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Roland Routier

September 2017 - May 2024
An open-ended adventure by Roland Routier Read more
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  • TravelerRoland Routier

    A fair country

    October 14, 2017 in Italy ⋅ 🌙 13 °C

    An extended market day in Borzonasca, the nearest town.
    The farm surroundings have provided many different mushrooms, (which have been eaten,) and an abundant supply of chestnuts, (which we roast at the fair and sell.)
    Every hamlet here has a church with a priest that they supported. One extra mouth to feed was always a heavy burden for peasant families although it extended the power of the church into the minutiae of everybody's life.
    Borzonasca is a three church town, with alters like wedding cakes, of no particular beauty.    Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    Busman's holiday

    October 16, 2017 in Italy ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C

    My official day-off today and I drove for two hours last night down the motorway from Liguria into Tuscany to Marina di PietraSanta, the village a few kilometres North of Viareggio where Vanessa has a beach house.

    This time I did not get the day wrong and was in place to greet her when she came down from Florence so we could spend the day together whist she took care of the house and paid her respects to the garden.

    Like a good WorkAway I mowed the lawn.    Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    Never promsed you a Rose garden

    October 23, 2017 in Italy ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    CentroAnidra make a rose syrrup and rose jams which they sell although probably not for a profit. They want their production to grow so this week we are onto it.
    The rough, grass field should have been ploughed last year and sowed with clover or something similar. Then we could have simply ploughed it again this year, leaving a nice nitrogen rich earth for the roses.
    Instead we ploughed it a few days ago, leaving a mess of buried roots and sods to clean up as we go.
    The rows were staked out and drip irrigation line laid along them. Insufficient fittings had been bought as nobody had seen fit to calculate the amount necessary before buying them, so the job was half done.
    In the meantime, the bushes were dug from the nursery, separated into individual plants, and planted along the rows.
    Some of the volunteers have been gathering and pressing olives.They are small and hard and not very tasty, but the oil is very tasty. Perhaps the the cause can be found in their age: they had been Bonsai trees in pots for a score of years before being planted a couple of years.    Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    CentroAnidra staff

    October 23, 2017 in Italy ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    Some of the people at CentroAnidra.

    Last night Paolo favours us with a 2 hour presentation on personal development covering some basic science, psychology and philosophy lavishly illustrated with personal and somewhat risque anecdotes. He outlines 3 primal fears that stop us developing which I interpreted as separation anxiety, fear of failure and fear of losing one's identity.

    The guru tells us that since conquering these fears he attracts many women without effort; but has no attachment to them as he has reached the stage of personal spiritual development beyond such petty cravings, (but he does maintain extremely cordial relations with Antonella.)

    Similarly, he tells us that though he created CentroAnidra through his vision and high level personal contacts, he is detached from the success or failure of the organisation. Having no skin in the game does make it easier to be aloof I suppose.

    Teresa is the Managing Director of the centre cannot afford the luxury of detachment as she does have skin in the game, dealing on a daily basis with the legal and financial responsibilities of an organisation that still, after 7 years existence, is barely breaking even. The centre has benefited and she has suffered from managing the centre like an accountant: hands-on and in-detail. Now she has stepped back to preserve her sanity, but no operations director has materialised to assist her and they can't afford to hire someone. The centre would benefit if her two deputies reported regularly to one overall chief, and they assigned jobs and resources together.

    Antonella, another vital and essential member of the centre, originates near Sienna and, having spent 14 formative years growing up in Oxford, speaks better English than I do. She has the capacity to run the whole operation efficiently but chooses to restrain her capabilities to Public Relations in the interests of community decision making. Were it not for a demonstrated affection for the guru someone would have whisked her away long ago IMHO.

    Valentina, (known as Vale which appropriately means worth,) runs the well organised food store and various other things. She is an accomplished TaiChi practitioner, with none of the limpid arm waving seen customarily in the West. Being a quiet, Sardinian girl, she is probably not interested in being an instructor but nevertheless she is the best role model for how people should behave in CentroAnidra. Instead she is taken for granted.

    Julia is a teacher and studied psychology at university. She works mainly with the Erasmus programme but I meet her in the kitchen cooking up goodies.

    Christina the pastry chef does not actually live at the centre but turns up to make the most delicious cakes and pastries when required.

    Chris is the mother of Val and spends time here but does not quite fit in. She runs a guest house higher up the valley and comes down at various times to help and for meals. As it is, as soon as she starts to project herself she is quickly talked down, retiring to a seat one up from the end of the table so she won't be left out completely and so limiting the group of volunteers ability to sit together. She could be more help to the centre if she was given a sphere of responsability and held to account for it: I feel there is a history here to which I am not privy.    Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    More people

    October 23, 2017 in Italy ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    Rita does the laundry and suffers from depression which she induces in herself by storing negative emotions in the small of her back. I make her laugh and she claims to be much better! She cannot imagine life outside the centre so remains stuck in it.

    Toby is making the straw house which will become the conference centre. He is assisted by his partner Bobby, a friendly teacher of Yoga down in Chiavari. Toby is also training the pigs to enter the ramp up to the trailer that will take them on their final journey.

    Giovanni is reponsible for the agricultural side and has severely sprained his leg in a fall. He has returned to the centre whilst recovering and limps around on a crutch trying not to show the pain it causes him though the strain evident on his face. His injury wakes him often during the night, adding to his discomfort. I showed him how to lie on his back with his thighs perpendicular to the floor and his calves parallel to the floor supported by a chair: it allows his entire body to relax and he is grateful for the tip.

    And of course Luigi whom we have met before.    Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    Fellow Workaways

    October 23, 2017 in Italy ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    The volunteers come from all over Europe and two, Angela and Jazz originated in North Carolina. Two boys from Bodio in Ticino were lively lads who had come down from the mountains of Northern Italy. Mateo hails from Bologna and has volunteered in the centre to keep a low profile from the law, he tells me over a smoke in the evening.
    Four girls were on the European Union University Erasmus programme, serving as "interns" in the centre to gain work experience: Yasmine from Istanbul: Karla from Czek Republic, Franka from Istria, Ekatarina from Yekaterinburg (not named after her). Alas, the lack of organisational structure or written curriculum made it difficult for them and they also suffered from being more intelligent and better educated than most of their teachers. Perhaps this was the point of the programme: to wake students to the facts of life, that we all have sometimes to work for thick, ignorant people who have the capacity to ruin them.    Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    Saint-Clément

    October 25, 2017 in France ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C

    I left CentoAnidra on Monday afternoon after 4 weeks work. They wanted me to stay longer but an unrelenting diet of faggiolini (green beans) overcooked even though fresh; occasional offcuts of pig and wine doled out a mouthful at a time was beginning to get to me.

    Whilst heading West to my next gig by Beziers, I found a wonderful camping / picnic spot at the back of a motorway service centre near Aix-en-Provence and settled in to watch a film with a glass of wine. 20 minutes later blue lights were illuminating the interior and a loud knocking on the door announced the arrival of the Gendarmerie.
    Two polite officers regretted to inform me that the centre was subject to regular sweeps by people breaking into cars and that I should move to the main carpark under the lights. Directly in front of the boutique. So as soon as the film was finished I moved in front of McDonalds and went to sleep. At 02:30 a noise made me waken and sit in the drivers seat as 3 men tried the doors of each vehicle in turn, the boutique having closed for the night. Seeing me sitting there ensured I was not one of them and they soon left in a small white hatchback. I got back in my sleeping bag and lay comfortably half-awake - like doing stag. Sure enough, at 03:00 hours another figure appeared making the rounds and was similarly dissuaded by my appearance. By 04:00 it was getting a bit cold so I swung back onto my bunk above the driver and into my warm sleeping bag. By leaning over I could see through the door windows the rear view mirrors covering my flanks. At 04:30 just when I had decided that there probably would be no more interruptions another pair of men appeared shining torches into the cab. The first time I let it pass, but when one of them pressed his nose against the window it was too much for me and the flat of my hand swung down in an elegant parabola onto the glass straight into his nose. The expression on their faces as they leapt away compensated for the disturbance although the East European glare as they scurried away caused cars to flash their lights at the apparent non-dipping motorist. After that the McD kitchens opened for the day and there was no more trouble.

    Before showing up for work I dropped in on Tim and Maria at St Clements, near Montpellier. On arrival I found people much as I had left them over a year ago. My first port of call was to Ivan the 76 year old ex-mechanic who showed me his newly planted vegetable patch and his beautifully maintained racing Renault Alpine, and whose goodwill I solicited in order to park my van outside the back of his house. Nobody seems to like or trust this fellow and he has been rude to Maria's guests but I never had a problem with him. Sucking up really does work with some folk.

    The house is much the same as before althought the painting and decorating of the school has progressed and the kitchen is almost ready for students. I spent my short time there with Tim, hauling boxes and beds out of one room, upstairs into another so that painting downstairs could continue. Along the way we moved several old matteresses and the like into the yard for the decheterie, for we had discovered two small shrivelled cats lying in a pool on one of them. I envied Tim his inability to smell them for I certainly could, even after spraying industrial strength vinegar onto the wet patches.

    The village sculpter invited us to witness the pouring of his latest piece - a cat looking remarkably similar to the ones we found - in bronze. Afterwards, as T&M prepared for their last guest this year after more than four months of constant hospitality, I moved on to Sommieres and the coast.    Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    Cessenon-sur-Orb

    October 30, 2017 in France ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C

    There has been a strong wind blowing in the region and the beaches have been sand-blasters, so I did not linger long in the Languedoc and have now arrived at my second workaway in the little Herault village of Cessenon - sur -Orb (AOC St Chinian,) about half an hour North of Beziers.

    Francoise Escobar was the first person to contact me after I joined WorkAway and posted a profile so I felt I should spend a little time helping her. She is building her house alone and raising a 17 year old boy at the same time so I should imagine needs all the help she can get.

    My directions are simple. About a couple of clicks out of town there is a pile of old stones and a cross, (the remains of the C XIIth Chappelle de St Anne:) turn right onto the track and follow the road: the house is the bulding under construction on the left.
    Miraculously, I found the cross, took the correct road at a junction and stopped outside the correct house.

    It appears that the electricity company have cut the supply to this house because it has been a building site for too long, 7 years in fact. A special junction box had been installed for the worksite but now the place must be signed-off by an electricity inspector and a proper connection made to the grid. I have appeared a couple of hours before the inspector is due and Francoise is in a bit of tizz. Given the state of French regulations, I am not surprised as the compliance codes change all the time.

    In the event, the inspector only found one earth wire to connect and failed a lamp in the bathroom because the particular (older) model installed did not carry the correct stamp of approval, as this years virtually identical model does. He kindly agreed to pass the house if these were fixed before he left the premises, so of course I connected the missing wire and ripped the light out. He okayed it, extracting a promise from Francoise to fix the problem later and casually mentioning that, had he inspected the house 2 years ago he would have passed the fitting. My betting is that some ignorant WorkAway will reconnect the existing lamp and F will have to put its replacement on the list of things to do. At the bottom.    Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    Little house on the prairie

    November 3, 2017 in France ⋅ ☁️ 15 °C

    So far this house and its owner have been a revelation of hope over experience, facilitated by You-Tube construction videos.

    Francoise has lived her entire life in this village and spent the last 7 years in the construction of this house which is still not ready for interior decoration. A number of startling facts have emerged during the week, starting with the lack of electricity:
    + the solar hot water heating system has not been regulated, (so the panels must be covered with tarp whenever it gets too hot;) the panels are shaded from the winter sun during the mornings; and there is no secondary heating for the times the sun don't shine;
    + the doors and windows have been fitted with gaps and without proper waterproofing so the wind-driven rain enter;
    + the fireplace didn't work, which is a pity since the nightime temerature is around 4 degrees;
    + the carport has been sunk to below the height of surrounding drains;
    + the floor is bare concrete which is always dusty
    + the waterproof coursing around the house is incomplete
    + the rammed earth walls are beginning to crumble as they haven't been lime-washed yet
    and so on.
    Francoise explains tells me that she quite understands if I want to move on immediately, but I reply that there is plenty to do to help and my apartment is quite comfortable anyway.

    Despite my intention never to project manage anything, I have a feeling that this how best to help her: to give her some tips on how to get things moving forward again.

    Meanwhilst, I have started by making a housing for the noisy generator that needs refuelling with a 20l jerrycan every other day. Actually, it is more like a pile of earth thrown over a timber pallet, but it cost nothing and does the job. Shouldn't be for too long as I have nagged F sufficiently to get her to copy and submit the papers necessary for the electricity company to agree and schedule connection to the grid.    Read more

  • TravelerRoland Routier

    Spanish flue

    November 6, 2017 in France ⋅ ☀️ 13 °C

    The commotion in Catalonia has been given a new twist by F, whose father and antecedents came from those parts.

    Apparently the schism, fundementally with Madrid, stems from the Civil War, when Franco's delegates asassinated a large number of Catalans and shovelled them into mass, unmarked graves. To this day F and her family do not know where her great-uncle and his wife's bodies rest.

    People who were at least sympathetic to the fascist cause are still ruling from Madrid and apparently have never acknowledged or apologised for the atrocities. Since then, whilst Fascist widows get a pension, Republican ones don't. And the authorities have been silent with their hands in their pockets over the puzzle of where the bodies have been thrown. (And they take more money from the area than they ever return in kind.)

    Like the Japanese actions in Manchuria, if old crimes are not confessed and vitiated, hatred and distrust will continue for generations.

    Meanwhilst, back at the worksite, I have removed the old cast iron fireplace, cleaned the chimney and knocked out the old concrete stovepipe surround to make the surfaces all nice and flattish for the new one that I pressured F to order. Maybe at the end of the week we'll have some heat in the evenings.    Read more

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