The Journey -
'Rosy' - Martins, Roanne, Mutton and Pilgrims

I've been meaning to mention the house martins for some time ...

I first met them when I was 9 or 10, and went on holiday to Scotland - to the hills above Blair Atholl.  They seemed to be birds who revelled in their ability to fly.  Sparrows and starlings can fly, but flight, to them, seems to be just a part of what their life is about - a necessary tool.  But house martins often seem to fly just because they love flying.  I brought Rosy into an empty lock the other day, and when the bottom gates closed, a house martin started playing roller coasters.  It swooped from the top of the top gates to the top of the bottom gates, skimming the water at the bottom of the lock in the middle, and then banking hard round to swoop back down and up to top gates again, where it banked hard round to repeat the game.  It had to adjust its flight slightly on each repetition, as Rosy was moving very slowly forward, and had to dodged round.  They also seem to play a game of tig, with one trying to stay on the tail of another, whilst the leader tries to out-manoeuvre the follower.  In the summer, the fledglings sit on telephone wires, while the parents seem to fly past them AND pass food to them.  Soon, they'll be sitting on the wire, and contemplating the great journey south.  It was the swallows and martins sitting on the phone lines on the Greek island of Hydra that fired up Leonard Cohen to write the haunting song "Bird on a Wire".

Rosy has now been to Roanne.  As in UK, the key towns on the French canal system are hardly known to non-canallers.  Which UK, non-canalling person knows anything of Napton, Stoke Bruerne or Braunston?

Roanne is the terminus of the Roanne - Digoine Canal.  The terminal basin at Roanne is a kilometre in length, and a hundred metres or more across.  There is a direct connection to the River Loire, which provides the canal with water, via sluice gates which can be closed if the river gets too high.  It used to be a great commercial centre, but is now chiefly known to European boaters as a safe and convenient winter haven.  The old buildings which used to be foundries, chandleries and peniche repair workshops are now garages, accountants offices and hairdressers.

I'd been a bit concerned about going up it, as there are some big, deep locks, but in the event, the journey was fairly painless.  The locks fill by upwellings from the base of the lock, there being a set of upwellings down each side of the lock.  If Rosy was against the left hand wall, and if the right hand side sluices were opened, the upwellings neatly pinned her against the left hand wall.  Unfortunately, in the biggest lock, which was over 7 metres, deep this didn't happen!!  We entered through the bottom gate which isn't 7 metres tall.  The top part is fixed, and only the bottom part opens.  In we went.  Mademoiselle éclusier's face appeared 7 metres up in the sky, as she dangled a hook down for the mooring rope.  She hooked it over a bollard somewhere up there, and passed the free end back down.  I felt a bit like a pendulum.  The length of the rope, and its elasticity, made it impossible to keep Rosy still.  Then Mademoiselle opened the sluices on our side!!  The upwellings swept us across to the far side of the lock, and pinned us there, very securely, during the 7 metre upward ride.

The canal goes up the eastern side of the Loire valley, so there are magnificent views across to the western side.  All heavily cultivated, and populated by the Charolais cattle.  They are bred for their beef, and they stare mournfully at us as we pass.  Do they know?  Do they understand their fate?  Surely if they are in a field with others of their kind for weeks and months on end, one of them must realise that not a single member of their group has ever met (or even seen) their granny or grandpa!  And they seem so passive!!  There are so many of them that if they decided to turn against us ...  well!!  It hardly bears thinking about!

When we got to Roanne, it was the annual water festival, and extremely busy.  I moored next to 'Calypso' (named after the famous Spanish wine 'Vino Calypso' perhaps?).  One of the crew was an English farmer, and I finally go the low-down on mutton.

A lamb is a lamb until about its first Christmas.  By that time, it will either have been sold at a fat-stock market as a lamb, or, if it is female, it might be saved for breeding purposes.  At Christmas time, these female lambs become termed 'hoggets', which they remain until they are termed ewes.  I'm not sure if this name change comes about when they lose their virginity, or when they have lambed.

Anyway, there are very, very few farmers who will keep the lambs until they are mature ewes, and then sell them off as mutton.  Rather, mutton in the shops is ewes that are pretty knackered after several years of breeding.

Now.  If you were a cannibal, which would you prefer:

To dine off the succulent and juicy thigh of a mature wench aged from between 15 to (say) 25?

OR ...

To dine off the stringy and (probably) cellulitic thigh of a woman passed her childbearing years? 

Which is why mutton in the shops is hardly worth eating, whereas proper mutton is highly acceptable tucker.

A few days ago, we passed through Paray-le-Monial.  Architecturally, it has a basilica, which is believed to closely mirror the now destroyed abbey at Cluny.  (The Cluny abbey is/was important as it spawned affiliated communities around Europe (as in Offord Cluny, near Huntingdon).  The original Cluny church was the largest building in Christendom (until the building of St Peters), and the Paray basilica is still a very impressive building.  In about the 19th century, a nun there received a 'revelation', advocating the honouring/worship (call it what you will) of the Sacred Heart, a concept accepted and endorsed by the Roman Catholic church.  Paray is (apparently) the second largest pilgrim centre after Lourdes.

Fancy that!!

Toodle pip!!

Bill