Dwight Peck's personal website. You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go. Who knows how? Off we go again -- as far as the end of the street, where two gendarmes were posted to go over our papers and car fairly thoroughly. As so often in these cases, the older one was abrupt and imperious, technically courteous but grimly skeptical our explanations, whilst the younger one was embarrassed for the older one.
Anyway, they let us go. But our room's not ready yet. Which is principally why we're here now; gasping in anticipation. A quick walk round town to re-familiarize ourselves with the venue. Meyrueis, at the intersection of trade routes through the area, has a long if incompletely recorded history, from Celtic tribes distributed amongst the causses to early Christian communities, to Carolingian-era barons of the Anduze family with a castle up on those rocks to a succession of owners through to the 14th century.
The clock tower is a remnant of the old city wall. The Maison Portalier from the 15th century, at the foot of the Rue des Gras an Occitan word for 'stairs'. The inscription on the lintel says 'Tricaudin, eater of foxes' and is considered to have been the sign of a tavern.
The Rue des Gras up the hill behind the village. The town was a prosperous trade and transhumance centre from the 10th century, with license to hold three annual fairs and weekly markets from ; they even had a tiny Jewish quarter. The immediate area abounds with the remains of old monasteries and a hospital of the Knights of St John, with a decent pilgrimage trade attracted by the pieces of the "True Cross" that somehow fetched up here.
In the 16th century, everybody took up hatting as a profession and the town went Protestant, but got battered out of that over the next two centuries or so, with an uneasy mix of the two religions but an abiding faith in making hats. Nowadays, in the absence of a brisk trade in hats, tourism makes up the difference. The Squirrel will excuse us and occupy herself as we descend to the New Year's Eve dinner and party. Wrong -- The Squirrel took off and is presently it turned out hiding under that stack of chaises longues.
