Journal Provençal Chapitre Quartre

Our final full day in Provence and the weather was set fair for the morning but the afternoon looked less than promising. We elected to don our tourist hats and head for Sillans where a short walk would take us to a waterfall. In the event, the waterfall was more impressive than we had expected and the town of Sillans proved be a place eminently suited to wandering around and just soaking up the ambiance.

A brief interlude around the villa pool in the afternoon was curtailed by some really heavy showers accompanied by lots of thunder and lightning. When it rains around here, it certainly rains. But it's short and sharp stuff and it doesn't take long to dissipate.

We had our final meal out at a nearby auberge and it was probably the best of our stay. An idyllic setting amongst the vineyards, with the local wine on tap for those wanted it. As an aide memoire to myself and those who were there, I'll just mention that our journey to the restaurant has already passed into our folklore and will be long remembered - and related when the time suits and the embarrassment  will be maximum! But not now.

All good things come to an end and, after we bade farewell to our gracious hostess, we spent our last morning in nearby Lorgues as we made our way back to Nice airport. Lorges was yet another mediaeval town that was just right for pottering around. Narrow streets, intriguing squares, unusual architecture and obscure parking regulations (but that's another story to be told around the campfire one day). As ever, a few photographs follow just to give a flavour of our perambulations. Maybe I'll supplement these with something on a floral theme sometime.

And so ends our three weeks of travels. Where do we go next? To somewhere totally different in July - the Outer Hebrides as we visit Lewis and Harris. This could be something really special as we have booked a day visit to St Kilda, a place we've both wanted to visit for a long time. Getting there could be quite an adventure in itself. Then, in September, we are off to Majorca for a week or so but more of that when it happens.

The waterfall at Sillans, with its translucent pool at the bottom. At 120 feet, it was much higher than we were expecting and worth the walk.

Sillans sunny street scene.

Nothing out of the ordinary but nevertheless very attractive, a Speckled Wood butterfly. Common the UK and common across Europe.

A worker in metal advertising their work and, if this is a true representation of what they can do, they are patently very skilled. 

Once upon a time, every village had its central washing facility, fed by a spring or, as in this case, by a takeoff from a nearby river.

Moving now to Lorgues and another craftsman advertising their skills, this time with a sewing machine that has seen better days. Mmm, I wonder what that says about them.

Access somewhat limited?

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the daftest of them all?

One fountain amongst many in the old part of Lorgues.

Ditto for this alley. An area for unplanned pottering.

I've been unable to find out anything about Lionel Accarisio who was 18 when he died/was killed in 1944. But it is reasonable to think that his death was war related given what was going on in this region at the time. Was he executed for an act of resistance? Is there a story here of great bravery?

Liberte. Egalite. Fraternite. Do modern French citizens still subscribe to the founding principles of their democracy?

 

Journal Provencal: Chapitre Trois

One of the highlights of any visit to rural France is a trip to a local market and this was the case when we visited the weekly market at the nearby town of  Aups. The place to go for fresh vegetables, fish, fruit etc and also the place to go to meet people. It's always a great pleasure just to wander around from stall to stall: tasting this and that, buying this and that and lapsing into Franglais in an attempt to be understood. I have the view that these markets contribute in no small measure to social cohesion and identity in rural France and it's something we've lost in the UK. It's a shame but it's an inevitable consequence of increasing urbanisation.

In the evening we had some culture when we took in a concert at the nearby mediaeval Cistercian abbey of Le Thoronet. The attraction was the four male voices of Var's Musica who treated us to 'Merveilles de la Polyphonie et Improvisations'. Unaccompanied voices reverberating around the walls of the nave of an ancient abbey - an unexpected treat and one to be long remembered.

A French olive stall. And I do mean a French olive stall: a stall selling French olives. Not a nice juicy Greek Kalamata olive, my very favourite, in sight. Just shrivelled French olives.

A colourful display of strawberries. Given their taste, I'd put my money on them being sun-ripened and never having gone anywhere near a chiller cabinet.

Some dangly things (it's a technical artistic term) forming a coloured curtain for the market backdrop.

Sad I know but I was intrigued by this display of heritage varieties of tomato. The colours varied from normal tomato red through to almost black purple. There were free tasters of some of them and very nice they were too. In my mangled French I managed to elicit from the grower that the problem with some of these varieties was that the yields per plant were very low and would never be high enough for commercial production. Only for the something something 'domestique' apparently as he rattled away, with my understanding diminishing in direct proportion to his enthusiasm at talking to someone interested in his plants.



An old type of Beefsteak Tomato. New, old - I can grow neither in my greenhouse.



Café culture: eating, drinking and watching the world go by. What better way to spend time? If only we had the weather in Cornwall to allow us to do this more often.

Ceramics - a speciality of the area. The style is rather heavy and too 'rustic' for my tastes. However, colourful they certainly are and the style fits in with the sun.

Saucisson of all shapes, sizes and substance. They make my efforts at chorizo making  look rather puny. But, thinking about it, perhaps I could legitimately describe myself as an 'artisan saucisonnier'. I certainly didn't come across any that looked remotely like mine. I could be missing a trick: I have a unique product that may deserve wider appreciation - or not.

I thought this mannequin had a rather wistful "I'd really rather not be here" look on her face. Perhaps this was due to the Day-glo swimming costume she was sporting? "Day-glo, Day-glo! They dress me in Day-glo", she seems to say, "I used to work for Dior once and now it's Day-glo". How the mighty have fallen. As a one-time fashion icon myself, I felt for her. Once you've been at the top, the only way is down.

Spices of the orient and Herbs of Provence.

Bags and bags of bags.

And this is something else I can't grow - garlic of this size. If you want it pea-sized, I'm your man. If you want it bigger, the holder of this stall is obviously the one to go to.

Under the plane trees in the central square in Villecroix for lunch, accompanied by the music of a very accomplished guitarist. Particularly memorable was his version of Clapton's 'Layla' - much slower and more melodical than the original.

Three of the four members of Var's Musica giving voice in the nave of the abbey at Le Thoronet.

This is a good example of what I love about the communication the internet allows. I write something in Provence and I am answered by a French-Canadian living in Northern Cyprus. Many thanks to LB who tells me that the planes we were wondering about yesterday were  Bombardier CL-415 'water scooper' water bombers. Operationally they skim the surface of the lakes scooping in water that they later drop on forest fires (or supporters of Marie Le Pen or Nicholas Sarkozy).

Journal Provencal: Chapitre 2

Our plans for today were straightforward: drive to Lac Sainte Croix, have a picnic lunch, have a walk along the shores of the lake, drive back to the villa, have a leisurely afternoon (possibly with a dip in the pool) and finish the day with a boeuf Bourginon. It sort of worked out that way - in the end.

Lac Sainte Croix was formed by the flooding of a valley in 1973 and is part of a wider water catchment scheme that uses the River Verdon as the link. We were in this region about 25 years ago, back in the days when our children were young and we 'did' camping. It was enjoyable then and it's enjoyable now. Makes us want to revisit France again and spend some more time meandering around the countryside.

Lac Sainte Croix. The water is as blue as it looks and I put that down to suspended silica particles.

The back end of an unidentified raptor. I think it's a harrier of some sort but haven't got my bird guide with me to be sure.

A perusal of a large scale map suggested that we could do a circular walk around a headland jutting into the lake. Using our thumbs, we estimated that it would be around 5 - 6 km and we thought that it would take us a couple of hours. Those familiar with walking in France will recognise the red and white route markers of the Grande Randonnee footpaths. In our case, we'd be walking 'out' on GR99B and 'back' on GR99A.

 

The map lied! In the event the footpath was, in some parts, much more rocky than we'd anticipated and we ended up walking just over 11 km, rather than our estimated 5 - 6. And it took us over double what we'd planned, 5 hours rather than 2. It was not the lakeside stroll that we'd imagined. But we did it and all felt very satisfied with our performance. We may have had a combined age of approaching 350 years but we could still negotiate some difficult terrain. What this meant was that our leisurely evening was somewhat compromised but nonetheless civilised.

Not that many birds were to be seen on the lake. Just a couple of Great Crested Grebes, of which this is one.

What a very pleasant way to spend an afternoon. I was quite envious as it's been an absolute age since I last fished. Only electric motors are allowed on the lake so it was very, very quiet. Just the sound of gently lapping water and gasping lungs. 

And then, all of a sudden , out the sky came 7 or 8 yellow aeroplanes. They wheeled around and then, one after the other..

..landed on the water. They were marked 'Securite Civile' but we had no idea what they would be used for. We walked on for a while and climbed up a wooded hillside: as we doing this we could hear the planes talking off again.

A Common Blue butterfly. A rather prosaic name for a beautiful insect. There were four or five of these attracted by something in the animal scat you can see in the background.

Mirror, mirror, on the side of the road... A strange place to locate a mirror - on a not too-sharp bend in the middle of nowhere.

Log envy. I do like a well ordered pile of logs. If I'd done this, I'd be very pleased with myself.

An alley off what passed for the main street in Bauduen, where our walk/trek/adventure/mistake started and ended.

Journal Provencal: Chapitre 1

Aren't we lucky? Two weeks in Alaska followed by 6 days in Provence. It wasn't planned this way, it just happened this way. We are down in the South of France helping a friend celebrate a significant birthday. It was the least we could do to take up her kind offer of staying a while in the villa she had rented in the hills. It's a lovely part of the world and it's great to be back in France again after a break of many years. We used to holiday in the French countryside every year and it's comforting to realise that it really hasn't changed that much in the intervening time.

We are staying in a very nice villa in the hilly countryside near the village of Saint-Antonin-du-Var, which is around 80 miles to the west of Nice

Our first trip out and about took us to and through a number of towns and villages in the vicinity of the villa. One such was Entrecasteaux  which was dominated by a castle originating in the 13th Century.

One of the original entrances to the castle was hewn out of the rocks on which the castle was built. Unfortuantely the castle was closed when we were there so we couldn't visit it.

 

Some interesting shapes and textures in this third storey window.

Looking down onto the knot parterre. The steps to the left were designed by Le Notre, who had a lot to do with the design of the gardens at Versailles.

There's always something fascinating about people-watching. Take this fellow with the large plaster on his head. I wonder what the story behind it is. Perhaps it's the result of surgery? Perhaps it's the result of being beaten about the head with a heavy object?

Perhaps by Madame's stick in a lover's tiff?

On to Tourtour with a terraced garden overlooking the countryside. An interesting collection of statues from a local sculpture were on view.

And nearby, the equally interesting natural sculpture of a tree just coming into leaf.

How we like the public spaces in French hilltop villages. Fountains, restaurants, buildings - all made for wandering around.

These steps once lead to something important? But now overgrown and the reason for their existence either lost or known to just a few.

An alley scene. Tourtour had a labyrinth of these. All leading somewhere...

Sometimes to another fountain..

Sometimes to an interesting wall plaque. Regular readers of my blog may recall an earlier post in which I mentioned Ronald Searle and some of the artwork he'd done for the Municipality of Paris on dog fouling (it's true: check it out here). I knew that he was a long-time resident of France but I had not realised that he had lived down here. He must have been living here when he died, which was at the end of 2011.

Simply a Passionflower because I find the floral architecture fascinating.