January 2023 – Walking without a donkey

January 2023

A walk from the Tuileries Gardens (Louvre art gallery end) to the Pont Neuf, along the Seine, and back through the Tuileries Tunnel with art works. I aimed to walk through the tunnel in the other (west-east) direction, but couldn’t find the entrance. Google maps to the rescue! Note that it says ‘Closed’ though at the time of writing that means only to cars and lorries etc.

Come out of the Tuileries Gardens by the end of the Louvre (above) and instead of walking across the zebra crossing to the river, take a right on the same side (the barbed wire towering above you)

‘This is a Revolution’. Above the entrance to the Tuileries Tunnel

Tuileries Tunnel (Tuileries Gardens / Louvre) entrance

Walk along the Seine

The Seine river with the Pont des Arts in the distance. I was looking for some space and a more natural environment after many noisy walks across the city to and from work during the week.

A long row of luminous silver birches lines the River Seine

Look to your left for make-shift homes and art work. Signs indicating historical sites of interest and local history are on the walls too, including the story of the Washerwomen. During the18th century, more than 80 boats would have been moored along the banks of the Seine, each carrying 24 washerwomen (‘a gigantic laundry’). Others built a jetty, illegally, and stationed themselves there to hang out the washing to dry. Eventually the boats were condemned as a hindrance to river traffic, and ‘the smalls’ unseemly to be seen from the Louvre and the Tuileries Palace.

It looks like someone or some people are staying here under the bridge

Tuileries Tunnel

Details:

From the Tuileries Gardens (close to the Louvre art gallery) to half way between the Pont des Arts and the Pont Neuf on the north/right bank
800m long – once you’re in, there’s no escape
10 European street artists
Parallel to the Seine River
Open only to walkers and cyclists
Including Andrea Ravo Mattoni, Hydrane, Lek & Sowat, Bault, Ërell, Madame, Romain Froquet
Artistic direction: Nicolas Laugero Lasserre, with the support of the City of Paris

Text from the @m_a_d_a_m_e (below) ‘De l’obscur au clair ce n’est pas l’œil oui change mais la façon dont on Louvre’ meaning, approximately, ‘from dark to light, it’s not the eye that changes but the way we Louvre.’

The Tuileries Tunnel is a cross between a cold contemporary art gallery and a graffitied tunnel. With all the ambience of the Channel one (linking Dover and Calais), once you are in it you are only reminded of its Parisian location by occasional French texts. Overlaid now with random graffiti, it’s hard to distinguish between the original and later-added work.

Lighting changes colour like switching traffic beacons and affects the frescoes. Beam-me-up blue ones invite you to stand underneath, back to the sides – part interrogatory, part revelatory. Some works stretch along the walls, like the dancing figures or running wild animals, moving and flowing; others decorate with familiar blocks of primary coloured letters or the image of Frida Kahlo. All are constantly interacting with their audience, some concentrating only on running and others defacing them.

There isn’t one theme, though the fight for life and peace features strongly. The art works do not, collectively, tell a story, nor do they offer a message (unlike the Colinton Tunnel or No Birds Land in Edinburgh), though there is immense subtlety in some of them despite the conditions of the walls and the external temperature.

Half way through, I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay, but I had to either go back or on. There is a rawness in the air, a sense of disquiet, with none of the cosyness of a National Gallery or safety of a contemporary white box. Certainly there is impermanence – there are no guarantees that what you are witnessing will be there tomorrow.

Link to tourist website page about the Tuileries Tunnel

Nearest public toilets: Tuileries Gardens, Rue de Rivoli / Place des Pyramides entrance.

For a good takeaway try Aki Boulangerie, 16 Rue de Sainte-Anne, 75001 Paris (Japanese take-away meals: those works-of-art-cum-French-pâtisserie (cakes is too pedestrian a description), real delicacies. I had a briquette (I think it was called) sort of deep fried breadcrumbs outside with curried veg inside – delicious).

For the best, simple green tea served in the tiddliest teapot (there’s plenty – quality not quantity) in Paris (so far) try Atelier WM – 45 Rue de Richelieu, 75001 Paris, France

Have you been to the tunnel? What did you think? Please do leave a comment below.

Documentation

A small group of us met for a Community Walk on Wardie Bay by Granton Harbour, and walked along the coast in the direction of the Forth Bridges. We slid on the ice as far as the Boardwalk Beach Club and then headed inland to Lauriston Farm.

Silverknowes coastal walk – taken a week earlier

We were scanning for eider, curlew and oystercatchers, birds which are all currently on the RSPB Amber List because they are under threat from ocean pollution and decrease in habitat and safe feeding grounds.

The second in my series of 30×30 Biodiversity (pen and ink on watercolour paper)

The UK’s breeding curlew population has halved in the last 25 years.
https://www.gwct.org.uk/action-for-curlew/about-curlew/

While we waited, I spent a considerable time removing this yellow fishing net which had become entangled with the seaweed on the beach

Straightaway, we spotted a few oystercatchers foraging on the Eastern breakwater with their red-orange bills and distinctive Balenciaga colouring. Unfortunately my phone camera cannot take good photos at a distance

Dogs were chasing the waders and we talked about how much energy the birds expend escaping them, energy they cannot afford to use up when the ground is frozen at this time of year and short daylight hours are filled with finding food.

The walk had to be cancelled the week before on account of the snow. This Saturday it was icy underfoot. Kim, Ewan and Jennifer

There were eider ducks floating, thank goodness, plus cormorants and herring gull, redshank, guillemot and turnstones, great crested grebe, mergansers, and grey plover.

Another poor quality long-distance shot, but I managed to capture the cormorant skimming away from the rock it had been sunning on

By the time we reached hot chocolate heaven with cold hands and full bladders, the rain was coming on and we admired the rainbow beside Cramond Island

As we walked inland, we spotted a kestral hovering with wings spread, listening to something it had spotted, plummeting, and then sitting in a tree nearby, perhaps digesting

Lauriston Farm have recently fenced off their lower field so that migrators can overwinter there safely – commendable work that will benefit us all. Jennifer, Ewan and Kim, trusty fellow walkers

Other sightings: crows, robins, magpies, blackbirds, fieldfare, a heron, and a flock of linnets.

Lauriston Farm, higher up, offers a glorious view of the Fife hills. We stopped to chat with Toni, one of the tireless team who run it, and Bob, a local birder who said the curlew “are definitely coming back”. Not ten minutes later as we walked to the bus stop, he was proved right. By the road was a group wandering and feeding, and again, taking off when they were disturbed, needlessly, by a jogger who ran through their midst.