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The eastern suburbs of Paris are not generally reputed for their beauty or their sehenswürdigkeit.  One exception is the town of Joinville-le-Pont, sitting astride the Marne river just on the far side of the Bois de Vincennes.

The town includes the Ile Fanac, a wooded island in the middle of the river, on which stand a number of fine fin-de-siècle homes.

The calm, regulated waters of the Marne make this area an ideal place for rowing, and Joinville-le-Pont has become something of a French Henley-on-Thames, with rowing clubs sprinkled along the riverbanks.

Joinville-le-Pont was an early centre of French film production, and just across the river you can still see the studios of Pathé Frères, regularly used by film-makers such as Jean Renoir and René Clair in the years before the Second World War.

Finally, a wander up the river and under the A4 autoroute brings you to Chez Gégène, one of the last guingettes still operating in the Paris region. These riverside restaurants and cabaret venues were originally set up outside the city walls to escape the taxes and prohibitions of Paris itself.

From the end of the 19th Century until the 1950s the guingettes were popular places for eating and dancing. But today, like the old brick Pathé studios, they stand as memorials to an earlier age of  entertainment…

It is a rare and exciting day when you hear a musician of the calibre of Eddie Palmieri in concert. One of the founding fathers of New York salsa and a great innovator in the Latin jazz of the 1970s, Palmieri brought his Afro-Carribean All-Stars to New Morning in Paris last Friday, and they blew the roof off.

Eddie Palmieri, Concert Pique-Nique, Reims France, 17.07.2010. Image: Eulsteph

Two hours of music stretched out over a pair of sets, suffused with humour and generosity. It was hard to suppress a giggle when Palmieri threw a quote from Salt Peanuts into one of his famously overblown solo passages. The grinning complicity between Palmieri and his bass player, Luques “Salsa” Curtis was evident throughout the gig.

Brian Lynch, Concert Pique-Nique, Reims France, 17.07.2010. Image: Eulsteph

The presence of trumpeter Brian Lynch in the touring band was a particular pleasure – an incredibly technically accomplished player, Lynch has been a regular collaborator with Palmieri since 1987, and directed the Grammy-winning album Simpàtico in 2006.

The music traversed Palmieri’s jazz catalogue (including tunes from Simpàtico and 1990′s Palmas) and included a steaming Latin version of Monk’s In Walked Bud, a nod to one of Palmieri’s own stylistic influences on the piano.

Palmieri apologised that the band wouldn’t be playing his salsa hits (Vamonos pa l’Monte, Cuidate Compay…), because of a lack of vocalists in the group. But with the energy on show last Friday, nobody went home disappointed. This is a gig I’ll remember for a long time.

I wrote last year about my chance meeting with Leanna Mills and her family in Montpellier. I was particularly moved by their story and have kept in touch with the family since.

With more surgery upcoming for Leanna and her sister Bethany, the family arrived back in France this week. They passed through Paris briefly on their way to Montpellier.

On Thursday evening I caught up with the girls and their father Nic for dinner. Afterwards we went down to the Eiffel Tower for some sightseeing. I’m still not much good at driving a wheelchair, and the evening crowds didn’t make it easier! Their little sister Olivia came with us, and had a lot of fun with the souvenir sellers…

Bethany, Nic, Leanna and Olivia in Paris

Bethany’s surgery is routine but still dramatic – she is getting the batteries replaced for the brain stimulator device that keeps her alive. The technology is slowly improving, and doctors  hope that her new batteries will last longer than two years. Bethany uses a wheelchair, but thanks to continuing surgery she remains fairly mobile and independent.

On the other hand, Leanna is facing a much grimmer challenge. In addition to her primary dystonia, she has recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease – terrible news for a 15 year-old girl.  Leanna now requires significant care, and the outlook does not look good for much improvement.

Mills Sisters Registered Charity

The Mills family currently need help raising funds to buy a block of land in Newcastle, Australia and to construct a disability-friendly home for the girls. They have a registered charity, and donations are accepted online at their MyCause page. These donations are tax-deductible in Australia.

In other developments, the sisters now have their own website. With permission of the family, I also have set up a Facebook page – so you can follow them if you’re on Facebook, and I hope to post regular updates there as I hear news…

The 14th of July (which NOBODY in France calls “Bastille Day”, by the way) dawned bright, promising a hot day with sun shining benignly down on the amassed weaponry parading down the Champs-Elysées. Shorts, sunglasses, sunscreen and digital cameras seemed the essential equipment to enjoy the day.

How wrong we were. As we took up our position in the roof garden of an office building just a block back from the Arc de Triomphe (friends with high places, naturally), and while snipers from the Gendarmerie stared at us through binoculars, clouds started moving in from the east, looming darkly over the Eiffel Tower.

The storm held off long enough for us to watch the French Air Force roar down the length of the Voie Triomphale, from La Défense to the Louvre. It was an impressive sight.

New Zealand’s airforce consists of a handful of Vietnam-era helicopters, a few transport planes that occasionally drop boxes of aid to cyclone-stricken Pacific islands and a part-time brass band. France has, er, a few more planes than we do:

And then, as soon as the jets got out of the way, the heavens opened. Paris was hit by a month’s worth of rain in three hours. We unsuccessfully dodged the showers and – strangely – found ourselves in a bar in time for lunch. We were wet, but seemed to be doing something right.

L’Ecluse specialise in the wines of Bordeaux. We ignored the bottle of 1979 St Pétrus on their wine list at €1227 and opted for a €25 Château Margaux instead. After drying out over a few glasses and an “Assortiment de cochonnailles” (a plate containing variations on pig), I sensed that the rain was easing and that I should make a dash for the métro.

My expectation of improving weather proved of course to be hilariously and liquidly wrong. As I reached the bottom of Avenue Georges V, another torrential downpour hit. By the time I took this video of a Leclerc tank rumbling onto the Pont de l’Alma, I was soaked to the skin.

The rest of the day was spent drying off, wandering around the Marais in the newly resurgent sunshine, and then heading up the tower of the American Cathedral (yes, more friends with high places) for a few drinks and to watch the fireworks over Trocadéro at 11pm. But that is another episode…

To complement our previous journey from south to north, yesterday we achieved the obvious second objective – to cross Paris from west to east, on foot. From Porte Maillot to Porte de Vincennes. It took us 6 hours, and we covered 14.2 kilometres.

We ignored the warnings of heatwave, and were surprised by lower-than-predicted temperatures.  A light rainstorm in the afternoon helped keep things manageable. The City of Paris, however, were taking no chances:  heatwave warnings were displayed everywhere on the public information screens.

The journey was documented in real-time via Twitter, but here are a few highlights in images:

Parc de Monceau, a welcome patch of greenery in the 8th arrondissement

Jeanne d’Arc defying the English outside Saint-Augustin (Paris 8e)

A very reasonably priced lunch at Bouillon Chartier

The Promenade Plantée offers a quiet green corridor for pedestrians and cyclists to cross the 12th arrondissement

As we reached journeys end at the périphérique on the eastern edge of Paris, the chimneys got more fanciful…

My blog is currently subtitled “A kiwi in Paris, sweating on the metro“, and this week I have fully lived up to this moniker. In celebration of the official heatwave in Paris, and faced with news it’s only going to get hotter, here’s a “really-can’t-be-arsed-writing-anything” post.

Have a play with this tone matrix (you’ll work it out), and think of all of us in Western Europe who are perspiring into the night.

Quand on arrive en Nouvelle-Zélande, on se sent forcément loin de chez soi.
“Arriving in New Zealand, you inevitably feel a long way from home.”

Charles Juliet – Auckland, août 2003

On the recommendation of a Twitter buddy, I’ve been reading Charles Juliet‘s Au pays du long nuage blanc: his journal of six months in New Zealand in 2003 while on a writer’s fellowship in Wellington.

Like all New Zealanders who are by nature slightly insecure about their nation’s reputation abroad, I was initially interested to see what an eminent French author thought of our country. Indeed, Juliet picks up on many of the usual kiwi tropes: the friendliness and informality of people, the centrality of rugby to the national narrative and the lack of insulation and heating in our houses.

The journal oscillates between observations of some of the remarkable aspects of life in New Zealand and reflections on Juliet’s own craft as a writer and poet. Descriptions of the weather constantly intervene, as one might expect given that Juliet spent a winter in Wellington!

Wellington, NZ – May 2008

Juliet spends much of his time exchanging with some of New Zealand’s notable intellectuals: Vincent O’Sullivan, Dame Fiona Kidman and Gordon Stewart among others. In particular he describes long lunchtime conversations with Chris Laidlaw, (broadcaster, diplomat, politician, academic and former All Black). Juliet also devotes many pages reflecting on his long-time admiration for Katherine Mansfield.

Juliet’s journal provided a personal connection too: when Juliet visits Auckland, it is at the invitation Professor Raylene Ramsay at Auckland University, who supervised my Honours dissertation! It was a curious experience to have the name of a personal acquaintance dropped into the middle of a book bought at FNAC Montparnasse.

Charles Juliet (Image: Léa Crespi, Télérama)

Despite the obvious pleasure Charles Juliet derives from his time in New Zealand, the journal is haunted by his awareness of the great distance that separates him from his homeland, France. And when Juliet finally leaves New Zealand in January 2004, he acknowledges that he will never return to the Land of the Long White Cloud.

Au pays du long nuage blanc is an easy read (I finished it in just 2 days), and would be of interest to anyone who wants to explore strands of the relationship between France and New Zealand. It’s published by Gallimard in Folio for EUR5.60.

Finies ces longues errances
sous des ciels éteints
Finis ces combats truqués
Où j’étais toujours vaincu
Fini ce temps installé
Dans la misère du non
J’ai déposé le poids mort
qui obscurcissait ma vie
Long a été le chemin
qui m’a permis
de quitter mon enfance

Charles Juliet – Wellington, décembre 2003

Wyuna Bay, Coromandel Peninsula, NZ – June 2008

This was the view yesterday morning from the Pont des Arts, looking east to the Ile de la Cité. There were train strikes and I decided to walk to Châtelet RER instead of braving the Métro. The reward was this sight of the Seine, almost completely motionless beneath a clear summer sky.

Say the words “Forest of Chantilly” and you might immediately imagine one of those cutaway gags in The Simpsons where Homer says to himself  “Mmmmm….Forest of Chantilly“, and he daydreams of prancing through groves of swirly cream trees, grabbing mouthfuls of marscarpone squirrel while blizzards of cherries tumble from the sky.

However, the Forest of Chantilly is a real place: 6,000 hectares of woodland lying 40 kilometres north of Paris on the RER D line, and the trees are not made of the eponymous cream. I went for a walk through the forest on Friday, from Orry-la-Ville to the Château de Chantilly.

The Parc Astérix is situated nearby, and one could almost imagine Obélix hunting wild boar in these woods. But there is little sense of wilderness: the forest is a working source of sustainable timber and is still used as a hunting park as it was in the time of the French monarchy.

In the middle of the forest are the Etangs de Commelles – a series of large artificial lakes built by Cistercian monks in the 13th Century as fishing ponds. Chateaubriand wrote about the lakes in the 19th Century, and today they harbour a remarkable range of birdlife and a large population of water-rats, some of whom sat on the bank, watching me eat my lunch.

Chantilly is a major horse racing centre. On a nearby estate, the Aga Khan keeps half the bloodstock of France.  The forest is criss-crossed by long, straight galloping tracks laid down in soft sand, dedicated to training racehorses. Walkers must take care because these tracks are restricted to horses and their jockeys from 6am to 1pm.

If you follow the GR11 path towards Chantilly, you emerge from the forest at the “service entrance” to the Château.

The Château itself, once home to the Condé and the Montmorency families, is popular with tourists and school groups. The well-groomed parkland is a startling contrast to the solitude of the forest.

From the Château, you can walk around the edge of the racecourse, past the most impressive set of stables you’ll see anywhere, back to the Chantilly-Gouvieux railway station. From there, you can be back in Paris in 40 minutes.

The excellent maps produced by the Institut Géographique National (IGN) make it very easy to put on a good pair of walking shoes and launch into the French countryside. It’s one of my favourite activities: at walking pace, you can better understand a landscape, you can avoid the crowds and make unexpected discoveries.

When I lived in Alsace, IGN maps of the southern Vosges were pinned across my apartment walls. And everywhere I’ve lived since my collection of maps (and walking experiences) has expanded.

These few weeks of rest between jobs end on Monday, so this week has been a last chance to enjoy some parts of the Paris region I hadn’t yet seen.  Yesterday I caught a train from Gare Montparnasse to Rambouillet and set off on a circuit through the Forêt de Rambouillet, one of the largest forests near Paris, 200 square kilometres in size. As usual, I took some pictures.

The Château de Rambouillet was a royal hunting lodge from the 1500s onwards, today it’s a summer home for French presidents. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing reinaugurated “presidential hunts” in the 1970s, and the goddess Diana with her attendant dogs and stags still watch over the park.

Walking out of Rambouillet towards the village of Gazeran, fields of wheat bend in the wind.

Once inside the forest, Rambouillet’s oaks stretch for miles and miles…

This is a forest where Scouts and ramblers make mysterious magic circles of unknown purpose,

A forest where witches might lurk in hidden cottages,

A forest which is empty during the week, save for a few deer and the lone walker.