One of the most attractive aspects of La Bourboule is their Make do & Mend attitude. This can be seen when observing the architecture of the town, particularly the street furniture. The afore mentioned bench, for example, is the same one depicted on postcards from before WWI, just periodically painted and refurbished. The balustrades that grace the river’s edge have been patched and replaced as and when necessary, with whatever stone in whichever form was available (cheaply, one assumes). This thrifty approach – much appreciated by yours truly, who has so far failed to emulate her great hero and role model, Scrooge McDuck but always admires others who are more successful in this – is also evidenced by the street lamps that are scattered throughout the centre of town.
Originally they were all matching, of course. La Bourboule looks as though it was built pretty much in one go, between the late 19th century, when the Cure became all the rage and the healing springs had become more widely known, and the 1930s. As a result the town has a pleasingly unified look. It lacks most of the modern concrete accoutrements that augment most other old city centres. Much of this has to do with lack of funds – by the time other towns embarked on a wholesale slash & burn assault on their existing buildings in the 1960s and 1970s, la Bourboule had run out of money and had to make do with what they had.
The street lights originally all possessed either three or four domes, each of which looked like a full moon in the darkness. However, the domes do sometimes break and crack, and appear to be expensive to replace. Walking around the town I discovered all manner of replacements for these domes. Sometimes only the colour differs; sometimes they are see-through rather than the usual opaque. And sometimes the shape is no longer dome-like, but has assumed a lantern-like appearance.
A small town like la Bourboule needs all the attractions it can get, and for me this departure from boring standard street lamps to a more varied and ingenious street architecture has increased the old fashioned and discrete charm of this little place enormously. La Bourboule is cool!
