Camping Peyrelade, Rivière-sur-Tarn, France, 26th August 1989
A day exploring the Gorge du Tarn up to St Enimie via Le Rozier and La Malene, dramatic and picturesque scenery at every twist and turn of the river. And with the natural beauty the inevitable warts of tourism: camp sites, packed laybys, advertsisng hoardings, cafes and restaurants, souvenir shops (animal skins a speciality) and stations hiring bilious yellow canoes at every convenient go-down to the water.
On the way back we pulled off the D907 onto a quiet road, drawn by a glimpse of Notre Dame des Champs standing 50 metres from the Tarn: a wonderful, remote (a kilometre from Mostuéjouls), moving, honey-grey 12th century Romanesque chapel. A wall like ‘tower’ with four bell openings rose erect at the junction of the nave and the rounded apse. It’s surrounded on three sides by a typical French cemetery full of grand graves with lurid, sentimental votive offerings. Simpler and most moving was the First World War memorial: a gaunt limbless tree trunk, like those photographed in the mud or the Marne or Somme, a tree of death, with crucified Christ at the top. The high Causses rose up behind it; griffon vultures rode the thermals.