Helen and Geoff's Amazing Adventures

Have fun and do neat stuff

Tower at Uzes

I am Uzes

by | Mar 2, 2013 | France

The title of duke of Uzès is the premier title in the peerage of France, coming right after the princes of the blood.  The title of seigneur d’Uzès is attested in a charter of 1088.  After part of Languedoc was attached to royal demesne (1229), the lords’ (and later dukes’) military skill and fealty to the Crown propelled their rise through the nobility, until, after the treason of the last Duke of Montmorency, beheaded in 1632, the title of First Duke of France fell to Uzès, who retain their stronghold in the center of town today, which has expanded round the 11th century Tour Bermond.

If France were a kingdom, it would be the job of the duke of Uzès to cry out, “Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!” at each state funeral, and defend the honor of the queen mother.  Twenty-one dukes have been wounded or killed as hereditary Champion of France over the centuries.

The present-day town retains the trace of its walls as a circuit of boulevards.  A Capuchin chapel, built in 1635 to house the mortal remains of the dukes, occupies the site of a 1st century AD temple dedicated to the first Roman Emperor, Augustus.  There are monuments of the prestige of the former bishopric, once one of the most extensive of Languedoc, but extinguished at the Revolution, and private houses that witness the wealth that the textile trade brought in the 16th century.  The town is also homes to three feudal towers, the Bermonde Tower (part of the château du Duché), the Bishop Tower and the Royal Tower.

The Cathedral was destroyed in the Albigensian Crusade, rebuilt, and destroyed again in the 16th century Wars of Religion. Rebuilt again in the 17th century, it was stripped out during the French Revolution. The 11th century Romanesque Tour Fenestrelle (“Window Tower”), with its paired windows, is probably the most famous icon of the city.

Uzes is famous in the area for its Saturday market as not only does it sell local produce but it also sells cloths of the region as well as plenty of tourist delights.

Like many cloth-manufacturing centers (Uzès was known for its serges), the city and the surrounding countryside were strongly Protestant during the Wars of Religion in the 16th century, which wreaked havoc in Languedoc.  Numerous of the city’s churches were trashed and burned by furious Protestants: only two remain today.

Shield Shrimp

When it rains across Australia’s vast inland region, temporary pools crop up all over the arid ground, giving life to a strange desert crustacean known as the shield shrimp (Triops australiensis).

Named after the formidable carapace that shields its head and upper body, T. australiensis can grow up to 7.6 cm long, and it uses its long, segmented tail and mass of 60 or so legs to propel itself through shallow water.

It also breathes through these legs – its sub-class Branchiopoda means ‘gill-legged’ – and in the females these legs bear ovisacs for carrying their tiny eggs.

Several pix in the Photo Gallery and a movie.

Acacia peuce

A rare and endangered plant. The tree grows up to 15 to 18 metres (49 to 59 ft) high, with short horizontal branches and pendulous branchlets covered in needle-like phyllodes adapted for the arid dry climate. It has a distinctive habit more similar to a sheoak or a conifer.

Although speculated to have been widespread across central Australia during wetter climates 400,000 years ago, the population is now mostly restricted to three sites, separated by the encroaching Simpson Desert. In the Northern Territory, the species is restricted to the Mac Clark (Acacia peuce) Conservation Reserve which is surrounded by a pastoral lease, Andado Station. The other two sites are near Boulia and Birdsville in Queensland. The tree is found in open arid plains that usually receive less than 150 millimetres (5.9 in) of rain per annum. They grow on shallow sand aprons overlaying gibber or clay slopes and plains and between longitudinal dunes or on alluvial flats between ephemeral watercourses.

 

Owen Springs Reserve on Hugh River

Owen Springs was a station on the Hugh River. The Hugh River flows into the Finke (when it actually flows). Both cut through the Western MacDonnell Ranges. The image above shows Owen Springs Reserve as a dot at lower right. The river it is next to is the Hugh. Hermannsburg, our next town, is near middle left edge. Hermannsburg is almost on the Finke River. You can see both Hugh and Finke Rivers cutting through sections of MacDonnell Ranges.

Palm Valley

Palm Valley is within the Finke Gorge National Park southwest of Alice Springs. Palm Valley has a smallish population of Red Cabbage Palms (Livistona mariae). The nearest related species is 850 kilometres away in Katherine NT. The average rainfall for Palm Valley is just 200 mm per year. Small pockets of semi-permanent spring-fed pools allow the unique flora and fauna (desert fish, shield shrimps tadpoles and frogs) to survive.

It had been assumed that the cabbage palms were remnants of a prehistoric time when the climate supported tropical rainforest in what is now the arid inland of Australia. Genetic analysis published in 2012 determined that Livistona mariae at Palm Valley is actually the same species as Livistona rigida from samples collected near Katherine and Mount Isa, both around 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) away. It is now thought that aboriginal people brought the palms to here from Mataranka.

Mound Springs

Mound Springs occur around the Western edge of the Great Artesian Basin and represent a natural discharge of Artesian water that was captured many hundreds of kilometers away from rain falling along the Great Dividing Range and New Guinea. This article provides details. Dalhousie is an excellent example of a mound spring.

Great Artesian Basin map Great Artesian Basin diagram