The day started with serious rubbernecking in Amiens cathedral. That header image is a detail from the West front. I had been to Amiens before, back in 1980 in my cycle tour of the great cathedrals forming a necklace around Paris with my then girlfriend/partner, Kay. I think then our route had been [Beauvais], Amiens, Noyon. Soissons, Laon, Reims but those were the days of 35mm film and I haven’t scanned most of the images from that amazing trip nor am I 100% of that route a scary 46 years later. Hm.
Well, 21st Century technology confirms that the route ten years ago today was this.
And equally 21st C: the time stamps on my images say I wasn't packed and leaving the campsite until 11.20.
And this was the lovely cycle path from the campsite into the centre of Amiens.
So by midday I was at the cathedral.
The interior is as stunning as that west front but I know that gothic cathedrals aren't everyone's cup of tea so if they're not yours, skip on until you see a food break ahead!
The interior is stunning. I remembered it as one of the "cleanest" of the interiors of French gothic cathedrals that I knew and I think that was correct. (Fits with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiens_Cathedral which has much detail and far better images than mine!)
However, I had forgotten just how much amazing "furniture" there is inside. This momento mori would normally be a bit OTT for me but it caught me. Yes, we should all remember that we all must die and perhaps I should give more thanks for being alive ten years on from this and still able to enjoy it.
I really liked that mourning cherub with the skull!
And this huge and very baroque piece is definitely at the ornate edge of my comfort zone but appealed.
Digression
Perhaps this day is a "double time travel" day: 2016 and I've already added 190 and somewhere between 1975 and 1978 I leavened my pre-clinical medical lectures by going to a term of lectures on "Mannerism and the Baroque" given by the amazing Nikolaus Pevsner. The choice was surely partly guided by the fact that Pevsner's Buildings of England books were of almost biblical importance to my father in my childhood as he took us British castles, cathedrals and churces.
It was one of the priviledges of Cambridge that in principle any student could go to any lecture. I knew then that Mannerism and the Baroque were not me but I also felt I shouldn't pass up the chance to hear him and I suspect I said to myself "well, if the first one is a turn off, I don't have to continue". He was stunning, I remember a heavy middle German accent, a slow but still spellbinding, energising voice and a series of slides that completely changed my views. I went to all eight lectures and reader I could have married him (OK, hyperbole, poetic licence, forgive me. However, I was absolutely stunned: this was a true academic. He must have been 73 at least and in a sort of timeless prime of complete immersion in his topic, his emotions and thoughts about it and his quiet confidence that we would listen and understand. I was having, or going to have, some medical lectures, certainly including from Nobel prize winners and Fellows of the Royal Society, Colin Blakemore on vision in my third year was outstanding; but this was something else, a reminder that the arts, and history are vital.
Hm, I went another of my intellectual loves, wikipedia, to find Pevsner's date of birth but I recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolaus_Pevsner for the history of his initial Nazi sympathies. I wonder where he ended up in that after his mother, who hadn't escaped Germany when he and his wife and children did, committed suicide before she would have been sent to a concentration camp. His daughter narrowly escaped recognition as a jew and survived the war in Germany. Hm, one can be immersed in intellectual, aesthetic passions at the expense of others around you. The image in wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolaus_Pevsner#/media/File:Nikolaus_Pevsner.jpg is pretty much how I remember him.
Back to 2016
I had completely forgotten this huge polyptych (or 3D cartoon) of the life and death of John the Baptsit in the choir.
Wikipedia tells me it dates from 1531.
After all that it was time for lunch, or to fuel up for the challenge ahead!
The way marker on the map up at the top of this page marks a tiny village, Monsures, here in the English wikipedia and a much larger entry in the French version. It had this 12th Century church (and a population of about 200 according to those wikipedia pages).
Then it was on to Beauvais and I didn't make in there ...
... until nearly 19.00 and I remember I only just managed to get into a restaurant to refuel. I though the restaurant was something "d'antan" (rather archaic French for "of old") but I can't see that on Gurgle maps. I do know I was in a rather technicolour cheap hotel.
... which came up rather wonderfully when I added flash ...
... those reflective tyre sidewalls really worked eh? I think some of the other images on the walls were of London but perhaps I am misrembering? Enough!