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There is nothing new in stating that Norway is one of the most spectacularly beautiful countries on the planet. Fans of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will know, of course, that Norway was in fact designed by the Magrathean engineer Slartibartfast, who won an award for it. I can confirm that the award was well deserved.

There’s not much more to say about our short trip to Norway’s western fjords in July, except that the photos and videos we made don’t do the landscape justice. And it’s important to note that it’s not just the fjords that are beautiful – the drive there and back from Oslo was  equally spectacular.

On the way north, we drove up through Hagafoss and over the Route 50 to Aurland – one of the most scenic drives I’ve ever done. And on the way back (via the Lærdal Tunnel, the longest road tunnel in the world at 24.5km), we crossed through the equally beautiful Hemsedal, over 1000m plateaux that reminded us of the central North Island or the McKenzie Country in New Zealand.

It also helps that Norway is ridiculously prosperous thanks to offshore oil, a small population and wise investment. The Scandanavian social model of high taxes, state-supported infrastructure and generous welfare system finds its apogee in Norway. It also has some of the lowest speed limits in the world – all the better for enjoying the scenery!

If you’ve not been to Norway before, save some money and make the time. You will never regret it.

The blog has been silent this week while I’ve been travelling in northern Europe. Now I’m back home, I hope to write several catch-up posts about the experience, including photos and videos. I’ll just need a few days to get it done!

Morning on the Aurlandsfjord, Norway

I was busy as a bee in Brussels over the weekend. It was basically my Belgian baptism: beer, bandes dessinées and bilingualism. It was, to be blunt, bloody brilliant.

Saturday morning sun among the guildhalls in the Grote Market

Hanging out at the Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinée…

…and finding parallels between Hergé and Breugel at the Musée Royal des Beaux-Arts

When in Rome…

Saturday night with the guys from Batucada Sound Machine…

Sunday morning confronting the colonial past at the Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale…

…before a Sunday afternoon lost among the glass towers of EU officialdom…

…all achieved in less than 48 hours!

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.

Geographically speaking, Paris is not a big city. Its suburbs stretch on forever and are home to 11 million people , but the city proper, (just 2.2 million inhabitants), is clearly enclosed with the boulevard périphérique. The city can be crossed, according to Graham Robb “in a few hours” by foot.

On a day-to-day basis, you never realise the true size of Paris while you zoom from place to place by métro, bus or taxi. So a friend and I decided to test the “smallness” of the city by walking across it in an afternoon. We followed roughly the route of Métro Line 4, from Porte d’Orléans in the south to Porte de Clignancourt in the north, with a little meander eastwards to take in parts of the Marais.

If we had taken a direct route, the distance would have been just 9km, however with the detours we walked about 13km. South of the river, we traced the route of Général LeClerc’s 2nd Armoured Division as it liberated Paris from German forces on 25th August, 1944. There is even a monument in the Jardin du Luxembourg to one Jean Arnould, killed while liberating the park from Nazi oppression.

Crossing the river by way of the Ile St-Louis, we dog-legged right to walk through the Hôtel de Sully and the Place des Vosges before following our nose north-west past Place de la République towards the 18th arrondissement.

Climbing over the Butte de Montmartre and down the other side, we arrived at the Porte de Clignancourt four and a half hours after we started out. Paris est à nous!

We made a video: four and a half hours walking summarised in four and a half minutes:

The places seen in the video are, in order, from south to north:

Monument LeClerc, Porte d’Orléans, 14e
Place Denfert-Rochereau, 14e
Hôpital St Vincent de Paul, 6e
Fontaine des Explorateurs, 6e
Jardin du Luxembourg
Beer stop, rue Soufflot, 5e
La Sorbonne, 5e
Cathédrale Nôtre-Dame de Paris
The Seine @ Quai de la Tournelle
Hôtel de Sully, 4e
Place des Vosges, 4e
Place de la République, 11e
Arc de Triomphe de la Porte St-Martin, 10e
Tati, boulevard Rochechouart, 18e
Sacré Coeur / Montmartre
Café La Maison Rose, rue de l’Abreuvoir, 18e
Stairs, rue des Saules, 18e
Traffic, Porte de Clignancourt
Celebrating a successful walk with another beer -  Bistrot la Renaissance, rue Championnet, 18e

We imagine there are very few native Parisians who have ever walked the width of their own city, and it’s certainly not something recommended (yet) in the tourist guides.

There are plans afoot to repeat the exercise later this summer by crossing Paris along an east/west axis – a journey of at least 16 kilometres.  Does anyone want to join us?

Some pictures of a hot and humid  Sunday afternoon spent in London before catching the Eurostar back to Paris….

Two hours on the grass in Hyde Park with the Sunday papers!

The New Zealand War Memorial at Hyde Park Corner

Horse riders get a special high-up button to cross the traffic at Hyde Park Corner

I hadn’t visited Parliament for years. Victoria Tower at the Palace of Westminster is most impressive… !

The Clocktower and the statue of Boudica (the original British rebel) stand by Westminster Bridge

More crumbs from the weekend… not only did I visit the Saturday market, I also went to Le Vert Anglais for a burger (according to Ed, the best burger in France, and I won’t contradict him!)

A burger and Orangina under the pine tree on Place de Castellane is a good way to spend a few hours on a sunny Saturday.

The Languedoc summer provides perfect conditions for an outdoor meal of tapas, accompanied by well-selected bottles of Rioja and Pic Saint-Loup in the old town. It’s great to catch up with friends, and after so many months in Paris, it’s nice to remember that the Spanish border is not so far away after all…

My visit to Montpellier coincided with the Comédie du Livre – apparently the second-largest book festival in France – bringing hundreds of authors and BD artists into town.  Fans of all ages flocked to the tents set up on the Place de la Comédie and the Esplanade to get that personal dédicace from their favourite author or dessinateur.

To complement the burgers and tapas, some intellectual nourishment was in order. On Sunday I attended a live broadcast of L’Esprit Public on Radio France Culture, held in Montpellier as part of the festival.

I am fascinated by the particularly French respect for “talking heads”, and the broadcast featured some heavy hitters of the French intello-politico-media-élite: historian and member of the French Academy Max Gallo, politician Jean-Louis Bourlanges, journalist Philippe Labarde, and law professor Dominique Rousseau.

Philipe Meyer played the role of genial animateur, orchestrating the egos and brainpower at his disposal with alacrity and humour.  The topics for the show were the European deficit crisis and reform of the French education system. You can listen here.

The often controversial right-wing polemicist Eric Zemmour was supposed to participate in a live debate on Sunday afternoon. Having seen Monsieur Zemmour many times on television I was looking forward to seeing some sparks fly. But for some last minute reasons he was unable to travel to Montpellier for the festival.

Despite Zemmour’s absence, his “opponent” Jean-Francois Kahn delivered a fascinating session on the dangers of groupthink and la pensée unique – Kahn was highly critical of the French media and its role as a critic and commentator.

Keeping up with all that abstract debate was thirsty work – and there is no better way to round off a weekend in the south of France than with a pastis at sunset!

It has been a wonderful Sunday, profitably spent achieving nothing in particular. I set off across the river with the vague image of lunch somewhere in the Marais.  First stop is shopping: a new pair of sunglasses (after 10 years I figure I can replace my old pair). I find the Ray-Bans I’m looking for in the  grand but soulless shopping centre under the Louvre.

Thence eastwards by Vélib along the rue St Honoré into the 4th arrondissement.  A halt outside the Hôtel de Ville allows time to locate the nearest Vélib parking station (yes, there is an iPhone app), where I drop the bicycle and head by foot into the narrow streets north of rue de Rivoli.

The 3rd and the northern section of the 4th arrondissements meander in a tight web towards Place de la République. No particular route through the quartier seems faster than any other, and you stumble across ramshackle hôtels particuliers and little green squares around every second corner.

The street names betray the mediaeval origin of this part of town. On the corner on rue des Hospitaliers Saint-Gervais et rue des Francs Bourgeois I stop at Le Voltigeur for a light lunch – coffee, croque-monsieur and salad. I read some Robert Sabatier while Bill Evan’s final album plays in the background. His version of Suicide is Painless takes on extra weight with the knowledge of his death within months of the recording.

Further north, in the heart of the 3rd arrondissement, rooflines jostle for position as if thrown up for the décor of a stage production.

Away from the busy pedestrian streets, little reminders of an older Paris can still be found.  Sometimes, you almost believe you’re somewhere in the “real” France, and you ponder what that phrase “real France” might actually mean.

Here and there, at the angle of a street where plane trees sprout energetically amidst the yellow stone, you get the impression that you are an intruder upon the afternoon calm of a village, where discretion is the better part of valour. This is the Paris I am coming to love – secretive and surprising in its silence even in the heart of the city.

Outside the Mairie of the 3rd arrondissement, I find a Vélib to take me south again to the familiar shores of the Left Bank. Across the Pont Neuf, a right turn onto Quai Conti, past the Pont des Arts and the gendarmes outside Jacques Chirac’s apartment, back to the street where the local accordionist has arrived for an afternoon of wine and approximate melodies.

Charles-Marie Widor – Toccata from Symphony for Organ No. 5 in F Major

St Germain-des-Prés is named for the famous abbey which has stood near the walls of Paris since the 13th century. But this morning, in time for mass on All Saint’s Day, and on the suggestion of my friend William, our destination was the quartier’s other well-known church. The Église Saint-Sulpice is nearly as big as Nôtre-Dame, and almost as famous: it even features prominently in Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, for those who care.

It was nice to celebrate mass on November 1st (although the choir was frankly decrepit and the lack of an order of service made it occasionally difficult for us Protestant-raised anglophones to join in the sung responses in Latin and French).

However our real motivation for visiting St Sulpice was to hear the organ. William is an organist in his other life, so visiting St Sulpice is something of an obligation while he’s living in Paris.

Originally built in 1781, the great organ at St Sulpice is the only intact surviving example of the work of French master organ-builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.  The organist at St Sulpice from 1870 to 1933 was Charles-Marie Widor, who composed one of the most pieces in the organ repertoire, the Toccata from his Symphony for Organ No.5

After the service, the postludes were an opportunity to hear the instrument in full flight – a Toccata sur Placare Christe servulis by Dupré, Franck’s Choral 1 en mi majeur and Gigout’s Toccata (one of William’s party pieces apparently).

On our way towards the exit, we absently joined a short queue of people who we thought were waiting to climb the church towers. In fact, quite by chance it was the line to visit the organ loft: a fact we discovered by asking the guy in front of us, a rather dapper looking gentleman who apologised for his bad French and turned out to be the organist at Turin Cathedral !

Up the spiral staircase we emerged among the pipes and blowers of one of the most famous organs in the world. It’s at least three storeys high and possibly has its own postcode. In the middle of it all was the saint des saints… the 5-manual organ console where Widor actually composed his Toccata.

Holding court between services was the titular organist, Daniel Roth who before coming to St Sulpice in 1985 was organist at Nôtre-Dame for 12 years. Long tenure is a tradition at St Sulpice. Since 1619, there have only been 12 named organists. Widor himself occupied the seat for 64 years!

William managed to have a chat with Daniel Roth for a few minutes, where apparently they got to geek out about speaking stops and bourdons and jeux de fond.  In among the pipes there was a little lounge containing photos and autographs of organists who have played at St Sulpice, including Albert Schweitzer, (who as well as being an organist managed to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. As you do.)

After our morning’s organ pilgrimage, we emerged into the rain and headed for lunch with William’s fiancée – a superb meal at Le Pré aux Clercs on rue Jacob. We found out later that this bistrot was Ernest Hemingway’s favourite. In St Germain-des-Près it seems you are only ever one wine glass (or an organ stop) away from history…

The first part of the trip towards Paris took me up some back roads from Montpellier to Clermont-Ferrand, over the top of the Cévennes. It was a spectacular and remarkably traffic-free drive, made all the more fun by a computer glitch (I assume) at the car hire company that allocated me a BMW rather than a Peugeot.

It’s an hour or so from Montpellier to St-Jean-du-Gard, winding through the arrière-pays of northern Languedoc. October means hunting season, and the roads were dotted with huddles of parked cars. Hunters were pacing up and down in flourescent jackets, rifles draped over their arm, their dogs tensed and ready to dash into the undergrowth to retrieve whatever furry or feathery things their dayglo-orange masters had just killed.

131 years ago, Robert Louis Stevenson passed through St-Jean-du-Gard with a donkey, but today I just stopped to buy lunch before starting along the twisty high road to Florac, the départmentale route 9 known as the Corniche des Cévennes.

The Cévennes is another one of those relatively under-appreciated parts of France, formed by deep river gorges and high plateaus (called les causses) reaching up to a thousand metres and more above sea level. The region’s ruggedness and isolation meant that historically it was a refuge for French Protestants, and one of the hotbeds of resistance during the Second World War. Even today it’s a remote place: the Lozère département is the least populated in France, and has the highest average altitude of any region.

As the road climbs higher you leave coastal Languedoc behind. Vineyards and terracotta architecture give way to slate roofs, cattle farms and pine forests. When the road emerges onto the plateaux above 800 metres, the vast stretches of high country reminded me of the central North Island of New Zealand: sparse grasslands and plantation forest line the route. All that was missing was a snowy Mount Ruapehu peeking over the horizon.

Even after you leave the Corniche, the route towards Clermont-Ferrand loses little of its altitude. I passed through Marvejols (an interesting-looking town with an old centre that is probably worth a return visit) before joining the A75 autoroute that zaps north-south across the midriff of France, three quarters of a mile up in the sky.

A final detour from the A75 took me past the Viaduc de Garabit – a 120-metre tall railway bridge crossing the Truyère river. It was one of the major engineering achievments of Gustave Eiffel, who completed it in 1884 before starting work on a rather large tower in Paris. But Paris is for tomorrow. Today was about driving across the roof of France.