Collioure sans couleur

l'Escala to Colliure - 56 miles

Colour is Collioure's USP, its brand's 'core value' and the town's current strap line.

In part, of course, this is plays on a simple homonym but it is also the result of serendipity. As chance would have it, the sister-in-law of the artist, Henri Matisse happened to live in Collioure. So in the spring of 1904, the artist and his family came to live here, rather than go to St. Tropez, where many other members of the Parisian avante garde tended to gather. He was joined by André Derain. The pictures they painted used colour freely, to express emotion rather than simply represent how the world looks.

When the paintings were exhibited in Paris, a controversy erupted. Critics called the style 'Fauvist' - the work of 'wild beasts'. The local tourist office has capitalised big style on the fact that this first explosion of Expressionist colour happened in Collioure, conveniently overlooking the fact that it was all a complete coincidence resting entirely on where Henri Matisse's sister-in-law happened to reside and a lucky homonym.

Anyway, we have been disappointed twice by Collioure, notwithstanding the place's strap-line, 'Absolute Colour', both times we have visited the place the weather has been grey and drizzly. The only explosions of colour today were in the windows of the kitch art galleries specialising in Matisse-by-numbers 

Not that our visit has been entirely without interest. The track from the campsite wriggles through the coastal hills alternating a nice sea view with vine clad slopes. Posh vines actually, as the local wine is Bandol.  One of the vineyards had walls daubed with graffiti - I like wine and I like graffiti - so I clicked away merrily.

Before we set out, Gill had looked up the delights of Collioure on-line. It mentioned a large castle, and the fact that a famous Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, lies in the town cemetery. He died here in 1939, shortly after fleeing the victorious Franco regime. I had not heard of him. I am embarrassingly​ ignorant about European literature. We decided to visit the grave.

It was well tended with lots of messages and quotes from Spanish admirers. Wikipedia came to the rescue when we returned to the van. It seems Machado is a major figure in Spanish early modernism. The article included this example of his work. Given our wandering existence it struck a chord. 

Wanderer, your footsteps are the road and nothing more; 

wanderer, there is no road,

 the road is made by walking. 

Walking makes the road, 

and turning to look behind 

you see the path that you will never tread again. 

Wanderer, there is no road, 

only foam trails on the sea. 

Talking of wandering, we have plotted our route back home. Our ferry is a week tomorrow. If the weather had been sunny we may have spent two days here hoping for a 'blue Med day'. Instead, we are in pursuit of a 'field in France' - Millau tomorrow, then Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, the Loire, Normandy then Calais. 

Perhaps we'll get some good weather in the Dordogne. Why is it we seem destined to always return home with a depressing election pending. It's happened for three years in a row. Viewed from a European perspective Britain looks like a basket case, a culture and a country in decline, ever more inward looking , deluded and self absorbed. Home is so dull, as soon as I get back I want to be travelling again. It is dangerously addictive.

Waking this morning - the weather has improved, the sea just beyond our pitch looks like the Mediterranean rather than a prospect of Clacton like it did yesterday.

News on the home front has just got much worse with news of the Manchester bombing filtering through. It is very sad, particularly the way young girls were targeted to provoke a greater response. Sad, but not a shock - a FB friend had only just posted a link to Auden's 'September 1939'  We swapped messages, Janet in Queensland, me in Languedoc-Rousillon, Then the news of the terrorist attack broke, we thought about Manchester,and  talked about an abyss edging ever closer.

Perhaps we simply have to admit to ourselves, we are living in war-times and have to adjust to the threats, accept that they are as inevitable as the Blitz, and hope that at some point in the future sanity prevails. How can you make sense of a world where Trump condemns the Manchester attack having just announced $110 billion arms deal with the Saudi Arabia. You cannot expect peace on our streets when democratic governments tacitly support carnage on the streets of Syria and other proxy wars across the Islamic world. Terror occurs in a context. Are the dead children in Manchester more important than than the drowned children in the Aegean? Until people believe in their hearts that every child  is equally deserving of our grief, the terror will go on. I feel sad about Manchester, naturally I sense it more strongly because it is my local city, but I also feel sad for humanity at large, and furious with power-hungry politicians who seek advantage by spreading grief and misery.