JIM P-R'S BLOG
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 06, 2023
My Grand Tour of 1953
I have described the construction of my Grand Tour car (with picture) in a previous “Autobiography in Words and Pictures” piece.
Now I write on the “tour” guided via an extensive diary written at the time. I have ommited many details, such as theatre observations and descriptions of architecture and art as most tourists since 1953 have seen them and transportation for like adventures has now become far easier.
Also missing are many places where I parked and slept for the night, locals met, and the medical side of things were I had to seek attention for my artificial pneumothorax - accept for two contrasting instances.
So here we go from when a crane in Boulogne harbour lifted my live-in car from the hold of the “Dinard” and deposited it on a quay side in France.
Bits of money were posted to myself at various poste restante along planned routes.
Paris was the Paris of youth, of drinking, eating with friends, drawing at the Beaux Arts, La Grande Chaumière and theatre.
With an open letter of introduction from the Royal Opera House, London, were I had been a scene painter, I badgered my way into several theatrical performances in one of which, after much hassle, found me sitting in a most comfortable seat. The performance was Mère Courage. Suddenly, all around me stood up and I was surrounded by Président and Madame Auriol and their entourage. The Marseillaise rang out. I was not dressed for the part.
I left Paris to drive around the Le Mans race track and to see the parents of André Brasilier (now a well known painter) in their Loire manor house.
The family Brasillier were and had been local artists in the Pre-Raphaelite style. Once landowners, their farming properties had been sold off to a state were they now lived in penuary. Their manor house was dilapidated as the Nazis had taken it over in the war and abused it terribly
Their cat brought in a small rabbit in the morning and we ate it for lunch. The lavatory was a hundred yards away from the manor house.
I headed for Spain, crossing the Gironde by the Royon car ferry and on to Spain and San Sebastian.
From there to Madrid was to experience unmade up, post-war roads as pot hole followed pot hole. The shuddering car seemed to manage surprisingly well, averaging 45 mph.
The landscape was of white painted houses clustered around water sources. All houses had a central chimney and were spotlessly clean. Food was mainly vegetarian unless someone had killed a sheep. This was medieval life enjoyed by a generous and most friendly population. And it all closed down completely in early afternoon - banks, shops, cafés, markets, everything. The world was then silent except for cattle, the sound of wind and the song of very few birds.
And suddenly, out of this simple and rather desolate place, and for no apparent reason, sprang modern Madrid.
Parking in the countryside each night, I made forays into cities to see wonderful art and architecture, then out again to tracks and fields.
Beside the wonders of the Prado it was the bull-fighting that intrigued me.
My first experience of this was to buy a ticket in the sun (cheaper) or shade (dearer).
For the first fight I chose a cheaper sunny seat. But the heat, the smell of blood, the cruelty, and the prevailing and overwhelming smell of sweet scent, made me feel quite nauseous.
I was much on the side of the tortured bull until it was dispatched by the highly decorated matador with a curved sword.
I tried a night bull fight which, less revolting, had lost the drama when seen in the sunshine.
Toward Valencia the crops varied from grapes, figs, olives, apricots, oranges to other fruit, but it was the dust that not only seemed to cover the landscape and the fruit in it that made breathing difficult when ever it was disturbed. Everything near to the road was thickly covered in it.
I had reached the sea and parked for the night on the verge of it. Having cooked and eaten local produce I crawled within my net to sleep and listen to the clouds of mosquitoes wanting to get in and to bite me.
A policeman appeared, woke me, and asked to see my papers. With no Spanish to explain my presence we argued. Then even he had to retire from the vicious insects.
Resting for the day, much of it in the cooling Mediterranean water, a crowd of young people appeared in an ox cart for a picnic on the shore. I was invited to join them and we enjoyed a delightful evening conversing through mixed language, gestures, and drawings in the sand. They wanted most to know about the bullfights in Madrid. They shared their strange food with me and we drank red wine from a porron, a spouted glass jug that delivered the wine in a stream from jug to mouth via an arc in the air - causing much laughter at my efforts to aim properly.
After all the jollity I left the car’s headlights on all night, which meant hitch-hiking with a heavy battery to the next village to have it charged. Three cars passed me in one hour. Finaly, a self-propelled, gas-generating vehicle more or less had to stop to prevent running over me. We continued our journey at walking speed to Villanueva where a lady café owner made me a real Spanish omelette with just onion, potato and beaten egg.
It was here that I settled for a while to meet Martin Torrents, an artist, and enjoy shoreline food and wine while looking out at night from beneath date palms over a sea dotted with bright lights as fishermen attracted sardines to their nets. Dust was dampened and the air cooled each evening by water spray.
A priest offered to show me his school where his room was odiferous and covered with dust, champagne corks, and cigar ash with butt ends.
Next to the sea and surrounded by white houses, and balconies of flowers with green or blue lattice blinds, I was very happy.
I had parked for the night on a dried river bed but my wheels had sunk in the sand. To get out I had to search for rocks to ram beneath the tyres before escaping. Then I was allowed to park in the fish market.
Along the coast north to Tossa, I saw the first English people since entering Spain.
Whereas those who topped up my pneumothorax at the American hospital in Paris were dressed in surgical gear, a doctor Xalabadar, in a back street of Barcelona, simply produced a large hypodermic needle with a dial at the end, shoved it into my chest and that was that. He refused payment.
The Pyrenean valleys were Shangri Las. Overtaking an old woman with a heavy load, toiling up a mountain road, I remembered the sweat of carrying a car battery and offered a lift. She was most grateful but left behind a most vicious flea. To be rid of it I coated myself with insect powder.
French roads were much better than those in Spain, but the rough Spanish ones had caused a break in the car’s chassis - welded together in France where everything was much more expensive than in Spain.
Marseille to Cannes with its nudity on the beach and then to Cagnes where my uncle Wyn had asked me to house-sit as he would be in Brittany where it was cooler.
With poste restante funds in pocket for food and petrol, I was able at last to disrobe and take a hot bath.
Should two prostitutes from Bordeaux turn up, I was told to entertain them. They didn’t.
With now three thousand and eighty six miles run, I was off to Italy, buying cheap petrol coupons at the border with France. Côtes d’Azur had seemed somehow false compared with the Spanish coast.
It was while driving through La Spezia that a bee was sucked into the car via the driver’s side nautical air vent. It went straight up the leg of my swimming shorts and stung me. It was when workmen were on their way home on bicycles. A glance in my rear view mirrors revealed some carnage on the road behind.
Shortly after that I came across a man in the middle of the road trying to push-start a woman in a basket-like vehicle. I wanted to overtake so gave a blast with my horn. The poor man panicked and couldn’t decide on which side of the road to escape - and ended up transfixed in the middle, swearing and quite near to my bumper.
Lucca, Pisa, Florence, each a feast of pictures and architecture, and each night after a day’s eye-feast I parked for the night on a country road and a quiet place to relax, eat and drink. Locals invariably greeted me with great friendship. Waking in the morning, I was unable to get out of the car as it was surrounded by a herd of pigs.
My diary filled with the praises of such as Verocchio, Ghirlandaio, Cimabué, Giotto, Bottecilli, Masaccio and many more, too difficult to describe.
Now came one of my target places. The villa where Boccacio retreated from the plague-ridden city to more or less isolation to write the Decameron. Certaldo was the village’s name and, as I climbed the hill to his house, I passed at almost every front doorstep a lady weaving raffia around bulbous chianti bottles. All that was needed was raffia, a large eyed needle and scissors. Forty a day was the average output per worker.
Boccaccio had chosen well and could relax in an enclosed courtyard of fountain and flowers. It was lovely and well worth my pilgrimage.
To Sienna where I drank such good red wine at a café, I returned with my two large and now emptied chianti water flasks to have them filled with this wonderful wine.
Another part of my picture quest was to see the San Romano battle paintings by Uccello in Sienna, and they were as wonderful as expected, but with 3553 miles on the clock and much more to see with the funds available I was off to Rome via Ostia Antica.
Ostia’s Roman theatre and remains of a Roman town were all that one could expect - drains, heating, temples, forum, Colosseum - and all beautifully presented.
Then to Rome itself to see the Sistene Chapel and Colosseum. But cities were always difficult for me and the car, and took so much time to leave for a night of camping in the countryside.
All roads may lead to Rome, but few away from it. This was the case when I left on the way to Assissi to see the Giotto’s there, and after some driving only to find myself in exactly the same spot from where I had started.
After Assisi, its Giottos and views of olive trees, with a pinnacle of cyprus trees, I aimed for Ravenna and the clear Adriatic.
I was already suffering a bit from a surfiet of fine art and medieval architectural marvels. Though to see the works of old painter friends like Cosimo, Velasquez, Ucello, Giotto, Bronzino and more, and more, were beginning to fill my brain.
And car troubles were beginning to tax me and my war-torn body. But when ever there was car trouble I was certain to meet lovely and helpful people. Not many were doing what I was doing. So often I was greeted with incredulety and open arms. Lack of languages was usually overcome with made-up words, laughter, and amusing drawings on paper.
Taking a minor route that turned out to be rougher than expected, car springs in front started to disintegrate, leading to collapse of the leaf springs at the rear. Not only that, but a transverse chassis member also broke. Limping at 10 mph past fields of tomatoes growing close to the ground, I reached Porto Garibaldi and Commachio where a man with electric welding equipment mended as much as he could, but I had to part with my watch as part payment.
Commachio, once joined to Porto Garibaldi by a river and with all transport by canals since it was once a port, was quite lovely to look at except for its filthy water (in which children swam) and was so disease-ridden that I was warned not to eat any of the food offered there. A friendly guide told me that 20 percent of its inhabitants had TB, more with malaria, and typhoid was prevalent.
My guide bade me to follow him for 15 km to eat in his cool, family house where they grew fruit and vegetables in enormous abundance, yet there was not a bee or bird to be seen.
I parked on his land and by day visited Venice to see not only the normal sights but the gold cross that Napoleon left behind as he could not believe that it was solid gold.
The weather was hot enough, but that inside the glass factories in Murano intense.
The usual tat was being produced at the same time as craftsmen and their assistants created fine elaborate pieces, such as chandeliers, as others churned out elephants and naked women.
What amazed me was after a piece had been finished at the end of its blowing tube, just a drop of water and a light tap parted the glass piece from the blowing tube.
Then to Vicenza, and its 16th century theatre with original oil lamp illumination, Verona, and more car trouble in its refusal to start, so forcing me to spend the nights on a slope. But it ran beautifully through the Po Valley rice fields and crossed the Alps at 6700 feet to pass the customs at the summit. Scenery of ultramarine lakes, tumbling streams to French glaciers all through downhill France in fine clear air was lovely.
Help was called for in France where the Ford mechanic could not believe that my car had crossed the Alps having an 8 horsepower engine and one burned-out valve.
Chambray to find no envelope of money in my poste restante, so headed for Paris and friends with my reserve cash.
The fan belt tore to shreds as I travelled through the immaculate vineyards of the top Burgundies to reach Paris, only to find that my friends (and reserve cash) had gone on holiday. Even someone I had met on my outward journey would have nothing to do with me as he thought I was a ruffian (and did look like one)
A concièrge of apartments owned by holidaying friends gave me food and enough cash to reach Boulogne, so I spent 100 f on a sandwich and ate the remains from the skin of a watermelon. .
With papers in order and at the ferry quay side a 60 f harbour fee was demanded. But I had no money left. Yet, delving in all my pockets I came up with three 20 Franc pieces. And the good news was that there would be no disambarking fee at Dover. I was back.
The car (later to be sold to a Scottish Laird) had done 5,227 miles (8,412 km) from 7th of June 1953 to the tenth of August 1953.
That was three months and three days of adventure - a GRAND TOUR indeed, if sometimes a precarious one.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Page-Roberts joined the RAF in 1942 to become a pilot. Recovering from TB, he designed for the theatre and television before painting landscape. After one-man exhibitions and mixed shows in London’s top galleries, he turned to sculpting in wood.
An alteration of course after a wrist fracture resulted in him writing 14 books and over 700 articles in the subsequent 24 years. His subjects were wine, vines, gardens, cooking, London’s dockland & travel. In 2006 he returned to painting.
His work sells with regularity at Christie's. In 2010 he held a one-man show of Aircraft Shadows at the Mayor Gallery, Cork St, London.
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My Grand Tour of 1953
I have described the construction of my Grand Tour car (with picture) in a previous “Autobiography in Words and Pictures” piece.
Now I write on the “tour” guided via an extensive diary written at the time. I have omited many details, such as theatre observations and descriptions of architecture and art as most tourists since 1953 have seen them and transportation for like adventures has now become far easier.
Also missing are many places where I parked and slept for the night, locals met, and the medical side of things were I had to seek attention for my artificial pneumothorax - accept for two constrasting instances.
So here we go from when a crane in Boulogne harbour lifted my live-in car from the hold of the “Dinard” and deposited it on a quay side in France.
Bits of money were posted to myself at various poste restante along planned routes.
Paris was the Paris of youth, of drinking, eating with friends, drawing at the Beaux Arts, La Grande Chaumière and theatre.
With an open letter of introduction from the Royal Opera House, London, were I had been a scene painter, I badgered my way into several theatrical performances in one of which, after much hassle, found me sitting in a most comfortable seat. The performance was Mère Courage. Suddenly, all around me stood up and I was surrounded by Président and Madame Auriol and their entourage. The Marseillaise rang out. I was not dressed for the part.
I left Paris to drive around the Le Mans race track and to see the parents of André Brasilier (now a well known painter) in their Loire manor house.
The family Brasillier were and had been local artists in the Pre-Raphaelite style. Once landowners, their farming properties had been sold off to a state were they now lived in penuary. Their manor house was delapadated as the Nazis had taken it over in the war and abused it terribly.
Their cat brought in a small rabbit in the morning and we ate it for lunch. The lavatory was a hundred yards away from the manor house.
I headed for Spain, crossing the Gironde by the Royon car ferry and on to Spain and San Sebastian.
From there to Madrid was to experience unmade up, post-war roads as pot hole followed pot hole. The shuddering car seemed to manage surprisingly well, averaging 45 mph.
The landscape was of white painted houses clustered around water sources. All houses had a central chimney and were spotlessly clean. Food was mainly vegetarian unless someone had killed a sheep. This was medieval life enjoyed by a generous and most friendly population. And it all closed down completely in early afternoon - banks, shops, cafés, markets, everything. The world was then silent except for cattle, the sound of wind and the song of very few birds.
And suddenly, out of this simple and rather desolate place, and for no apparent reason, sprang modern Madrid.
Parking in the countryside each night, I made forays into cities to see wonderful art and architecture, then out again to tracks and fields.
Beside the wonders of the Prado it was the bull-fighting that intrigued me.
My first experience of this was to buy a ticket in the sun (cheaper) or shade (dearer).
For the first fight I chose a cheaper sunny seat. But the heat, the smell of blood, the cruelty, and the pervailing and overwhelming smell of sweet scent, made me feel quite nausious.
I was much on the side of the tortured bull until it was dispatched by the highly decorated matador with a curved sward.
I tried a night bull fight which, less revolting, had lost the drama when seen in the sunshine.
Toward Valencia the crops varied from grapes, figs, olives, apricots, oranges to other fruit, but it was the dust that not only seemed to cover the landscape and the fruit in it that made breathing difficult when ever it was disturbed. Everything near to the road was thickly covered in it.
I had reached the sea and parked for the night on the verge of it. Having cooked and eaten local produce I crawled within my net to sleep and listen to the clouds of musquitoes wanting to get in and to bite me.
A policeman appeared, woke me, and asked to see my papers. With no Spanish to explain my presence we argued. Then even he had to retire from the vicious insects.
Resting for the day, much of it in the cooling Mediterranean water, a crowd of young people appeared in an ox cart for a picnic on the shore. I was invited to join them and we enjoyed a delightful evening conversing through mixed language, gestures, and drawings in the sand. They wanted most to know about the bull-fights in Madrid. They shared their strange food with me and we drank red wine from a porron, a spouted glass jug that delivered the wine in a stream from jug to mouth via an arc in the air - causing much laughter at my efforts to aim properly.
After all the jollity I left the car’s headlights on all night, which meant hitch-hiking with a heavy battery to the next village to have it charged. Three cars passed me in one hour. Finaly, a self-propelled, gas-generating vehicle more or less had to stop to prevent running over me. We continued our journey at walking speed to Villanueva where a lady café owner made me a real Spanish omelette with just onion, potato and beated egg.
It was here that I settled for a while to meet Martin Torrents, an artist, and enjoy shoreline food and wine while looking out at night from beneath date palms over a sea dotted with bright lights as fishermen attracted sardines to their nets. Dust was dampened and the air cooled each evening by water spray.
A priest offered to show me his school where his room was odiferous and covered with dust, champagne corks, and cigar ash with butt ends.
Next to the sea and surrounded by white houses, and balconies of flowers with green or blue lattice blinds, I was very happy.
I had parked for the night on a dried river bed but my wheels had sunk in the sand. To get out I had to search for rocks to ram beneath the tyres before escaping. Then I was allowed to park in the fish market.
Along the coast north to Tossa, I saw the first English people since entering Spain.
Whereas those who topped up my pneumothorax at the American hospital in Paris were dressed in surgical gear, a doctor Xalabadar, in a back street of Barcelona, simply produced a large hypodermic needle with a dial at the end, shoved it into my chest and that was that. He refused payment.
The Pyrenean valleys were Shangri Las. Overtaking an old woman with a heavy load, toiling up a mountain road, I remembered the sweat of carrying a car battery and offered a lift. She was most grateful but left behind a most vicious flea. To be rid of it I coated myself with insect powder.
French roads were much better than those in Spain, but the rough Spanish ones had caused a break in the car’s chassis - welded together in France where everything was much more expensive than in Spain.
Marseille to Cannes with its nudity on the beach and then to Cagnes where my uncle Wyn had asked me to house-sit as he would be in Brittany where it was cooler.
With poste restant funds in pocket for food and petrol, I was able at last to disrobe and take a hot bath.
Should two prostitutes from Bordeaux turn up, I was told to entertain them. They didn’t.
With now three thousand and eighty six miles run, I was off to Italy, buying cheap petrol coupons at the border with France. Côtes d’Azur had seemed somehow false compared with the Spanish coast.
It was while driving through La Spezia that a bee was sucked into the car via the driver’s side nautical air vent. It went straight up the leg of my swimming shorts and stung me. It was when workmen were on their way home on bicycles. A glance in my rear view mirrors revealed some carnage on the road behind.
Shortly after that I came across a man in the middle of the road trying to push-start a woman in a basket-like vehicle. I wanted to overtake so gave a blast with my horn. The poor man panicked and couldn’t decide on which side of the road to escape - and ended up transfixed in the middle, swearing and quite near to my bumper.
Lucca, Pisa, Florence, each a feast of pictures and architecture, and each night after a day’s eye-feast I parked for the night on a country road and a quiet place to relax, eat and drink. Locals invariably greeted me with great friendship. Waking in the morning, I was unable to get out of the car as it was surrounded by a herd of pigs.
My diary filled with the praises of such as Verocchio, Ghirlandeio, Cimabué, Giotto, Bottecilli, Masaccio and many more, too difficult to describe.
Now came one of my target places. The villa where Boccacio retreated from the plague-ridden city to more or less isolation to write the Decameron. Certaldo was the village’s name and, as I climbed the hill to his house, I passed at almost every front doorstep a lady weaving raffia around bulbous chianti bottles. All that was needed was raffia, a large eyed needle and scissors. Forty a day was the average output per worker.
Boccacio had chosen well and could relax in an enclosed courtyard of fountain and flowers. It was lovely and well worth my pilgrimage.
To Sienna where I drank such good red wine at a café, I returned with my two large and now emptied chianti water flasks to have them filled with this wonderful wine.
Another part of my picture quest was to see the San Romano battle paintings by Ucello in Sienna, and they were as wonderful as expected, but with 3553 miles on the clock and much more to see with the funds available I was off to Rome via Ostia Antiqua.
Ostia’s Roman theatre and remains of a Roman town were all that one could expect - drains, heating, temples, forum, Colosseum - and all beautifully presented.
Then to Rome itself to see the Cisteen Chapel and Colosseum. But cities were always difficult for me and the car, and took so much time to leave for a night of camping in the countryside.
All roads may lead to Rome, but few away from it. This was the case when I left on the way to Assissi to see the Giotto’s there, and after some driving only to find myself in exactly the same spot from where I had started.
After Assisi, its Giottos and views of olive trees, with a pinackle of cyprus trees, I aimed for Ravenna and the clear Adriatic.
I was already suffering a bit from a surfiet of fine art and medieval architectural marvels. Though to see the works of old painter friends like Cosimo, Velasquez, Ucello, Giotto, Bronzino and more, and more, were beginning to fill my brain.
And car troubles were beginning to tax me and my war-torn body. But when ever there was car trouble I was certain to meet lovely and helpful people. Not many were doing what I was doing. So often I was greeted with incredulety and open arms. Lack of languages was usually overcome with made-up words, laughter, and amusing drawings on paper.
Taking a minor route that turned out to be rougher than expected, car springs in front started to disintegrate, leading to collapse of the leaf springs at the rear. Not only that, but a transverse chassis member also broke. Limping at 10 mph past fields of tomatoes growing close to the ground, I reached Porto Garibaldi and Commachio where a man with electric welding equipment mended as much as he could, but I had to part with my watch as part payment.
Commachio, once joined to Porto Garibaldi by a river and with all transport by canals since it was once a port, was quite lovely to look at except for its filthy water (in which children swam) and was so disease-ridden that I was warned not to eat any of the food offered there. A friendly guide told me that 20 percent of its inhabitants had TB, more with malaria, and typhoid was prevalent.
My guide bade me to follow him for 15 km to eat in his cool, family house where they grew fruit and vegetables in enormous abundance, yet there was not a bee or bird to be seen.
I parked on his land and by day visited Venice to see not only the normal sights but the gold cross that Napoleon left behind as he could not believe that it was solid gold.
The weather was hot enough, but that inside the glass factories in Murano intense.
The usual tat was being produced at the same time as craftsmen and their assistants created fine elaborate pieces, such as chandeliers, as others churned out elephants and naked women.
What amazed me was after a piece had been finished at the end of its blowing tube, just a drop of water and a light tap parted the glass piece from the blowing tube.
Then to Vicenza, and its 16th century theatre with original oil lamp illumination, Verona, and more car trouble in its refusal to start, so forcing me to spend the nights on a slope. But it ran beautifully through the Po Valley rice fields and crossed the Alps at 6700 feet to pass the customs at the summit. Scenery of ultramarine lakes, tumbling streams to French glaciers all through down hill France in fine clear air was lovely.
Help was called for in France where the Ford mechanic could not believe that my car had crossed the Alps having an 8 horse power engine and one burned-out valve.
Chambray to find no envelope of money in my poste restante, so headed for Paris and friends with my reserve cash.
The fan belt tore to shreds as I travelled through the immaculate vineyards of the top Burgundies to reach Paris, only to find that my friends (and reserve cash) had gone on holiday. Even someone I had met on my outward journey would have nothing to do with me as he thought I was a ruffian (and did look like one).
A concièrge of apartments owned by holidaying friends gave me food and enough cash to reach Boulogne, so I spent 100 f on a sandwich and ate the remains from the skin of a water melon. .
With papers in order and at the ferry quay side a 60 f harbour fee was demanded. But I had no money left. Yet, delving in all my pockets I came up with three 20 Franc pieces. And the good news was that there would be no disambarking fee at Dover. I was back.
The car (later to be sold to a Scottish Laird) had done 5,227 miles (8,412 km) from 7th of June 1953 to the tenth of August 1953.
That was three months and three days of adventure - a GRAND TOUR indeed, if sometimes a precarious one.
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