Rustiques museum

Another triumph over a French attitude towards times and appointments.  We wanted to see the museum but it is only open on Tuesdays and Fridays from 10 - 12.
Duly there at 10 am (one of us by bike, even!) the museum was firmly shut.  A notice on the door informed us there was a village walk at 10 am starting from the campsite, but omitted to mention that the guide was one and the same person who led the museum visits.

Le guide, a Belgian who speaks 7 languages.

 We waited for 15 minutes then asked.  "Oh, he will be leading the village walk.  You'll find him easily somewhere in the village.  Try the chateau or the church".  OK, we wander around as suggested but no luck so we went to Trebes to find a coffee. At 11.30 we thought we'd just try our luck and return to Rustiques to see if they had ended up at the museum by any chance. Just giving up for the second time as there was no sign of life, they all suddenly appeared accompanied by the old man whose 40 year archeological collection founded the museum in 2001.

Jean Nicoux,the archeologist, and part of a statue

And here was another surprise.  In such a small place we expected a very rustic dusty collection of disorganised exhibits but far from it.  He had been a meticulous collector and recorder of his finds; everything was well documented and fragments of pottery placed on photographic reproductions so you could see what the whole thing would have looked like. 

M Nicoux describes some of his finds.

The old man was easy to understand and eager to tell us all about his collection of mostly gallo-roman pottery, coins etc, but also some prehistoric tools and so on. One item was a small piece of gold jewellery with a phallic symbol which he explained the Roman women would wear to illustrate their husbands' virility. He had nearly missed it down in the ground until a sudden ray of sun caught it and made it glint.

We also heard how it took him 25 years to get permission to excavate two niches outside the church, which turned out to contain the remains of 9 and 4 bodies, on top of which were remnants of statues presumably destroyed during the revolution and buried in there.

All in all a worthwhile visit and now on to the next thing, as today is the National Day of Music.  All over France there are concerts and dances and soirees, so we're off to find some.....