A hooded monk in the darkened interior of Le Barroux Abbey

Today was a rather up and down day -  hills and mountains that is. Coming to the end of Pauline's parents visit, we decided to attend one of the daily services at le Barroux Abbey to listen to the Gregorian chanting. We checked the Abbey's timetable and found a 3:25H, which would allow us a Gallic long lunch with plenty of time to drive up into the hills to the Abbey in time for the service.

We enjoyed an excellent meal at the Couteaux et Forchettes (literally Knives and Forks) restaurant in Cairanne, only a few minutes from our place. It continues to amaze me that you can enjoy a three course (plus Amuse Bouche) meal at a Michelin rated restaurant for less than Euro30. 

We arrived at the Abbey with 5 minutes to spare, or so we thought...because when we entered into the Abbey proper, apart from an automatic light as we walked in, the Abbey was in almost total darkness. Light trickled in through narrow stain glass windows and a small light illuminated the Christmas creche. We sat and, as our eyes slowly became accustomed to darkness, we made out the eerie praying figures of monks dotted around the church. Ten minutes after the service was supposed to begin we decided to seek clarification, why it had not, from the Abbey office, where we were told that the next service would be at 5:30pm.

Our French was too limited to question why the service at 3:25pm had been cancelled, but still dissatisfied, we studied the schedule again, when we realised that 3:25H Matins actually meant 3:25am!

Feeling slightly foolish, but also a little bemused why anyone would get up at 3:25 in the mornng to pray, we changed plans and drove up Mont Ventoux, 20km away, which is a very minor ski and outdoor sports resort with a peak of around 6300ft. The snow in Europe has been pretty poor and this could be seen when we reached the 'resort' area.

Perhaps more interesting is that Ventoux gets its name from the French word vent or wind and the mountain suffers from high winds, especially during the Mistral, which closes the resort and the mountain pass many times during the Winter. According to Wiki' the wind blows at 90+ km/h (56+ mph) 240 days a year. It was certainly very cold and windy when we were there.

Mont Ventoux's other claim to fame that it is also one of the most arduous mountain stages in the Tour de France and masochistic cyclists regularly test their stamina up the mountain.

After a cup of hot chocolate and a crepe (gulity!), we returned to Le Barroux Abbey for the afternoon service, where a very different scene from earlier in the day awaited us. The public pews, set towards the back of the nave forward facing, were quite full. The monks sit in the rest of the Nave facing inwards. It was the second day of the Epiphany and the service is unique for these two days. The pew sheet was bilingual in French and Latin, but the service itself was 45 minutes of continuous chanting of the liturgy in Latin. The congregation's participation was limited to getting up to bow during certain parts of the service, which was somewhat impressive as we lost our places in the liturgy fairly early on and the chanting was not really clear enough for us to find our place on the page again. It was an interesting experience, but strangely not as spiritually uplifting as we had expected.