Au revoir Francais et Angleterre

Well, we made it to England without too many more dramas with fuel after queuing for an hour at a time. This is us in our last queue.

We had a couple of delightful days in Peterborough at a 5 star campground, then headed up to Cheshire to drop off our camping car. Rain, soggy damp, drizzle, mizzle and all the other issle's that Middle England is famous for live here. The poor middle-of-England folk think this is living. I feel for them.

We haven't cooked since we arrived in England, because, seriously, eating out in England is now cheaper than Australia. And we couldn't be bothered.

We've bought so many 'little things', too, we are having trouble packing them to fit into our luggage allowance. This doesn't usually happen with us. We usually have so little interest in 'things' that it comes as a surprise that we are interested in buying now. I think that everything has become so much cheaper here, that it would be stupid not to.

Which makes one wonder -- why is it all so expensive in Australia? Who is benefitting from the price hikes there?

We can get amazing meal deals, and product deals, here, that we cannot get, now, at home. A shame. I think we are being ripped off.

We will soon be home. November 2. Pete is excited. Bec: so-so. Me? Hey: I am happy to travel wherever and whenever I can. A great trip this year. We have loved every minute. (Don't we always?)

The air is chilled in England, about 6˚ C at night and 12˚ C in the day. The leaves are changing colour. The skies threaten. We will not escape without good winds, good rains, and dreary weather. How the English put up with it, beats me. Even so, I love it! I can live indoors as happily as out: and this country encourages that.

Home soon. Au Revoir Francais et Angleterre! Another wonderful trip.

Our last queue for fuel

Sunset on our last evening in France

Ice and honey

We are enroute to Calais. I have missed days in the telling, but that is because, since we left the Pyrennes, the Ice Age Cometh, and we are freezing. Wearing woolly socks to bed, and wearing them again during the day, covered with ordinary black socks, so they don’t look too ridiculous. But, our first priority is warmth: we need to stay rugged up in all that we have. Nights have been heavy frost. Days have been icy. We’re hoping that this too will pass.

Our second concern is fuel. We are about half of the way to Calais and have been turned away at the bowsers for Gazole (Diesel) all day. Tonight we have a half a tank. That will get us a few towns further on and then we might have to make the papers in order to get fuel. Tonight though, without hope of fuel for movement or sun for warmth, the moon is soggy white and distorted by clouds dripping what feels like ice, we are camped in one of our Invitation sites in Chezelles.

We are camped in a green grassy space, surrounded on all sides by high trees, in the very centre of a tiny village, most of which seems to be owned, run, or supervised, by the people who gave us the Invitation to this grassy site. So lovely. Especially after spending much of the day in Limoges. Limoges, like many places in France, needs a giant Gerni to pressure spray its homes, shops, restaurants, bars, and public buildings. It also needs an education program in hygienic disposal of dog poo.

The French love dogs. The French dogs poo. On the sidewalks, on the roads, on the footpaths, on the grass, on your feet -- if you stand still for too long. It really is disgusting. And as frequently as the dogs poo, Frenchmen piss. They use every corner of every building, brick, stone or wood, and every plant, tree and hollow as an opportunity to squirt a smelly arc. The paths and roads decorated in dog poo are revolting. Add to this the amniotic smell of the French male’s inner essence and places like Limoges become too ripe to bear.

Chezelles, though, the village where we’re parked tonight is run by honey producing folk. If you are a wealthy miel (honey) producer and distributor you could do worse than own your own village. I think they own much of the town. Their operations certainly occupy most of the centre.

To start with most of the homes in the village have a splash of paint wash, so they look cared for, clean. And the sidewalks are untainted, even pleasant. We walked at sunset from one end of the village to the other and didn’t once need a nose peg or a shoe brush. Thank you, honey folk of Chezelles, if you are the movers and shakers who keep this pretty village clean. It smells lovely, too.

Rugged up and moving

Chezelles

Our honey stopover

Limoge needs a genre

Postcards from our villages

There is snow on Canigou, just opposite, and a biting little chill nipping the air: so it is time for us to leave Eus. 

We are sad. We have come to love this little corner of the world. 

Each day we have crammed in repeat visits to little villages that are close enough for lunch and a drive.

Ceret: An arty town. Picasso was here. As were many contemporary artists through until the 1920s. They came, they stayed, they painted. Many buildings show medallions of where they rented homes for the duration. Trouble is, I pretty much lose interest in artists after Van Gogh, so I hardly know these folk. Nor do I understand their work.

We lunch right outside a very trendy modern art gallery, which we weren’t even tempted to enter. But lunch was fun, Catalan, served by a delightful character from the hippie era, wearing a long braid and an even longer red Indian cotton tie-died shirt. He played Cat Stevens and Dylan and we stayed longer because he played them for us.

Collioure: A very pretty coastal town, climbing around the bay. The harbour looks a little like Chania in Crete from above with ancient harbour walls curving like skinny stony arms out into the blue Mediterranean.

Molitg-les–Bains: A spa town. Probably the prettiest town in the region, as it has been decked out in stylish slim Cyprus pines, pretty lanterned gardens and water gushing down the mountain side.

Stylish spa pools and elegant hotels frequented by clients ‘taking the waters’ line the narrow streets. This is one of the few places where you still have to reserve to gain a table for lunch.

Vinca: Just up the road, this is another very unprepossessing town, with few shops, yet it has a delicious and inexpensive restaurant where we were served great Catalan fare with espresso to finish at only 90cents a demitasse: the most reasonable, yet, in France.

The town has “beaucoup” Englishmen, according to the Maitre D’ and when you walk the streets you can see their many homes renovated within an inch of their lives. Not much is left open in these parts now, given the chill in the air.

Villefranche-de-Conflent, the most touristy spot, was all but closed yesterday when we called in to say goodbye. The few people who were in the few bistrots open were foreigners: mostly English. Many tourist shops have even taken their merchandise out of the stores for the winter, swept the shop empty, and locked the door. Most places around here are moving indoors for the winter.

Two little boys live in our village. From now until May they will likely spend most of their time indoors. They don’t have gardens. There is no public park on this hill – or any of the towns in these parts. Nowhere green for the children to play.

Most houses don’t even own gardens in these hill communities. Actually, that is true in most of France. Only a very few do. It is odd, to us, from Australia – where the outdoors is always accessible, usable and available to use – to live seasons as separately as they do in France. The umbrellas have been folded, bistrot chairs stacked till next spring, signs dismantled, doors locked. That season is over. It is time to move on to the next.

We have now to wind our way back to Calais. Some 1300 kilometres of driving in the midst of a fuel strike. The centrist-right French government is attempting to push up the retirement age from 60 to 62 – I guess they have finally done their sums and realized they can’t afford to let people retire too early! – and the objecting hoards have come out in protest: one of their easiest bludgeons: the oil refineries, have been closed in protest. Our trip back will be yet another adventure hunting down fuel.

Ceret, Picasso was here

Collioure, hugging the bay

Molitg-les-Bains, an elegant spa town 

Vinca has beaucoup English living in and near 

Villefranche-do-Confluent, empty of tourists for once 

Artisan Boulangier et Chocolatier

It is not every day you see an artisan French bread maker in action. Some wicked morsel in the window of an unassuming back-street boulangerie in the unassuming town of Prades drew us indoors. Before long we were crammed into a century old bakery at the back of the store where great sacks of pulverised grain and flour leaned heavily against white washed walls, checking out all the action.

Not a sugar sack in sight. The grains and flours are mixed in giant vats.  Water and a yeast and dough starter called levain, are added. When the dough rises, elongated tubes of it are laid out on neatly spaced scallop-shaped trays ready for the fuel driven ovens along the back wall: slow ovens for crispy breads, faster ovens for thinner skinned bread. The dough prepped now will be baked about 2 o’clock, in the cool of the early morning.

We spent a good hour watching Bruno, master boulanger, pastry chef and chocolatier, finish off a tray of pomme tartlettes (his puff pastry was handmade and light as air), and skilfully, individually dipping exceptional chocolate truffles into a final bath of dripping chocolate before going on display in the window.

His truffles had been days in the making; there were so many layers. They were entirely hand-built in unusual pinched shapes, or in the more traditional ball rolls. There were layers of built chocolate mixed with nuts, or honey, or Armagnac, or whisky, or brandy, dipped in ganache, then rolled in sugar, nuts, or bitter cocao. We were swamped in samples, which, quite simply, were the most delicious chocolate concoctions any of us have ever tasted.

Bruno, one of the most skilled pastry chefs and chocolatiers in France, has worked all over the world:  Toronto, elegant establishments in the High Alps, Corsica, and at one time he almost moved to Australia. Now, with a growing family he has happily settled down in this small shabby town that, in his words, is close to everywhere: the beach is just down the road, the mountains are on his doorstep. He is happy here.

He is not perturbed that Super U, down the road, has on its shelves cheaper bread, laden with preservatives, shrink-wrapped to stay fresh for days. Bruno’s bread lasts just hours. He is not perturbed that there are four other bakeries in this tiny town vying for the bread market. That some of these use frozen dough bothers him not one bit, either. He sells to those who want his bread.

Life is good. He wants for nothing. He is not rich, he says, but he is happy. And those who want Bruno’s bread are buying quality. Traditional, from ages past, hand made, delicious. Just like his chocolates.

Bruno, master boulanger and pastry chef

Every oven in the bakery has a different function 

Artisan chocolates

Hairpin country

The road to Andorra is up: hairpin after hairpin turn to the top, and as you arrive at the height of jagged treeless mountain tops you think you’re done with climbing; surely you are now at the top of the world, (Mont Louis, at that point), but, unbelievably, the road continues to twist right into another vertical hill climb. And on it goes, twisting up, ever up, endlessly. Higher than we’ve ever been in the camping car.

Amazingly, there are video cameras trained on the route.  Pour votre securite, the signs say. We have never driven anywhere that’s needed surveillance before. And just as well. A truck right in front of us, carrying a load of hot mix, swerved too wide and the camber tilted his load, laying his entire rig ever so neatly, and surprisingly gently, onto its side, firmly pinned to the cut away mountainside. A security vehicle, swooped in from nowhere and reached him before we could. The driver was safe. He climbed out of the cab, stood in the centre of the road, his eyes wide with shock, yet registering that he was lucky to be alive.

En route we pass a small hill community, Livia, that sits alone up there, much like an antiquated city state. All around, every bit of surrounding land is France, but Livia is completely Spanish, and has managed like that since ancient times.

From up high you can see the road as it curves around and down. At one stage I count six terraces of switchbacks clinging to the rockface of just one mountain. To build such a road must have been quite a feat. Giant slabs of concrete are steel bolted into the bedrock to hold the mountain in place. Looser rock is wire caged, stapled to the cliffs attempting to contain the inevitable landslides. Beneath one massive mountain a tunnel has been bored six kilometres long. The never-ending road works, maintenance and road security reduce the traffic to single file snarl in many parts. It must always be like this. Amazing expensive engineering for a tiny country with a population of something short of ninety thousand.

Andorra is a co-principality. It has been for over a thousand years. One of the co-rulers is the President of France, a prince of Andorra for the duration of his term of office; the other co-prince is the Bishop of Urgell in Catalonia. There is little agriculture. On these vertical slopes there is no soil.  You can grow nothing. Even if gravity would allow it only 2% of the land is arable. We saw sheep, cattle and horses in ungainly stance attempting to negotiate the vertical tilt of their high summer pasture but any day now, they will be moved to lower ground. The land is given over to snow in the winter.

Consequently, Andorra lives off its mountains, mountain sports and tourism. Mountains drop down over 9,000 feet, allowing narrow gushing waterfalls to be harnessed for hyrdro-electricity. In winter jagged peaks are topped with snow and anchor cable cars that bring snow skiiers, downhill racers, cross country skiers and snow shoers. In summer, soft clouds float between mountain peaks, a boon for photographers; and icy streams flash with trout for the fishing crowds, and for those who are brave enough, who don’t suffer from vertigo, there is hiking. But, like the cattle and sheep it is likely done on very uneven legs.

Tourism brings money, lots of it. The country appears wealthy and everywhere there is improved infrastructure, roads and apartments, going up. The smaller villages are all smart ski resorts, clad in cheerful geranium–red hanging plants or window boxes; most, not yet open for the season.

The capital, Andorra de Vella, looks all shiny-new and modern. We camp about 10 minutes from the centre of town. As always in the Pyrenees we hear fast running water everywhere: funnelled into canals, streams, gurgling in channels underground. Apartment blocks grow vertically from the terraces of the surrounding rock face.

These house a youthful population. The city feels young, hip and energetic, surrounded by its shabbier cousins: Spain and France. Downtown all is new glass and clean concrete. Most signs are not readily recognisable: not French, not Spanish, possibly Catalan. It is efficient like Singapore; energetic like Hong Kong; culturally spare. 

Amazing that every morsel of food in every restaurant, every product displayed in every store window, every hammer, nail and heavy duty pneumatic drill or crane has to be brought into this country over these tortuous roads either from France or Spain. There is no place to put a fixed wing airport: the country is completely reliant on roads. Fuel that is barrelled up these mountains from elsewhere is sold cheaper here than anywhere else in Europe. Products that come from the rest of the world are available duty free in this tax haven environment. 

Ten million people travel these crazy roads to come to Andorra every year, for that very reason. And it is at times like this that the inequities of the earth’s resource distribution seem highlighted in bright marker pen.

Enroute to Andorra

Uneven country makes bridge building a challenge

Livia, a little of Spain surrounded by France

Smaller villages are clad in geraniums

Pretty Andorra

Salt hills and steppes

On our last day in Provence we drove home via the Camargue, because we are charmed by its countryside. We passed large white hills of crystal salt pulled from the sea to make money. We were then brought to a complete standstill by a town that looked like an architect’s recreation of many, but similar, sets of mounded salt hills: La Grande Motte. We could not believe our eyes.

Last year, at exactly this time we were leasing an apartment in a building in Chicago reminiscent of what we were now seeing. A really unusual building, that caused a lot of comment in the architecturally savvy city that is Chicago. This French seaside town looked as if that very same architect had transplanted himself to France for a decade. He hadn’t, we discovered, but the era, the inspiration, were of the time: the sixties: so the influences were similar.

In an effort to counteract the pull of the Spanish coastal resorts Charles de Gaulle, in the 1960s, decided to turn this stretch of sand, sea, salt and flamingo-filled lagoons into something that might make attract French travellers and make France some money. Rather than Spain.

An architect was hired, Jean Balladur. Monsieur Balladur must have had a field day. He had complete freedom to build a resort on the coast that would keep people coming. And he did. Building after building after building is his. Each is similar, yet each is different. But you can see that the same man designed all of them.

The buildings, and they are all white apartment or commercial blocks, rise up out of the ground like spectacularly shaped salt hills. Then, at some point, in their construction they veer off into a sharp angle to the high sun: like the stepped Inca ruins of Machu Pichu.

None of us can ever recall visiting a town like this: where everything is so – homogenous -- in style. It is as crispy clean as Singapore, and each building could yet grace the front cover of many an architectural magazine.

Is it ugly? I am sure there are purists who would think so. Is it beautiful? I have no doubt there are many who would be fans of this homogenous architecture who would adore the place. We were fascinated by it.

What is interesting to speculate is how much fun the architect must have had planning this town. The freedom to plot a new building here, another one there. What luxury he had to make the decisions he had to make: about proportion, execution, how to fill space. How many architects ever have such a free commission? Not even purpose-built cities like Canberra smack of such singular architecture.

One thing for sure: you cannot miss this place. It is jaw-droppingly different, worth a visit, and, actually, draws crowds. Who are the expensive set. The marina is a mooring for multi-millionaires, filled with the largest leisure boats we have yet seen in any one place. Hundreds upon hundreds of them. The restaurants are sophisticated, and sport only the most elegantly dressed clientele

And us. Smartly dressed people – and us! -- walk up and down wide beautifully kept promenades, ogling Balladur’s buildings. What fun to come across something that is such a complete surprise.

White hills of Crystal salt

White houses that simulate the white salt hills

White on white

Voila Vincent!

We visited Saint Remy-de-Provence where Van Gogh sequestered himself after his harrowing experience in Arles. Even today, Saint Paul de Mausole, is a calm, healing sanatorium, sited opposite crumbling old Roman ruins. Vincent often wandered across to these columns and arches and rocks of Glanum when he felt well enough, carrying his pots and easel, motivated still, in these last months of life, to capture his scattered scrambled thoughts onto stark still pieces of blank canvas.

He was given three rather lovely stone rooms entirely to himself: one his bedroom – as simple as he preferred; another, across a passage, a bathroom and dressing room; and the third: larger, vaulted, filled with yellow light streaming through the window, he kept for his work: his oils brushes, cleansers, canvases.

Sister Epiphane, and the nuns who looked after him, must have been kind: they feel peaceful, these rooms, even reflective. Though there were, even then, bars on the windows. “From an iron-barred window I can see a square of wheat in an enclosure, a Van Goyen perspective, above from which I can see the sun rise in all its glory, ” Vincent wrote from this very room. 

Down a flight of wide worn stone stairs from his rooms he wandered directly into the most beautiful cloister: all healing light, colour and hope. He would have sat here for hours with peace soothing his soul.

A few steps on is the garden bordering the fields, where stands the olive grove he painted, and wrote of to his sister, Wilhelmena: “I don’t know whether you can understand that one may make a poem only by arranging colours.” I wonder if Vincent suspected that his poem making was nearly at an end. 

On 17 May, he left St Remy and visited Theo in Paris. There he met Theo’s new wife and brand new son, who was named Vincent, after him. He is said to have looked robust, healthy, with colour on his face, and a solidity about him. The nuns appeared to have done well with their charge. 

On 19 May, he moved into lodgings at a café in Auvers-sur-Oise, leaving the balm of sunflower suns of Provence behind. 

On 8 June, he admitted to his mother that he was lonely.

On 6 July, he again visited Theo and his new family in Paris.

On 27 July in Auvers, he was heard to shout something. He then rushed out of the café into a field and with a gun in his hand shot himself in the chest. 

On the 29 July, Vincent died in Auvers-sur-Oise in Theo’s arms.  He had rushed there on hearing of the disaster. 

Dr Gachet drew Vincent on his deathbed. Vincent was an unknown painter, a virtual stranger, yet this good doctor felt compelled to take a piece of charcoal and record the deeply etched lines that cut across this dead man’s forehead. Such a sweet homage to a tormented soul. Dr Gachet, I think, sensed greatness. His drawing of Vincent is simple, beautiful. 

The local paper reported Vincent’s death in a terse tidy summary. “On Sunday July 27 a Dutch man called Van Gogh, 37 years old, a painter staying at Auvers at the moment, shot himself in the fields and being only injured he went back to his room and died two days later.”

On Tuesday, that 'man called Van Gogh' died...

But, Vincent lives on. His swirling poems grace countless walls for all to see in their colourful glory.  And will forever.   Voila Vincent!

Vincent's room in the sanitorium in Saint Remy

Walking in Vincent's steps in the cloister

He painted the olive grove in the garden here

Dr Gachet drew Vincent on his deathbed

Sunday feasting

We have succumbed to the magnetic pull of Sundays in France. We now live like the French live on Sundays, and we have changed our ways and now eat our main Sunday meal at lunch time. Lunch usually starts any time between 12.00pm and 1.00pm and finishes any time between 3.00pm and 4.00pm. The courses go on, and on, so all you are really fit for after that is a slow amble down an easy street. Usually one leading to a bed.

We camped for a couple of days in Provence at a private Parc aux Escargots (a Snail Farm) in the valley, not far from a beautiful little restored Roman bridge, called Pont Julien, looking up at the lights of many of the Vaucluse perched hill villages. 

The delightful couple at the snail farm offered Sunday lunch in the dining room of their home. We were not about to refuse. We were joined by 2 other campers, and the young teenager daughter of the house and her school friend. 

There were two options on the menu: the snail option or the chicken option. Because we were sleeping just a few steps away from the snail production we thought we’d rather not be their predators. We chose the chicken option instead, as the chooks lived in two smartly arched corrugated-iron sheds a short field away, far enough that we couldn’t hear their squawks when they were throttled for our lunch.

Everything was home-made there in the house. Everything was organic. Every thing was pulled out of the fields around the farmhouse, and as fresh, crisp and clean flavours as I have eaten anywhere.

We started with an apperitif: a Vin d’Orange du maison. Home made. Delicious. The first course was home made tapenades on rustic cuts of home-made French bread. The second course was a selection of chunky pieces of rillettes and pates, all home made, using rich fatty duck and home-reared chickens. The third course was warmed chicken liver salad. The sauce the chicken livers was cooked in had been reduced down to something that approximated the texture of earthy cream to swallow: it became the dressing. I moaned.

The fourth course, accompanied by a half a carafe of rouge vin, was garrigue-herb flavoured chicken pieces accompanied by home made pasta. This was a long rough-cut twist of pasta, in flavour, not unlike a German Spaetzle. The chicken was rich and its chopped herb marinade clung to the flesh and the pasta. Delicious. The fifth course was home made soft goat’s cheese wedges, sprinkled with herbs and ground pepper, and served with more French bread. The French bread just kept coming, as did the wine. The sixth course was a cross between a crème brulee and a baked custard: served in one of the maison pate jars, topped with a soft topping of burnt sugar, browned but not crusty. I kept on moaning.

Finally, we were served fresh coffee. Mmmmnnn. The entire meal, including aperitifs and endless rouge ou blanc wines, cost us €25 each. Super value -- and we weren’t finished yet! After the meal, the chef came out to take his bow, and his wife – who did all the serving and explaining (an not a word of English anywhere) invited us into the sitting room to view a video on their snail production. Which, too, was in French, but easy to follow, and gave us a clearer understanding of what their snail farm was all about. 

After we’d paid, and were thinking of heading back to the car, the couple called us back again as their teen daughter and her friend were keen to perform a concert they’d prepared for us after dinner. So, back we trotted and followed their song and dance routine with lots of clapping and cheering for good measure. Such a lovely way to spend a Sunday. 

This Sunday, to continue our absorption of French culture, we found a tiny village, Ille-sur-Tet, about 10 kilometers away (so we didn’t have to drive too far home) and had a similar experience in a lovely little restaurant in the heart of the village with a view of the floral square, packed with diners our age enjoying every morsel of a very sophisticated menu that included: 

First Course:

Salade au chevre chaud (warmed goat’s cheese salad). I had this. 

Tarte a L’Oignon (onion tart salad) – which Pete and Bec chose. 

Second Course: 

I loved my Escalope de Saumon. 

Pete and Bec had Supreme de Pintarde (roasted guinea fowl). 

Every Sunday, at the moment, we can hear gunshots wherever we are, and right now, all around us they must be shooting guinea fowl. Poor little fat round speckly things. Though, our meals looked and tasted delicious. The mains were served with dauphinois potatoes, a baked oregano-dredged tomato, and a square of something that was a cross between a vegetable frittata and a light baked bread dressing, large quenelles of mashed potato and, we think, the rich orange pumpkin that we see being lined up for harvest in many fields in the south.

For dessert we were offered many a choice but we ended up choosing what looked terrific on the table next door: an Ile Flottant – which was the most delicious mix of icecream, nuts and fruits, somewhat like a wicked, but delectable, sundae. 

We eat out at other times too, but there is something about Sundays and market days that seems special. In Prades on a Sunday in the bistros in the square, we are often feted by an old fashioned piano accordian player. His hat is jaunty, his tunes are French, his attitude is jolly. Which all adds to the delightful sense of joie de vivre when eating out here.

Garrigue-herb flavoured chicken

Apperitif du maison. Vin d'Orange

Chicken liver salad

Herby goat's cheese 

Creme brûlée 

From ancient wells to elegant chateaux

Cucaron is an older shabbier village in a valley. Some of the houses have 1600s etched over the door to show when they were first built. It has ancient wells that need renewing, and a big market place shady with mature plane trees planted entirely around a giant rectangular etang (pond).

Some villages stand out. Two in particular. 

Menerbes has lovely old homes with many brilliant new renovations complete. It has a very expensive air about it, and its views down into the wine valleys are awesome.

Lourmarin is the busiest of all the perched villages. It is approached by a narrow winding road, in and out, and no matter the time of day, tourist vehicles are bumper to bumper. This is an expensive village, and quite the most stylish of the Most Beautiful Villages we have yet visited.

The shops are boutiques. The art is in galleries. Restaurants, and there are many of them, have individualised and personalised menus. Money, money, money. 

Peter Mayle, the travel writer,  used to live in Menerbes. He left a little over 10 years ago, when he found perfect strangers cooling off one hot day in his private swimming pool, without so much as a by your leave. He later moved to Lourmarin.

Now, something is drawing all these hundreds of carloads, even busloads of tourist folk, to this particular corner of France. It is difficult to say what could be the catalyst, other than Peter Mayle’s depictions of Provence. 

Actually, looking at the influx, I can imagine many Mayors in many of their little Mairies in communes all across France, terribly tempted to pay Peter Mayle simply to say that he lives in their town, their village, too.  Perched, or not. Because the tourists, particularly this monied set of mature Americans hankering after the good life, are filling these boutiques, restaurants, markets, gites and wineries. To capacity. 

And I am wont to wonder what history will make of all of it.  And, whether, come October, as has happened just this week in Eus, that the shops, museums and bistros will all close their weekday doors and go away now until Spring. As happens in chalets in ski retreats when the snow and the skiers stop. As happens with Continental ferry schedules when schools start again in the autumn. As happens to all things that open and shut on the Greek islands once the tourist season is over. It all just closes up till the next hoard comes.

Cucaron etang

Elegant Menerbes

Lourmarin is all style

Stylish setting

Simple and lovely

The blue of Provence

Pottery boutique in a Lourmarin cave

Village perche en Provence

Our next few days are astonishing in that the most frequent sounds we hear in just about every village we visit are American accents. Everywhere. We think this might be because we were now in the Vaucluse department, made so famous, or infamous, by Peter Mayle, the Englishman now married to an American, who popularised this area with his travel books on Provence, with a TV series and a romantic movie starring Russell Crowe: The Good Life.

This is the Provence of wild red poppies on the verges in spring, heady purple lavender marching in picture perfect straight rows across fields in summer, and the rich aroma of crushed grapes wafting on the breeze in autumn.

It is the Provence of perched stone villages, many of them listed among France’s Most Beautiful, decorating pretty hills dropping in terraces of grape vines.

It is the Provence of colourful markets packed with stalls selling fruits, vegetables, cheeses, wines, olive oils, lavendar sachets, pottery garlic graters and cheery Provencal tablecloths.

It is terribly, terribly touristy.

And after just a few villages, you end up with an ache in your head, trying to remember what differentiates one from another.

In Venasque, it is the ancient stone Baptistry, which once was a pagan temple, which helps sort it from the others.

The Baptistry sits low, between a church and a house, disconcertingly like a private basement, now, without the presence it must once have had. It was a special place for the Bishop to baptise catechumens – those who chose to be baptised, who prepared thoroughly for it. Inside the below-ground hollowed out crypt-like rooms there is a marble font believed to be an ancient olive oil press; the altar is old, probably pagan, recycled; little holes in the vaults are believed to have carried stone pottery pieces to improve resonance in the chamber, allowing all to hear.

The road to Gordes from Venasque is all rock and rumble. I often wonder who were the Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth explorers of old in these parts: who found their way in and around these amazing rocks and mountains.

Gordes is gorgeous. It looks like a giant took a bunch of Picasso-drawn house cubes and tossed them down a high hill, like bits of Lego.

Around these hills are many of the miniature dry stone bories that today look so picturesque, but which once were all that peasants could manage to lump together to form a home for themselves and their families.

Red ochre is what makes Roussillon different from all the others. This is one of the few villages perched on a red ochre pit and, as a result, the buildings all over town are rose-coloured stone, or harmoniously painted in variations of soft rouge shades. Lintels bear inscriptions showing many homes constructed in the 1770s – about when Captain Cook landed in Australia.

Saignon sits peeping down over the market town of Apt, cleverly built so high it keeps its own character-filled streets so much quieter than the mess in the busy traffic snarl below.

We looked up at the lights of Lacoste from our campsite. This is where the Marquis de Sade once had his castle, and from where he raped and pillaged the surrounding villages in order to satisfy his predatory sexual urges before being jailed for his perversions. Today, Pierre Cardin owns his castle ruins. He has fixed up part of it and holds musical gatherings there. So, still a party place.

Also from our campsite we could see Bonnieux, high up. This village has had a forest of cedars, imported from North Africa, growing on its slopes since Napoleon’s time. He had a thing about trees, Napoleon. He had many planted along French roads just to shade his marching army. These days avenues of plane trees almost define rural French roads, and are so gorgeous, I make Pete regularly stop and photograph them. No matter that they are similar.

Venasque

Gordes 

Dry stone borie 

Roussillon

Bonnieux

Pretty lunch spot

Arches everywhere

Ready for harvest

Jambon in every village

Theatre and thespians

Orange, too, is another town that looks as though it has one foot in the past while attempting to dip a toe into an uncertain future. Its past was the interesting bit for us, as Orange has some standout ancient monuments, the Arc de Triomph and the Antique Teatro, for a start, reminders of days long gone when Roman generals and their legions sought to bring a little culture and distraction to the lives of their Roman colonists living in this little corner of the world. Both monuments are now listed as UNESCO World Heritage sites.

We parked beside the very pretty Arc de Triomph that is similar to the one in Paris, albeit smaller. Delightful low reliefs on many of its surfaces have, amazingly, survived for over a thousand years. The highlight, for us, was the marvellous Roman Antique Teatro, which is considered to be one of the finest in the world, and one of only three in this condition. The other two are in Turkey and Syria. 

The theatre, and its exceptional audio guide, kept us enthralled for much of the afternoon. It has tiered semicircular stone seating, with a straight theatre wall at the back, finished off with two towers, one at each side for extras, stage hands, and sets. Dressing rooms and storage were built behind the wall. The stage in front of the theatre wall is long and narrow. Its stage originally had a wooden roof and, when needed, the seating area for the entire theatre could be covered with fabric blinds propelled along by pulleys. The supports for these can be still seen projecting from the external theatre wall.

The theatre wall is 103m long and about four stories high. It had many features that were useful as stage sets:colonnaded alcoves, balconies, bits of wall shaped to accentuate acoustics, and tall symmetrical doors for entrances and exits. And above, and overlooking all, is a niche which holds a full-sized statue of the reigning Roman emperor. This statue had a removable head, for with every new Roman head of state, there needed to be a change of head for the statue. Which puts a different slant on the saying: Off with his head.

The massive curtain that covered the stage at the start of each performance was lowered into a special curtain cavity dug out at the front of the stage, and the flat area beyond that, often paved, was called the orchestra. The lower seating tiers were for the noblemen; the upper for the poorer members of society. Plays went on all day. Folk would turn up at whatever time suited them to observe whatever might be going on, all the while eating, drinking and talking, and sometimes shouting, no doubt, from the peanut gallery.

Not all was quiet in Roman theatres in days of yore.

Arc de Triomphe, Orange

Arch detail

Antique Teatro, Orange 

Roman emperor with his head

In the Teatro underbelly