Here comes the sun (and I say ...)

A few rays of sun change everything. All life is governed by the climate and although humankind has learned to make adjustments and created technologies to bend the weather to our wishes, it's still only bending and not a volte face.

While the weather has been an ever-present factor for us its impact on the communities through which we pass is equally inescapable. As I write, I'm watching through a white haze the swarms gathering at the Sunday morning market in Moissac. The temperatures reach the high 30s of late and everyone is happy. People stroll slowly in sundresses and shorts and even the Moissagais admit they have a holiday allure as long as the sun shines. Groups of friends are generous with the apéritives in the shaded cafés; and last night the biggest crowds ever assembled for the annual solstice Fete de la Musique in the square under the protective gaze of the famous Romanesque tympanum of the abbey church.

Warm weather opens purses, which gladdens the hearts of restaurateurs and farmers. Just eight days ago our host in the Auvergne fretted at the effect two wet summers would hane on his ability to stay open. And the bent-over farmer instructing his grandson in the ways of cattle moaned that for the second year he couldn't make hay so would have to buy feed during the winter for his unhappy cows.

People in the Lot and the Tarn et Garonne departments - a region called the Quercy - through which we are now passing stitch together a livelihood based on polyculture. Small plots of sweetcorn alternate with tobacco and sunflowers, but it is for fruit that the area is famous. Cherries, figs, plums, strawberries, Chasselas grapes and apricots - they are here in aromatic piles on the market stalls, but the prices are high. The late frosts killed off the blossoms and on many trees no fruit has set. The growers are left scrabbling for an income.

The sun was therefore heralded with glee three days ahead by shopkeepers, bed and breakfast owners and farmers. It was not just the English and walkers who were obsessed by the weather. "Summer will start tomorrow!" we were told by the butcher as he rubbed his hands and looked at the sky. We heard it again and again, till the statement took on the joyous certainty of an end-of-days prophecy. And start it did, with glinting dew and a shiver of bare arms that were breathing for the first time. The sky was silver above the crest of a hill in the instants before the sun blessed it. Such mornings draw us out early, peering at each flower as if it was the first. It's a coincidence, though it feels inevitable, that the sun arrived for the Solstice and our baptism on the "true" St Jacques route. Everything is different. The villages are big and lively, with busy cafés and resplendent butchers' and bakers' shops presided over by talkative shopkeepers. Homes feel richer than almost any area we have been through; the communities are viable and living at peace with themselves. And we are no longer alone. Twenty or more people follow the same path as us at roughly the same pace, making for the key villages and accommodation each evening. So although we don't always walk with other people, it does happen; or different combinations of familiar faces will share a table at a café or collect around a valued water tap. Our thoughts and conversation are thus levened by those of our temporary companions, and their ideas and perspectives on what we're all doing here. Outside the gites the festoons of washed clothes are almost festive each evening and rather than skulk in our room we sit in the late sun as it tickles us out from under the shade of a walnut tree.

As the temperatures mount it becomes imperative to walk early in the day and to spend the two or three lunchtime hours in shade. A hillside orchard could have been invented by Enid Blyton for its views over poppy-filled cornfields to a small green lake and the vineyards beyond. Afterwards, just up the lane, the farmer's wife sat under another tree offering cold, homemade lemon and honey drinks to enraptured walkers, along with her cakes, walnuts and prunes. There was an honesty box, but she did it as much for the pleasure of sharing her view with people from all countries. We were Canadians, French, Swiss, Germans and English to collect there in the breezy eddy of her farmyard. Where once we have been grateful for the offer of hot drinks and shelter from the rain, now a sign pointing us to someone's garden tap overwhelms us with the locals' generosity.

The baking sun is blinding against the white stone and it draws attention to the buildings. And now we come back full circle. In Normandy and Picardy the long, low houses were built of wood for warmth and their thick thatches tucked in tight the heat from the fire - even at the risk of catching fire themselves. The overhanging eaves were sloped to protect the outside stairs from snow and rain and to provide a place close at hand to build the barricades of logs needed to give heat all through the long winters.

Quercy houses traditionally have wide overhangs too, tiled in red and yellow terracotta for the heat to evaporate. It's when you see more modern houses, without the deep eaves, that you realize the wisdom of vernacular architechture. The rooms of the modern houses bake through the length of the day while those in the traditional style are in constant shade. And yet this district, with its recurring chalk and limestone ridges and valleys has moments of rain that can spring up unexpectedly and from any direction as the wind, confused, is buffeted by the rock. So we see that the verandas at ground and first floor levels stretch around three or even four sides, so there'll always be a place to sit or to stretch out laundry in the lee of the rain. The gentle contours of the hills lend themselves to building part of the house into the rock: cool constant temperatures for storage. Our table companions in the Fete de la Musique last night were a carpenter and his wife. He works in all the nearby villages and towns, in traditional styles and modern. We told him of a modern eco-house we'd seen built entirely of thick wooden blocks. Useless to do such a thing round here, he advised. The succession of rain and dry winds would twist and crack such a structure ina couple of years.

I'm fascinated at how the vernacular building styles change and adapt as much to the climate as to the landscape and local materials. As if the earth is given the natural materials people need for homes that will let them live comfortably and economically. In modern cities, in modern homes everywhere, such wisdom has been lost. We build for immediate economy and savings, but pay out in more than money alone to heat and cool our buildings with fossil fuels. Certainly, some architects research and promote other ways of building but cost for cost up front, we're nearly always frightened away from even this new-found wisdom.

Moreover, I'm confounded always by the folly of colonialisation. In our haste for resources and riches and in the pressure of populations humankind has driven itself further and further into parts of the earth where we have no right to be. We sat out a rain storm with a student from sub-tropical La Réunion, a French départment in the Indian Ocean. A nice life, tending towards laziness with only the periodic cyclones to keep an eye on. But in search of employment he had spent four years in Québec and was traumatised by the inhumanity of -40°C winters. And I'm left to puzzle over why people should have wanted to settle there in the first place.

Now, once again, there is talk of colonisation on Mars or some other such distant place, to escape the disasters we have brought to the earth. Does anyone know what the vernacular architecture for Mars would be - the one that would allow us to live in balance between our bodies and the environment there?

22nd June 2008