The Écopole du Forez

Preparing for a trip can be nearly as enjoyable as taking as it.  This time, with lots of arrangments to make beforehand, that was particularly true.  How many days would I take to cover the 800 km?  How long would each day's ride be?  Were there certain towns where I wanted to stay?  Which chambres d'hôte seemed best placed and most attractive?

I didn't, though, plan what I'd be doing in each place.  I'd stay there at least two nights, giving me a full day to explore.  But I had no plans for that day, apart from possibly looking for something related to the river.  Invariably the chambres d'hôte offer multiple brochures describing local attractions.  Usually, traveling with Lynda, we already have plans and I ignore the brochures, except to stuff them in a drawer to make room on the desk for my computer.  This time, though, I thought they might offer something.  That's how, while I was in Feurs for the first two nights of my trip, I learned about the Écopole du Forez.

It took France a while to recover from World War II.  Eventually it did and from the mid-1950s through the 1970s, the so-called trentes glorieuses, the economy took off and grew steadily.  Especially after the destruction from the War, the growth meant construction -- roads, rail lines, buildings, homes.  And construction meant sand and gravel, much of which came from river beds.  Over time, the environmental effects of this became more and more evident.  In places with heavy extraction stream levels went down, in turn affecting fish populations and upsetting plant and animal habitats along the banks.  

In the mid-1980s, environmentalists were trying to stop extraction of sand and gravel from pits along a stretch of the Loire in the middle of the Forez Valley.  The mining was lowering the river bed, which, in turn, was affecting fish populations and upsetting plant and animal habitats along the banks.  In 1987, the Fédération Rhône-Alpes de Protection de la Nature (FRAPNA) managed to find the funds to buy one of the gravel pits covering about 27 acres.  That same year, three companies with contiguous pits decided to donate to FRAPNA an additional 370 acres.  The Écopole's history is silent on what may have been going on in the background to cause this.  Now, with responsibility for nearly 400 acres, FRAPNA turned to the European Union for funds to restore the pits and surrounding areas.  La Nef ("The Vessel"), a wood and glass visitors center recalling an inverted ship's hull.  The building sits on pilings several feet above ground, both to provide a vantage point and to protect against Loire floods.

They also found resources to build

 The center opened in 1993.  Twenty years later you need the old photos on display there to know what the area was like before.  The old pits have become a series of ponds bordering the west side of the Loire.  Grasses and reeds cover the banks and black alders and willows have grown up on the land nearby.  The restored habitat has brought fish to the ponds and lots of birds, including cormorants, grey herons, black kites, egrets, and several varieties of ducks.  The upstream Grangent and downstream Villeret Dams eliminated beavers from the Forez Valley.  But Écopole staff successfully reintroduced the animal several years ago.

On a daily basis the Écopole concentrates on environmental education.  It has ties to universities in Lyon and Saint-Étienne.  It works with schools in the area.  And it hosts a regular flow of tourist like me.  It is also trying to extend the écopole concept up and down the river.  This year, at the end of May, during the celebration of the Écopole's 20-year anniversary, supporters designated the center as the first component of what they're calling the "Transligérienne."  "Ligérien" (feminin, ligérienne) describes someone or something related to the Loire River.  The term derives from the Latin name for the river, the Liger.  Supporters of the Transligérienne idea hope to see a series of similar natural preserves created all along the 1,000 km of the river.  Eventually, too, they hope to link to the Via Rhôna, a hiking, cycling trail along the Rhone River.  The dream is a line of nature preserves from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.

Back in Paris

This may be an odd way to maintain a blog.  It's supposed to be a more or less daily log of what you're doing or what's on your mind.  But what I'm going to do here, at least for a while, is to post notes on what I've been up to over the last nearly six weeks.  I'm catching up on what I'd hoped do do during my Loire bike ride, but didn't.  I have several reasons (excuses) for that, but mostly they have to do with being busy riding, recovering from a ride, or exploring a little of the area where I was staying.  Most days while traveling, I did well if I made a few notes at the end of the day or next morning with coffee.

In the middle of July, I was back in Paris.  It was only for a couple of days, but it was good to be back.  I didn't always feel that way about the city.  My relationship with Paris wasn't love at first sight.  I've never quite understand why everyone is so seduced.  My appreciation came grudgingly and over time, the same as it did with New York.  Maybe this comes, at least in part, from growing up in Iowa and Los Angeles, the Midwest and Far West.  As an "outlander" I think I mistrusted their reputations, couldn't believe they were all people said they were.  I didn't think I needed whatever it was they offered.

Also, in the case of Paris, I learned French before I ever knew very much about France the country.  I'd learned the language in the Peace Corps to be able to teach English in Senegal.  I only got to know the country later, mostly through the Tour de France bicycle race.  In the late 1980's, when I first got interested -- a time before Google maps -- I'd sit with the Michelin road atlas and trace out each day's stage.  I learned the geography of the country; and I got familiar with regional cities and small towns where the Tour stopped regularly.  When we started traveling to France, I was more interested in visiting these places than Paris.  But that changed.  The city grew on me.  Every time we went, I got a little more comfortable; it felt better.  

"Bonheur"

I took the pieces of my bicycle out of its travel case yesterday and put it back together.  I was staying with a friend in Paris and I'd found some shade in the courtyard of her apartment building; I was hurrying to be done before the temperatures went into the 90s.  (And here I'd thought I'd be escaping Washington D.C.'s heat when I got to Paris.)  At one point, I dropped a small screw.  I found it again right away, but it occured to me then how much this whole project depends on this seemingly fragile machine.  One piece missing or broken and all the planning is up in the air.

Maybe if I gave the bike a name it would feel more like part of the family and be on its best behavior.  But I've had it for nearly ten years without knowing it as anything other than "the Hampsten," so it's probably too late for that sort naming, personification thing.  In any case, as long as I don't lose critical pieces, the bike has always (knock on wood) been highly reliable.

So I'm off for a month or riding down the Loire River.  Last night, the apartment across the courtyard seemed to offer what I'm glad to take as an encouraging sign of what's ahead.

The Minister takes her leave

Well, she certainly didn't just hand over the keys to her office and go home.  Delphine Batho, recently dismissed from her position as French Minister of the Environment, gave a press conference today in which she took aggressive shots at the Prime Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault and certain "economic lobbies" that wanted her out.  Her remarks have been called "politically naive," and they probably were.  All of the blame was directed elsewhere, for example, none her own way.

But her political inexperience and lack of press conference skills shouldn't obscure the fact that the Hollande/Ayrault government, when it chose her ministry to take the largest budget cuts in its 2014 budget, announced that, to put it mildly, environmental programs were way, way down on its list of priorities.  That, to me,  has a lot more significance than Ms. Batho's press conference.

The government's priorities may be jobs, and correctly so.  But, more like socialists of 40 or more years ago, they seem to act as if jobs mean infrastructure and regional economic development.  It's as if they're out to recreate the "Trentes Glorieuses" the 30 years of post-war economic growth.  Thus Ayrault's Notre-Dame-de-Landes airport project just west of Nantes where he was mayor for many years, justified as critical for economic growth in that part of western France.  No one in the government seems much interested in what all this does to land and water resources, or whether the jobs being created will still be around in five or ten years.

Meanwhile, Ms. Batho retains a seat in the National Assembly as a deputy from the Deux Sèvres, a largely rural district directly south of Angers and the Loire River.  I don't have the impression she was particularly identified with environmental issues before being name to her ministerial position.  Nor has she been that close to EELV (Europe Écologie Les Verts) party members.  It will be interesting what role she plays now.

Budget cut, environment minister gone

French president François Holland's government recently announced its budget for 2014 with more cuts in public spending; the agency taking the biggest hit turned out to be the Ministry of the Environment with a seven percent reduction in funds.  Who knows what was going on behind the scenes, but this turned out to be too much for the Minister, Delphine Batho.  She publicly criticized her own government, calling it a "bad" budget.  On Tuesday she was sacked.

The budget cuts together with Ms. Batho's firing, even allowing for her failure of collective responsibility, says nothing good about the Holland government's interest in the environment.  And this is not the first time Holland and Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault have axed a head of the department that seemed to taking a commitment to the environment too seriously.  Holland's first Minister of the Environment, preceding Ms. Batho, was Nicole Bricq.  But shortly after being named to the position, she suspended oil exploration permits in the waters around Guyane.  The oil companies complained and Ms. Bricq was gone.

Ms. Batho has been replaced by Philippe Martin, a PS deputy from the Gers and until now a member of the Assembly's commission on sustainable development.

Apparently Ms. Batho wasn't particularly close to the EELV members of the government or environmentalist members of her own Socialist Party.  But after the government's severe downgrading of environmental policy as indicated by the budget -- quite apart from Ms Batho's firing -- one wonders at what point the EELV members of the government will decide their project may be better served by leaving.

Bosco Verticale

These look almost real.  And, remarkably, they're about to be.  The two apartment towers, referred to as the "Bosco Verticale" (Vertical Forest), are currently under construction in the Porta Nuova neighborhood of Milan, Italy.  Hines Italia, the project developer, expects they'll be finished and ready for occupancy later this year, or perhaps early next year.  Already, they report that 60 percent of the units have been sold.  The neighborhood, about 10 minutes north of the landmark Duomo and between the Garibaldi and Centrale train stations, in the midst of a major redevelopment effort including new commercial and residential buildings and park space.

© Stefano Boeri Architects

 





Clearly, their distinctive feature is the greenery.   Could they have been inspired by the Torre Guinigi in Lucca (below)?  Maybe.

© Richard Mounts, 2006

More likely the inspiration would have come from a contemporary building like this one, the Royal Park on Pickering Hotel in Singapore.  Stefano Boeri, the architect for the Bosco Verticale, and a few others seem to be dramatically extending the idea of a green building.

© Singapore Air

Statistics for the Bosco Verticale are impressive.  Together the two towers, one 262 feet (80 meters) and the other 367 feet (112 meters), will include the equivalent of a two-and-a-half-acre woods.  Once planted, a gardening service will be responsible for some 730 trees, 5,000 shrubs, and 11,000 groundcover plants.  To reduce the weight of normal dirt, gardeners developed a lightweight substrate material.  Besides the sense of being in the woods even at 300 feet over Milan, it's expected that all of this greenery should reduce building energy usage by nearly a third.

A complication developed at the end of May when the firm doing the construction filed for bankruptcy.  But it's reported the developers have found a new firm to take over and they should be able to finish construction more or less on schedule.

World Heritage "curse"?

Later this summer I'll be biking through a part of the Loire Valley that's been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The designation, which only occurred about ten years ago, is meant to help preserve, and at the same time draw attention to, the remarkable chateaux along the middle portion of the river, and to their history.  I suppose it's not unexpected that these two objectives should end up creating tensions.  The people who want to draw in tourists and the people who want to preserve sites aren't necessarily the same.  And once the UNESCO designation has been achieved, they aren't likely to have the same interests.  In fact, they may well end up in conflict.

A recent example of this is the Loreley Plateau, a site along the middle portion of the Rhine River, about 80 km west of Frankfurt, Germany.  (Hat tip to M. McDonald)  The plateau is at the top of a nearly 400 foot-high rock at the narrowest point of the Rhine.  The rocks below and the turbulence in the river have caused numerous accidents over the years and helped give rise to local legends.  In 2002, the rock and the plateau were included in a 65 km stretch of the river receiving UNESCO World Heritage designation.

Google Satellite identifies several hotels, restaurants and a sizable camping ground on the plateau, all of which feature great views above the river and probably benefit from the UNESCO designation.  But it seems that a recently-constructed summer bobsled run was one thing too many. 

http://www.spiegel.de

Just this week, the World Heritage Committee issued a statement declaring that the run was "not compatible with the outstanding universal value of the World Heritage property" and calling for its removal.

I'll be on the lookout for tourism run amok when I'm riding past the Loire chateaux.  But I have to say I have trouble seeing this bobsled run as an example.  The World Heritage Committee seems to be okay with places to eat and sleep and park your camper van.  But the bobsled run seems to strike them as just too touristy, too tackily mass touristy. 

http://www.spiegel.de

 I'd probably prefer a beer on one of the restaurant terraces before I took a run on the bobsled.  But it's a little hard to see, from the photo here, how it has more of an impact on the site than do the other tourist facilities.

Meanwhile, commercial barge traffic continues along this stretch of the river below and a little over two years ago one of them capsized near the Loreley rock spilling 2,400 tons sulphuric acid into the river.  One wonders whether the barges and their cargos are "compatible with the outstanding universal value of the World Heritage property?"