Christine and Keith's Travels: Quirieu, France, Tuesday 8th July

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We felt very virtuous after catching up with some emails, and I had written one in French to the mother of a friend of ours who we might be able to visit in Avignon. We love to receive emails and it is a pleasure to think about the people who send them and to hear the news. Yesterday we learnt that some friends of ours are soon to be grandparents so we are very excited for them and their family.
The day was fine, so after lunch we set off for a walk to Montalieu, about four kilometres away, to see the Museum of Stone and Cement.

We were greeted by two very friendly ladies and they started to take us for a guided tour, with the commentary in a mixture of French and English. Soon another couple arrived and we only had one of the guides, a delightful young woman with a real enthusiasm for everything in the museum and a detailed knowledge of stone and cement.
The museum had been created in a block of four homes, built four hundred years ago from the local stone. One section had retained all the original rooms and was set up as it would have been for a stone worker and his family. The rooms were all tiny, and full of useful items that did the job of modern appliances with no need for electricity. One was a coffee roaster, with a place for coals and a rotating enclosed section for coffee beans. Apparently coffee had been too expensive for the people here so they had used a substitute like chicory. There was a tobacco cutter, which was illegal to use beyond for the few plants you were allowed to grow in the garden for domestic use. A foot warmer had a section for coals and a lid with openings so you could put your feet on it, and apparently it was particularly effective for women, who would put it under their skirts, as in a tent, and warm up all their nether regions. This would have been important in winter, since the undergarments we saw left an unprotected shaft in the middle to facilitate going to the toilet. A chair had a secret section in the seat, and that was where the family would hide the salt. Salt was very expensive and bought in lump form. It was one item that couldn’t be grown or produced within the family and so it was something that robbers would try to take. Most families lived with all the generations under the one roof, so there would be someone home, but robbers would just take, or would bully someone into giving, valuables such as the salt. The family that lived here kept their salt in the chair that grandma sat on and even a robber would not think to disturb her to check there. Salt also played a great part in preserving food, and we saw in the corner of the room a stone trough where a salted pig would be kept. Salt came in rock form and had to be ground into small crystals in a pestle and mortar before use. There were the regular bed warmers, waffle makers, a worker’s metal lunch container for soup that could be heated over a fire, butter churns and moulds. Books from the early 1800s explained the craft of a stone cutter and one was put out by the first Union of Stone Workers and Carters for Montalieu-Vercieu. There was an absinthe glass, with a special slotted spoon to place a sugar lump on to soak up the liquid – illegal in the olden days and totally banned in France now because it causes brain damage. Crosses stood in the corner. Made by the householders at church in a particular season, they were tossed on to the roof to protect the house for the coming year.

The two bedrooms were upstairs, with the first having a door where you would expect to see a window, but no landing or balcony. The door was to allow a coffin, too big to come up the stairs, to be brought in and then taken out. Two small glass containers were for burning cotton in and then for placing on the body to create a vacuum, apparently a cure ‘all,’ and much in vogue. The parents’ bedroom had a bed with the two sides of the ends not identical; they were specially designed for one side to be pushed against a wall. Brides were married in black and widows wore black, but white was used for working in because it could be boiled to wash it without problems. Even poor brides wore a dark overcoat with a white veil, and better off brides wore black satin, lace and ribbons with their white veils. Whoever you were, you wouldn’t have had much clothing if you were in a stone cutter’s family, with one dress for working in and one for Sundays being the norm.
We stepped back into the present with a room that explained the formation of limestone and that the different colours are produced by the effect of different decaying plants and animals at various eras. This was all in French and since we were a bit short of technical vocabulary, the dictionary came in handy. Stone cutting in the past was a terrible job, requiring much brute force and hours of repetitive actions and strain on the body. At one stage there were thirty-five café/bars in Montalieu to cater for the excessive drinking of the stone cutters. Now there is only one café. Stone cutting today is mostly mechanised and even finishing can be done by machine.
Finally we watched some videos on cement – strangely fascinating once you put your mind to considering it. It was invented by Louis Vicat between 1812 and 1817, when Napoleon asked him to build a bridge at Souillac and failed to supply any finances for it. Of course, he was a 32 year old genius, but even for a genius it seems a very big ask. The recipe for cement is the same to this day. His son, Joseph Vicat, developed the idea further, with lots of new applications and the building of cement factories, which the company now has all over the world. There was a display of matching items in stone and in cement, so you could make a comparison, and my view of cement certainly went up many notches. Sculptures in Montalieu celebrate both stone and cement, and of course the houses and walls are a monument to stone’s durability and its ability to be beautified by weathering, mosses, lichens and other plants.

We bought a French sim card and set off for a stroll through the town before we returned. Everyone we met greeted us, and cars stopped on the road so that we could cross. Added to the helpful couple in the Tabac and the museum ladies, it was such a friendly and polite town that we walked around with smiles on our faces.
We took a different route on the way home, to use quieter roads and nearly made it to Quirieu. Unfortunately the people we asked for assistance didn’t know the shortest way, but that was ok, since it was a fine afternoon and we were strolling through the lovely village of Bouvesse and then through the countryside. We were alarmed, and our serenity was shattered, whenever a guard dog rushed a boundary, barking and with his fangs bared. We offered a little prayer to the ‘god of intact fences’ every time.
Back home we discussed plans for our trip to Lyon the next day and then had another late night. It must seem that we have no willpower in regard to bed times and I would have to say that that impression would be correct.