I tracked down these old sepia photographs of our home, and it’s immediate surroundings, taken (I think) in the late 19th century. We live in what is still referred to as the Quartier Gare, and the house situated in the fork of the road is ours now. It has been the location of a carriage-maker and carter, and a hotel/bar restaurant, serving the station, which is still standing (at the end of our garden, down a wooded bank).
Our garden is on the other side of the road, beyond the house on the right, which is unchanged still. It was a well-frequented épicerie. The road we have to cross to reach our garden is the direct route to Avranches, on the Atlantic coast just east of Mont St Michel and the Baie.
The view down the Avenue de la Gare (now renamed Avenue du Maréchal Foch) is unchanged, and is still the unobstructed view from our windows. The timber structure in the photo of our house has long since disappeared, but there heavy tethering rings still mounted on wall of our dwelling.
Two photographs show the same wide-wheeled cart, parked on the street beside what is now chez nous.
I deliberately avoided naming it because it has a reputation for bling, whereas to me it is simply home, and beautiful it is Saint Tropez, the only harbour on the entire Mediterranean coast to face north.
This is Vital Monot, the schoolteacher, and his dog taken in 1912. Sadly he was killed in 1916.
Our house is the one just behind him on the left. And our tiny hamlet is now in woodland, not fields. The road in is to the left of him, but now there is no road out - just footpaths after the last house.
In Sourdeval, as part of the 75th anniversary celebrations of the town’s liberation from German occupation on 15 August, an exposition of photos from the period 1943-1945 has been installed in the Place d’Europe adjacent to the Hotel de Ville. One very striking picture showed the Wehrmacht requisition of nearly 100 horses in the town centre. And a tableau of the German High Command enjoying an open-air concert with the swastika flag billowing in the wind over the memorial to the fallen dead of Sourdeval who fought in WW1.
Picture prompted me to look up your hidey-hole in the Jura (just the canton and it’s environs on Google). Fascinating and very interesting indeed to see so many far-flung (from here in the northwest) and enticing spots in La belle France.
Delightful representation! Is the bridge still insitu? It looks very ancient and robust, and the river torrential, quite a gradient to it by the looks of things.
The two characters are intriguing. One looks as if he is wearing a Masonic apron, perhaps a real maçon. The man on the left is accompanied by what look like two companion geese.
Love the bridge… There are dippers in a town nearby which nest along stream beside the MRI unit, which is endlessly relaxing looking at them as you wait, and wait. Such engaging birds.
I have post cards of old St Tropez and Ste Maxime, long before Port Grimaud was built, I live on the other side of the bay to St Tropez, in Ste Maxime (but not actually in the town, out in the sticks). I’ll snap them later and post them.
This area is so much more than the obscene money that comes in and out of it, and also so much more than the rude locals - almost everyone under a certain age here seems to be rude, arrogant and have hatred written all over them, it’s as if the world owes them something because people come here for holidays (not just foreigners, this area groans under the weight of French tourists during August). Most of the older people are lovely, almost as if the younger generation were bred elsewhere
This is an 1873 engraving of of our village, Laroque Bouillac, which was an illustration to an account of a journey from Figeac to Rodez on the newly opened railway. At that time the village, which is an Aveyron stretch of the Lot, could only be reached by boat. Today we have a main road which is both immensely convenient and a source of irritation
Thanks for sharing this fascinating view, Mark. I’ve had my atlas out tracing the railway from Figeac to Rodez (it seems to extend well beyond to the east), and I managed to spot the thin thread of the Aveyron, but failed to locate your village, which isn’t listed in my atlas, dated 2015.
Any local place-names to pinpoint it?
But you’ve supplied me with almost an hour of divertissement at the kitchen table! I had intended to cut the grass, but it has rained heavily while I was carried away with the map, and it was worth it.
Nevertheless Peter, I should apologise for possible confusion, as I meant to write ‘the village, which is on an Aveyron stretch of the Lot’ (around here, the river doesn’t also serve as a departmental boundary, but instead winds in and out of the Lot, Aveyron and Cantal). We’re tiny, but appear on most atlases between Bouillac and Boisse-Penchot, on the D840 between Capdenac and Decazeville;
Gotcha! I looked for Laroque rather than La Roque, the latter being the listing in my atlas, so I am now 100% fulfilled!
I always feel satisfyingly grounded when I can match an image to the map, and to a person or persons to both. Oddly, Google Earth doesn’t move me in the same way; I think it is my old fashioned upbringing with maps as a means to travel and to human encounter.
Unfortunately, where our house is in Carmaux was once only open fields (before 1971) so there are no old photos of the area.
But I do have a few old postcards of the Place Gambetta in the town - the same square where @an_droo has his Tabac, although I dont think it existed at the time these photos were taken!!!
it is Saint Tropez, the only harbour on the entire Mediterranean coast to face north.
Somewhere down the ages, the name got changed too.
