Christmas trip to Luceram in the Riviera hinterland

I have previously posted pictures of the spectacular winter scenery we have in this part of the world. Spectacular and unexpected - given the glorious sight of that vast backdrop of snow-covered mountains behind Antibes and Nice. There's always a great excuse to venture into those hills and mountains at this festive time of year, which is to go and see the crèches at Luceram, a village some 18km due north of Eze, and about 40km as the crow flies from Antibes.

The first picture shows scenery on the way to Luceram . So far, it's just a light dusting of snow on the peaks, but a short way further on, there is deeper snow, right down to the roadside.

And here it is, the real McCoy(the snow that is) , a mere 45 mins drive from the Riviera beaches. Watch out: missus is in a playful mood.



This is the village of Luceram, viewed from the church. All these pictures should enlarge if you put the pointer on them and click (or tickle laptop touchpad) as appropriate. Sorry to keep saying this, but I continue to find other Bloggers who have been up-and-running for months without realising this).

ed: having said all that, I find these pictures don't enlarge. There's absolutely no rhyme or reason why it works sometimes and not others. And there's the matter of pictures that disappear from view hours or days after posting. Blogger's software developers really need to pull their socks up in the New year.

Click on the road at the bottom of the village (it's the entry route from the south) and you can just about make out a couple of tinsel hearts strung across the road. In fact, as you will see, the villagers have gone to some trouble to give the entire village a festive look. Most of the villages do in this part of the world.

You may recall my recent Christmas shopping expedition to Biot, the place for beautiful glass. We recently learned from our Nice-Matin that the Biotois (?) spent €66,000 no less on their street decorations, but let's not be mercenary. (Although in passing, I can't but help recalling the assembly given by a Deputy Head at a school near Slough in which he painstakingly computed the cost of the Twelve Days of Christmas in modern money. And we have just had a Christmas Card from "Uncle Ray" with a political -cum -mercenary message. The picture on the front shows a a throng of recently-appointed peers of the realm all living it up, over the caption "10 lords-a-loanin'".

Thinks: New Year's resolution: must stop digressing/going off at tangents in blogs. Who knows - someone might actually be reading this stuff ! And who was it on Louise's "Chocolates and Cuckoos" blog who claimed yesterday that I was someone unable to laugh at himself ? Answer: the same person who two weeks ago said he was resolved never to read my blog ! Sorry mate: bit of self-contradiction there: you can't have it both ways.

Luceram is a typical typical arrière-pays village, crammed with 15th century architecture and earlier, with these narrow, labyrinthine lanes, steep curving flights of steps, ancient doorways, and, at this time of year, Christmas decorations.

As already mentioned, Luceram is famous for its numerous crèches (nativity scenes) which the villagers install at various places around the village. They are not really my scene, I'm afraid, at least from a religious/philosophical perspective, but they do add a welcome splash of light and colour to what is otherwise somewhat cold grey masonry. Ladies with red jerseys and fur-lined hoods help brighten up the place too.



There's no shortage of history in these parts. This is the ancient xxxxxxx. It was built in XXXX, and played a major role in the Battle of Xxxxxx, and looks like it would benefit from a visit to a dentist. As you can see, there's no shortage of things for me to research in the New Year.

And here's where we had our pre-booked Christmas lunch. Sorry about the leaning camera angle. It must have been one of those post-prandial photographs !

Well, here we are back on the coast, after our day trip into the hills. This is the rue d'Antibes in Cannes, the place to go for that special Christmas present. At a price.


Well folks, this is my last post, this side of Christmas. If you have any comments, could you make them in the next three days ( by Dec 21st). We're spending Christmas with our family in England. I will then leave this site to accept comments by moderation only. Sorry to have to do this. As some of you know, up till recently I accepted all comments, including anonymous ones, but had to stop that, thanks to some clown who thought it funny to post what he thought to be my home address. So I've decided to play safe while away.

As already indicated, there will be some changes in the New Year. "Dreams and Daemons" will be for occasional posts ( once a week maximum). My new blog, called "Inside Antibes", will become my main daily blog, devoted mainly to monitoring the news in Nice-Matin ( local, national and international). I shall also be venturing cautiously back onto the Telegraph's blog, with a view (optimistically, perhaps) of using "Inside Antibes" to continue interesting discussions once they disappear from sight on the Telegraph. That, as some of you know, has been a sore point with this blogger, given that comments to Telly blogs now have to be made in a day or two, when they are then relegated to the dusty archives, where threads tend quickly to die the death.

How different from the good old days, when Colin Randall was blogging, and some threads went on ( and stayed visible) for many days on end . Shane Richmond seems pleased to have built up a team of 38 bloggers. A bad move, if you ask me. He should have restricted it to 15 max, and been ruthless with those that were underperforming. Some present Telegraph blogs are a waste of space, mentioning no names. And on that charitable seasonal note, I and that grumpy hippo, lodged in the hippocampus, wish you all :

A Merry Christmas and a happy, prosperous New Year !

Dull day in Antibes

What you see on the right is one of those gizmos that I personally had not come across till recently. It's a meteo clock, and sits on our coffee table, and despite its intimidating array of symbols and flashing numbers has proved quite a talking point. One visitor was curious to know how it was able to display the outside as well as inside temperature, and liked the way the display alternated between showing the humidity as well as temperature. Certainly anyone who knows this part of the world will understand that the humidity figure is every bit as important, if not more so, than temperature.

I took the photo yesterday morning, because the meteo was warning of approaching rain, indeed an electrical storm. Out the window, things looked reasonably settled - a hazy blue sky- so I was curious to see how things developed. Was our meteoclock a good buy ? I'll say later why I have no faith whatsoever in the local published forecasts.

How does the meteo "know" what the weather going to be like ? Well, according to the book of words, it monitors atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, and if there's a sudden change in any of these quantities , it makes a prediction based on the size and direction of the change.

If you look at the bottom of the display, for example, you'll see a bar chart displaying atmospheric pressure on a time scale ( -12, 9,-6,-3,-1, 0 hours) reading left to right. You can see that the pressure had been dropping steadily for the last 12 hours, signalling the arrival of a depression and with it a rainy spell . How does it know the outside conditions ? There's a separate unit, the size of a remote control, that sits on a window sill, recording temp and humidity, and communicating these to the main unit at 1 minute intervals via radio signals.

Speaking of radio, you may also note the dish antenna symbol. That shows that the clock is picking up a signal from Hamburg that automatically corrects the time. I was hugely impressed last weekend to see it put the clock back an hour, even if the change was a few hours late on the display. It beats having to dig out the book of words, and fiddle around with buttons.

Well, as the day went on, so the clouds got bigger and darker. And here's how it looked down in the harbour last night, just before nightfall. Threatening !



Finally, at about 11pm , there were a few drops of rain. So the meteo clock worked, after a fashion. Obviously one cannot set too much store by a single snapshot, so to speak, - but as I indicated earlier, it beats the local forecast anyday.

In case you weren't aware the French Riviera enjoys a microclimate that it doesn't really "deserve" based on latitude alone. There are parts of the coast here, especially between Monaco and the Italian border, where virtually anything can be grown outdoors, with perhaps just a little extra protection in winter. I'd never seen a jacaranda tree outside of Kew Gardens till coming to this part of the world. If you're into gardening, or botanically inclined, the Hanbury Gardens just across the border are a must.

It's reckoned that to get our winter climate in the leg of Italy (ie not counting the western Italian Riviera) , you'd have to travel down to Naples and beyond . Why is that? I don't pretend to know all the answers, but it's a combination of factors. First, the topography - with hills and mountains forming a backdrop, it's protected from the cold north winds, especially the dreaded mistral that can makes life such a misery further west ( see Peter Mayle's descriptions of the Luberon in his "Year in Provence" - quite shiver-inducing, just to read). I'm told that sea currents, prevailing winds are also part of the equation.

But just as the Riviera is a microclimate, so there are nano and pico climates within. There are many days when Antibes has quite different weather from Nice, a mere 15 miles across the bay. I know because I have only to look across, and see Nice under cloud and rain for hours on end, while we're in clear sunshine . Naturally there are days when it works the other way.

We've given up consulting our ISP's online weather forecast, with Nice as the nearest town. Most of the time it's a joke. Sure it gets it right sometimes. But then a stopped clock is right twice a day. The forecast in the local paper is no better. Thus the decision to invest in a Meteo clock.

I'm writing this pretty much as it comes, with little attempt at tarting up, or adding literary flourishes. And I'm not going back, trying to condense into fewer words, because I don't have an editor and a strict word limit. Does anyone reading this object to a relaxed style of writing ? I only mention it because "Anonymous" has popped up on Colin Randall's Salut! blog, describing my blog as "verbal diarrhoea". I always feel that expression to be somewhat ambiguous: is it an indication of quantity, quality or both ? If readers here would prefer a tighter writing style - probably with less frequent postings as a consequence- please say so in the Comments. It was GBS who once apologized, I believe, for writing a long letter, saying he did not have the time to write a shorter one !

Whether I act on advice is another matter. Much would depend on the manner and spirit in which it was given. "Anonymous" does not strike me as someone who's well-disposed - possibly one of the two or three long-term residents on that site - carnivores who delight in shredding other's comments and opinions.

As I see it, a blog is not like a TV channel that exists to entertain anyone who casually tunes in. It's one's personal space - a niche if you like- that may take weeks or months to establish itself, and attract a small group of kindred spirits, or those who simply want to see how the world looks through the eyes of someone other than themselves.

Final thought. I was once called on to teach "Weather" as part of the Science National Curriculum. Neither I nor my colleagues greatly relished the task: it's too nebulous and wishy-washy for the scientific temperament. But there's one useful thing I learned that sticks in the memory. It's how to answer the question "What causes weather ?" in just seven words. Anyone know the answer ?