Condoms and a b@stard hotel
Trip Start
Apr 20, 1998
1
19
24
Trip End
Nov 22, 2000
Condom, Midi-Pyrénées, France
Monday, August 14, 2000
The citizens of Condom in Gascony don´t find the name of their town remotely funny. Would you find it hilarious if you lived in an English town named Preservatif? And what about if carloads of grinning French posed for photographs beneath the town sign? You probably wouldn´t even raise a smile.
The best thing the French could do with their infamous town is make a lot of money from English speaking tourists. Yet it has taken a long time for locals to cash in on the joke. The Musée des Préservatifs (Condom Museum) only opened three months ago and there´s still no saucy postcards in the tourist shops.
Anyway, Condom offers a lot more besides a token photograph and a snigger at the Musée des Préservatifs. Condom is ideally placed for exploring the surrounding Gascony countryside with its vineyards and tranquil rural scenery. There are five historic villages arround Condom too, all within a half hours drive of each other.
Condom is a large provincial town. When we arrived there on the Wednesday the market was crowded with locals in their flat caps, shirts and trousers, tourists in singlets and shorts with impossibly large pockets and Africans in blue jeans and jackets. The market, spread through the centre town from the Cathédrale St Pierre to the Boulevard de la Libération, is filled with home made jams, foie gras (goose liver pâtê), pottery and second hand clothes. It's an easy and relaxed town in which to explore. We began at the Cathédrale and worked our way through the cobblestone backlanes. It is down one of these lanes where the new Musée des Préservatifs is hidden away.
The museum is actually a tasteful, informative history of the condom. For example, did you know the condom is actually named after a Dr Condom? The good doctor prescribed préservatifs in the 17th century to Charles II so he could avoid the scourge of royal illegitimate children. Not everyone liked this new artifical means of birth control. The Catholic Church was opposed to it and so was Casanova, the world´s most famous lover, who called condoms "the work of the devil."
The condoms used by Charles II were made out of sheep bladders and, as you can see from a sample on display, particularly gruesome. In 1839 Charles Goodyear revolutionised the contraceptive market with the mass production of safer, less expensive rubber condoms. There's also a display of safe sex advertising ("If it´s not on, it´s not on") from around the world and a documentary about the British Durex factory.
With the entire history of préservatifs to ponder on, we drove from Condom to Montréal past endless fields of sunflowers, bathing in the sun like complacent holidaymakers. We stopped to camp at a traditional farmyard, one of many in the area, that had been recommended to us in Condom. The Rose D'Armagnac is a typical, simple camping à la ferme. A shower block and electricity are the only luxuries, unlike the two camping grounds in
Condom with swimming pools, general stores and organised sports and activities. What you do get is a serene atmosphere where you can sip a glass of Armagnac French brandy and watch the sun set over the Gascony countryside. "It´s the perfect end to the day," said our only neighbours, a couple from Paris.
The Rose D'Armagnac is run by Welshman Howard Owen and his English wife Clare. They have lived in Gascony for eight years, Owen supplementing his income by sculpturing Buddahs and selling them around Europe. "The quality of life here is great," he said, gazing over his property into the vineyards next door. "I go back to London and think ´how do people stick it?´". He isn´t the only ex-pat to enjoy Gascony. Terry Wogan lives outside Montréal during the summer months.
We took three days to slowly tour the villages that encircle Condom. They could be all seen in a day, however it is more relaxing to linger over a café au lait or take a stroll through the outskirts of the villages.
Nobody in the Montréal tourist office could tell me if Montreal, Canada was named after their small town. "I do not know, but I think so," was the ambiguous answer. Montréal is a quiet village perched on a sharp rising hill.
The village was deserted apart from a group of men playing a leisurely game of pétanque. We stopped to eat a traditional Gascony dinner at the Chez Jospehine; jamon ham and buttered garlic salmon with an unlimited choice of good local red wine.
Just out of Montréal and worth a quick look is Seviac. A Roman villa was discovered here just thirty years ago. The large excavations dug out large thermal baths, pools and some fine mosaics depicting pear trees and grape vines. It was used as a burial ground after the Romans left. Two skeletons nicknamed Les Amants (The Lovers) on display were unearthed together, seemingly holding hands. They looked a little forlorn in their faded display case.
By the time we drove north from Seviac to Fourcès it had started to rain, for the first time in months according to a local. Fourcès is an unusually designed village. It follows a circular plan, almost like a maze, with well restored medieval shops and houses ringing a tree-shaded main square. There is an amazing flower market and festival here in Autumn which completely transforms the leafless town square into a carpet of flowers.
A friendly rugby fan who owned a pottery shop enthusiastically discussed France´s World Cup rugby campaign with me. He wore an Australian jumper because he admired their play. He didn´t like New Zealand though, claiming they were "dirty". That´s a laugh, I thought, coming from a Frenchman. I didn´t mention the Wales vs France game involving a Frenchman's bowling ball grip of a Welshman's eye.
In the Estate Agent´s window two chateaux were for sale. One, the Chateau de Cazaux D'Angles was a steal for 1,900,000 FF (£177,000) but it was all but gutted inside and from the outside it looked like it a relic from the French Revolution. The other partly restored chateau went for 7 million FF (£619,500).
There are so many farmhouses and small stone houses around Condom waiting for an idealistic family to restore them to their quaint, former beauty. The prices were neglible, the tourists few and the people arguably the friendliest in France. But then there was the winter solitude and the unemployment in a region with few industries. Howard from Rose D'Armagnac thought the area was a goldmine for those with an eye for restoration and rural life. "It´s only a matter of time before this region is discovered," he said.
We had a difficult time discovering Larressingle, which is hidden off the main road between Montreal and Condom. It is a 13th century fortified villages built by the Gascon barons and was the principle residence of the Abbots and the Bishops of Condom. Larressingle served as a refuge for the local people. A circular rampart protects the church and castle and a number of small dwellings. It is an impossibly small village, perhaps just fifty paces wide.
Despite the constant drizzle Larressingle was under siege again, this time by tourists and French school children. There was standing room only in the crêpê restuarants and the craft shops were doing a brisk business. Even the medieval museum with its suspect wax figures was full, though the rain may have been the deciding factor for its visitors.
In the austere church we found a novel way of collecting money. Visitors pay ten francs to hammer a nail into a beam of "medieval" wood. The log looks like it had been blasted with shotgun pellets. It was difficult to sit and contemplate our surroundings while children hammered enthusiastically in the background, but at least the money helps keep the church from ruins. Near the end of the 16th century the clergy moved to Cassaigne, taking the internal timbers and fittings from the church and castle with them. The whole village was falling apart until rescued by French authorities.
In contrast to the small church in Larressingle the huge 14th century collegiate church seems out of place in La Romieu, to the west of Condom. It looms out of the village looking like a grain silo. The village was used as a stopover by pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostella in Spain, which may explain the decision to build such a grand church. The sacristy in the church has some wonderful frescoes of the founders of the church and, strangely, black angels. We walked gingerly up the winding staircase from the sacristy to the top of the church tower. Below we could see three hikers who had stopped to rest, their Santiago pilgrim shells dangling from their packs. They were continuing a European tradition dating back hundreds of years.
La Romieu is also plagued by cats. We saw them perched on windowsills, creeping along rooftops and lapping water at the village fountain.
We asked the tourist office about their unusually large cat population. The tourist office sold us the story (literally, for 3 FF). The legend of the cats of La Romieu began with an orphan, Mariette, who lived in the village in the 1340´s. There was a great famine which lasted three years and in desperation the starved villages started dining on the local cats. Mariette, who had a great affinity for her feline friends, saved two of them, a male and female. Soon there was a whole litter in her attic. When the famine eventually ended the villagers faced a new problem - a plague of rats, as there were no cats left in the village. Mariette let her litter of cats go, thus saving La Romieu´s crops and its population again.
A sculptor from Orleans was told this story by his grandmother. Inspired, he revived the legend by placing sculptures of cats all around the village square. There is a sculpture of Mariette too, looking suspiciously feline. Legend tells that as Mariette grew older she began to resemble a cat herself.
Driving back from La Romieu through Condom we realised for the first time we had begun to take the town's name for granted. Condom had become just a focal point for the surrounding villages. There were no more jokes about Condom being twinned with Phuket, Thailand. Gone too were the awkward blushes when I asked the attractive girl in the tourist office if we could have a map for, er, the town where we were, er, presently in. "Yes, here it is, Condom!" she said rather too loudly.
Anyway, in nearby Lectorue, a large town dominated by the St Gervais Cathedral, there´s accommodation available at the two star Hotel dê Bastard. Now that was worth a laugh.
