26th of July the market halls of Clamecy in front of the cathedral open in the morning and offer a full of variety of fresh products. Arnaud planned to do some grocery shopping. As we were invited for dinner tonight I ordered a tarte at the bakery. It was put aside for the way back after our round tour over the market. It was so picturesque to stroll through the small little medieval alleyways.
Just observing the people having their little chats or choosing their products among the opulence of what each stand offered was a joy. Arnaud’s basket got more and more filled over the top and I just added an extra “pain aux raisin” which later turned out to be the last straw which broke the camel’s back because it jumped out of its paper bag even before it made its way home.
Back home it was time for getting my journal / blog updated. It consumed more time as I expected, but I wanted to do it in such a way, that it was bringing our experiences alive again reading it. In a time of zapping through pics and quickly consumed Instagram or Facebook posts I tended to do the exact opposite and invest time into what could turn out as treasure of wonderful memories.
For today we had the local museum of Clamecy on our plan. Beside the Gallo-Roman excavations and history which are part of the foundation of every collection around here the unique location of this place brought up a special trading good: The wood of the raftsmen being brought together in the harbour of Clamecy to be drifted all the way down to the river Seine to Paris. The firewood was gathered together as floats of up to 75m length and 5m wide. They contained 200 Ster (stacked cubic metre) of wood. 600.000 Ster were transported each year.
There were photos showing the wood drift at exactly the place where the people are landing with their holidays boats and enjoying the harbour in front of Arnaud’s house. The last wood floats were rafted until a hundred years ago when coal had already taken over the main sector of heating and energy supply.
Another exhibition which fascinated me the most was about the graphic artist Charles Loupot who had influenced the perception of advertisement into the smallest details and perfection. The productivity and variety of merchandise products revolutionised the way of commercials in its entity. For many years he didn’t live far from Clamecy and this collection is outstanding.
For the evening we were invited at friends from Arnaud for a barbecue. Alissa, Eian and their son James had started the fire already when we arrived. They were originally from America and had another friend Marc invited too. But what made the world being a village again was the fact that they were best friends with Stacy who was the project manager of my first team I was working for at the Jean Nouvel office in 1998. Unfortunately, she was not around as they live nearby. But we could send her at least a selfie to make her guess who was in town. We were enjoying the evening under the stars nearly until midnight.
