Philobiblon

Okay – enough lying around on the beach; today I decided it was about time to take up a spot of exercise, and recalling a pleasant, if steep famous stroll from Eze-sur-Mer to Eze – it is called the Sentier Nietzsche because it is here that he is supposed to have composed Thus Spoke Zarathustra – I set out.

But I made a fatal (at least, quite possibly to my knees) mistake, wandering into the tourist office first to pick up a guide to walks of the region, and ending up with the large and comprehensive – almost a book rather than a booklet – Les Guides Randoxygene, Pays Cotier 2008.

It has a walk that encompasses the Nietzsche path, but then goes on – ending up, in a phrase I find irresistible, at Neolithic ruins… so it came to be that I took the Circuit du Mont Bastide – only 6 km, but ranging in height from 0m to 650m, and pretty well always either up or down. Ranking “sportif”, the toughest in the guide, and defined as being for “marcheurs entraine”, which I’m definitely not.

But it was a nice walk, with only a few vertiginous moments, and the Neolithic ruins are very fine…

…even if the guide is disappointing silent on their details, and there’s no explanation on the site. Was it a permanent village, or more like a British “hill fort”, a refuge in case of trouble? Certainly it has a most spectacular view over the Med and what was probably the high walking route along the edge of the plateau. (The site is right near the local high point, Mount Bastide itself, at 650m.)

But they must have had either a very sophisticated water storage system, or carried water a long way, should they have spent any real time here – and I was thinking as I walked the rocky paths, very tough feet. Even if they used simple shoes of leather, the pressure of walking must have been great.

But that’s getting ahead of myself. You get out of the train at Eze-sur-Mer, and you start climbing – and pretty soon the Med is doing its Med stuff below you…


About an hour later you arrive at the “perched village” of Eze, although I’m cheating here with his picture, since its actually taken from the side of Mount Bastide…

Eze could be lovely, and probably is when the tour buses go home – but oh dear – as I was seeking lunch I saw a single group of nine buses of one American tour – seemingly “this is Monday so it must be France”… not an attractive sight or sound, and that’s pretty well what the shops of Eze cater to.

Still, the people of Old Eze, who only got their own water supply – from this single fountain – in 1930, and who hosted a chapel of the White Penitents, a lay order founded to deal with the plague and still dealing with leprosy around here in the early 20th century, probably would have thought it a fair trade.

And if you ignore the shops and look at the detail, there is still much to admire…

And the countryside is fascinating; the walking guide makes much of the great fire of 1986, which swept through an old pine forest. The vegetation now seems very mixed (a surprising number of oaks on the south side of Mt Bastide, and often surprisingly rich. Whenever I stopped to study it (that I was catching my breath as well is a given), there seemed a surprising wealth of fruit, although no doubt much of it poisonous…

And lots of the vegetation looked like it could look after itself, like this seriously spiny vine.

And what I think, if my Australian sheep farm memories are accurate, is saffron thistle, which has seriously infested the top of Mt Bastide….