill in the Luberon. At the very top of Bonnieux, is the old church, which the Knights Templar began building in the 12th century. Its cloche, or bell, is only rung on special occasions, and a person has to go up in the tower to ring it. 

Seven hundred years later, older parishioners had too much difficulty ascending 429 meters to the old church, and another church was built lower in the village. This 1870 church is still called the new church. Its automated bell rings once on the half hour. 

The best part of this Bonnieux bell business is double ding-dongs of the bell on a building I don’t know the name of. It rings on the hour. And then a few minutes later it chimes the time again for us slow-witted time-tellers who were caught off-guard by the first bells and forgot to count the rings. Helpful, don’t you think?