All Roads Lead to Pau.
Our Golden Milestone: Le Square Georges V on the Boulevard des Pyrérenées
Our Golden Milestone…
The familiar medieval Latin proverb, “all roads lead to Rome,” was oddly enough first recorded in writing by a French theologian and poet, Alain de Lille, in 1175. The metaphorical concept of the proverb is based on the physical Golden Milestone (Milliarium Aureum), a monument erected in 20BC in the central forum of ancient Rome. It became the marker from which all roads in the empire were measured. In modern times we use the reference to emphasize that there can be different ways to achieve the same result or that there is a certain inevitability to life’s choices and actions. Over the past eight years, the city of Pau has supplanted Rome as our central converging point of seemingly random crossed paths, both in daily life and global travels.
The first inkling….
The first inkling of Pau as our personal Golden Milestone came immediately after announcing to friends and family that we had finally found our slice of French heaven and would close on the property in March of 2016. My dear college friend Laura, who lived with her husband and daughter in Vermont, responded with a reminder that their daughter Margo had participated in a high school exchange program in France. What I did not previously know, was that the French student who stayed with Laura’s family, was from Pau!
After the initial surprise, further inquiry revealed that the school he attended is on our street and that we overlook it from our terrace. What are the odds of that? Last July Laura visited us while on a business trip to Paris. During her stay, we had the pleasure of inviting the exchange student, who is now a gainfully employed university graduate, to come join us for coffee. He arrived with fresh croissants, clearly a young man of good taste and manners!
Interlocking Threads…
That first connection between our past life and a new one proved to be just the beginning of many interlocking threads of an ever-expanding web that would capture new friends and enrich our expat life. But that web was not yet done connecting to Laura. During the exchange program, Laura’s daughter had stayed with the Touya family in Toulouse, a two-hour drive from Pau,. When the Touyas vacationed in New England during the summer of 2017, Laura suggested we meet them. They were spending a few days in Boston, so we invited the family to come for dinner at our seaside home in Hull. They took a memorable ferry ride across Boston Harbor to a neighboring town and then squeezed into our tiny electric car for the short drive to our house perched on a hill overlooking the harbor and open sea.
We served home-made clam chowder, my mom’s southern cornbread, and my husband’s grilled Teriyaki steak tips while the setting sun painted the sky and sea in luminous shades of ruby and amethyst. I had been nervous to cook for people I didn’t know and to meet the high standard of French cuisine. Thankfully, my husband’s suggestion of an all American menu was so successful that the family took our recipes and re-created them on the other side of the Atlantic. Though this amazing family arrived as strangers, they left as friends. We have stayed at their home in Toulouse, and they have come to our home in Pau, perhaps encouraged by their son’s love of Pau’s professional basketball team and not just our cooking.
Photos: (1) Laura, François (owner of favorite restaurant “Le Poulet à 3 Pattes,”) me & JB. (2) JB & exchange student with L.A. Olympic Torch JB carried in Boston as part of the flame’s cross-country tour. (3) Laura on a day the Tour de France passed through Pau. (4)The Touya family visiting Hull.
https://www.lepouleta3pattes.fr
Serendipity…
The next “all roads lead to Pau” serendipity reached deep into my past; pre-marriage and prior to any thoughts of living abroad. During the first year of our long stay visas, JB and I were required to go to Bordeaux for a medical exam. In the government run clinic waiting room we joined a dozen other travelers from around the world, also hoping to stay for a year or more in France. Almost immediately, a conversation between a beautiful young woman and one of a more mature age (closer to mine) caught my attention.
My eavesdropping revealed that the later was an “Aussie” and I suspected that the former was Japanese. Her French and English were fluent, but something about her demeaner hinted to me “Japan” where I had spent a life changing summer in my twenties. Never shy about opportunities for social interaction, I politely (I hope) inserted myself into their exchange. After confirming the young woman was from Japan and revealing my connection to the country, we discovered that I had stayed in a small Tokyo suburb right next to the equally small town in which she had been born and raised. She had come to France in hope of improving her French (she had already spent a year in Australia to bolster her English). Then came the revelation that her work visa avenue to France was as a professional rugby player for the women’s team in Pau! And if that wasn’t enough of a small world “coincidence,” she confessed that her stipend provided by women’s rugby is supplemented with working at one of the local wine co-ops we frequent.
South African threads…
Like the massive and complex webs of a Darwinian bark spider, Pau’s connections continue to be far reaching and have even spun across the equator to the southern tip of the African continent, explored by the evolution theorist in 1836. For the last three years we have escaped our region’s rainy winter weather for a few weeks of Cape Town summer during late January and early February.
The first year we visited happened to coincide with my need for a haircut. I found the fabulous “Hand Salon” and was so happy with the results, that I intentionally planned to indulge when we returned the next year. This time my appointment was booked with Michael, a brilliant stylist and owner of the salon. We immediately launched into typical chit-chat starting with where I was from. When I responded that my husband and I were originally from the USA, but had retired to the Southwest of France, the rapid scissor snipping paused mid-air. Our eyes locked in the mirror as he said, “where in the south-west?” My almost apologetic reply was “just a small city near the border of Spain called Pau.”
Michael’s cutting hand dropped and the other spun me around to exclaim eye-to-eye, “my wife’s family is from Orleans, France and my friend just bought a place near Pau !” After a moment to recover from that unlikely nexus he resumed his artful attack on my salt and pepper head and divulged that he and his wife were hoping to someday move the family to France. The expat adventure would be an exciting challenge for the family and secure the future benefit of affordable university educations for the children. When I returned to the salon in 2024, we delved into Michael’s dream of starting a surfer lodging venture in Biarritz, about an hour from Pau. JB and I had vacationed twice in this gorgeous coastal town, infused with a southern California vibe, many years before deciding to live in France. Michael’s dream has been temporarily deferred by an advancement in his wife’s career, but my fingers are still crossed for them to migrate northward.
Hand Salon: https://www.haveaniceday.co.za
Another strand…
The South Africa-to-Pau thread recently developed another strand. When hiking in Cape Town, I have been constantly amazed by the varied rock formations and exposed layers of geological millenniums. These images continued to ferment in my writer’s brain long after returning to France. Wanting to use the images metaphorically, I began to research the area’s geology on the internet and stumbled on a link to an amazing book by the South African geologist, John Rogers.
Geared toward scientific novices like me, it explains what you see from a geological point of view as you fly into the region and then explore it on hikes, drives, and train rides. The process of obtaining the online pdf version of the book from John, led to conversations about my background, interest in his research, and of course — a Pau connection. He had a colleague in England whose wife’s family came from Pau, and he suggested I reach out to him. When I did, I received a delightful reply from the colleague. He beautifully recounted a fascinating family history imbedded in the southwest of France and deeply impacted by two world wars that connected the family to England through love and service of freedom.
I must add that reading John’s book is currently enriching my hiking experiences in Cape Town, as we have just returned just this January for a six week stay. His perspective on the world below our feet and beneath the ocean depths has also inspired me to research the geology of the region we hike in France. I highly encourage anyone interested in the natural world to acquire the book.
Photos: (1) Lion’s Head (2) JB paragliding over Lion’s Head and Table Mountain (3) Rock formation on drive to Cape of Good Hope (4) Ever present Protea flower (5) View of Table Mountain from Blouvergstrand (6) Clouds rolling over Table Mountain and Lion’s Head from harbor cruise (7) Hiking at the foot of the 12 Apostles Mountain Range (8) Lunch at the roof top bar in the Silo Hotel in a former grain silo
State-side connections…
Even when I’m back in Boston on one of my tri-annual trips to spend a few weeks visiting my 97-year-old mother, I regularly discover Pau connections. These stays are made possible by the amazing generosity of two friends, Jane and Tricia. They open their home to me each time I come to Boston and give me near free rein of one of their vehicles. Coincidently, they have a neighbor who spent some of his college time in an exchange program at the University of Pau.
During my limited time in Boston, they also do their best to coordinate social events with mutual friends and connect me with new like minds. One night Jane and I shared a Yom Kippur dinner at the home of Roberta, a local university professor and friend I have delightfully inherited from Jane. The other guests were Roberta’s associates, and she especially wanted me to connect with one who had for many years led educational tours out of Pau, across the mountains into Spain, and along a trail of medieval cities. The inspirational concept of following that trail by car to Barcelona has now been added to my local bucket list.
The Dutch connection…
On my return from one of these Boston trips, I characteristically indulged my insatiable desire to connect with fellow travelers and fell into conversation with the dashing Dutch gentleman sitting next to me on a connecting flight from Amsterdam to Toulouse. Lucky for me, Joop was fluent in English, as well as Dutch and French. We initially bonded over a minor faux pas while delayed on the tarmac. A businessman across the aisle was engaged in a loud, speaker phone enabled conversation that threatened to continue right up until the last allowable minute. After a few shared eyerolls between Joop and me, he politely asked the businessman to mute his phone. The offending traveler, turned to us and firmly expressed that he was hard of hearing and that the audible phone exchange was necessary.
Following a sheepish apology, we spent the next two hours digging into past lives, politics, expat life, and relationships. Before parting ways, we exchanged contact info and after several weeks I accepted an invitation for JB and I to have lunch with him and his French husband Alain. It was no surprise that such a delightful travel companion was married to a brilliant, funny, and kind man. They share a home in Amsterdam as well as an exquisitely renovated French farmhouse an hour from Pau. While sharing a reciprocating Saturday lunch in our home, Joop pushed me to launch my long percolating concept of "Pourquoi Pau?” by setting a 48-hour deadline to register the domain. Now his thread in the Pau web universe will always be connected to my internet web as well.
Photos: Lunch at Joop and Alain’s incredible “farm house.” The afternoon concluded with a lovely farmland walk along with surprise showers. Evident in our final rain soaked photo.
Dare to wander…
All these seemingly random unforeseen connections to the city we chose for our French life, leave me to wonder about the principle of the “Golden Milestone.” Do all roads, physical and spiritual, inevitably lead back to wherever we choose to anchor, on “terra ferma” or within our hearts? If we had settled in Antibes, Bordeaux, Toulouse or some other yet unexplored village on this continent or another, would a different web of encounters have interwoven from that place?
Perhaps, if we dare to wander, we are destined to discover a delightful inevitability beneath life’s choices and learn that happiness and home, like many things in life, can be achieved in different ways, anywhere, and in unexpected moments.
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