Provence – Taran's Tales

Provence part six – Our first taste of the fleshpots of the Côte d’Azur

Provence means one of two things to most people, either sun-filled landscapes with a scattering of small medieval towns and villages perched artistically on hillsides, separated by never ending vistas of vineyards and olive groves or, the exotic lifestyles of the rich and famous in the fleshpots of the Côte d’Azur. More commonly known amongst the anglophones of the world as the French Riviera, the Côte d’Azur nominally stretches from the Italian border in the east to Cassis, near Marseilles, in the west. My dear Celine is torn between the culture of big cities and the beauties of nature, whereas I am more of a dedicated countryside fan myself; nevertheless both of us approached the French Riviera cities of Nice, Cannes and Monte Carlo, with no real expectations of finding our optimal nesting place. A couple of other big cities that also interested us both, especially me as an old sea-dog, were Marseilles and Toulon; whilst not typically on the average Cook’s Tour of casinos and the lives of the high-rollers, they are both interesting old seaports with lots of history. Still we were determined to experience all that Provence had to offer which included a day or two “at the seaside”, and so one mid-October day, with a forecast of “periods of clouds and sun” we set off for our second of several visits to the azure waters of the Mediterranean.

We had already briefly tasted the Riviera lifestyle when visiting Saint Tropez [see “Provence Part Two – Saint Tropez”], but Cannes was to leave us with some very different impressions. A town of just 72,000 people, it seems much bigger than that, with an infrastructure and hinterland to support the vast numbers of tourists that descend on it every year. It is well known for its various film festivals but all the same we were surprised to find it so crowded on that grey autumnal day. Unknowingly, we had arrived for the first day of MIPCOM, a festival of television programming where 14,000 delegates, including 1,600+ of the world’s film and TV producers and 4,800+ buyers from TV stations, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and the like, descend on the Palais des Festivals et des Congres to criticize and barter each other’s made-for-television films and series.

Looking for somewhere to park near the promenade we found ourselves competing with a mass of oversize limousines and luxury black sedans with dark tinted windows, and finally ended up at the Parking de la gare de Cannes in a slightly less salubrious part of town. The Palais des Festivals monopolises the western end of Boulevard de la Croisette, the main street alongside the promenade, from Le Vieux Port round to Pointe Croisette at the eastern end of the bay. Not having any great interest in television soap operas, we set off towards the old town, past the pentagonal bandstand on Allée de la Liberté Charles de Gaulle, past Mairie de Cannes, the impressive Town Hall with it’s clock tower and the war memorial in front, then down Quai Saint-Pierre and Quai Max Laubeuf, enviously admiring the flotilla of luxurious sailing yachts with their perfect teak decks, moored stern-to, Mediterranean fashion, awaiting a visit from their well-heeled owners.

Mairie de Cannes, the city hall in Cannes.

A couple of weeks later, when we made a second shorter visit to the city, showing Celine’s younger sister Dagmara the sights, we got into conversation with a lucky young man walking ashore from the British yacht “Latifa”, who proudly told us he was helping the owner prepare for a five year circumnavigation of the world, in which he would be one of the five crew. This legendary 70ft yacht, a successful competitor in three Fastnet Races in the 1930’s and post-war, was designed and built by William Fife in 1936 at a small shipyard on the beach in the village of Fairlie in Scotland, and its present condition was a compliment to the boatbuilders of old. It had me fair droolin’!! And I like to think my dear wife and sister-in-law could be quite tempted to go to sea on such an elegant craft! [see www.sandemanyachtcompany.co.uk for a fascinating history and more photos of SY “Latifa”].

The elegant sailing yacht Latifa, being prepared for a five-year jaunt around the world.

Anyway, Celine eventually managed to drag me away from the quayside and we enjoyed our walk the narrow streets and up the stairways of the old town and up the hill to the church of Notre Dame.

We had great views of the port below us as well as a cruise ship moored offshore, and, looking inland, we appreciated the true size of the city and beyond. Descending back to sea-level, we headed towards the festival with its pavilions bedecked with enormous hoardings of TV programmes vying for the attention of the delegates, and the entrances of its perimeter of steel barriers guarded by snappily dressed young men, all identical in their black leather shoes, black suits, white shirts and red ties, to keep us common people away from the celebrities.

And as if that level of security wasn’t quite enough, heavily armed soldiers in combat fatigues mingled “discreetly” among the crowds of mere mortals enjoying the small funfair. We followed the Walk of Fame, where we found, among others, the handprints set in stone, of Timothy Dalton, Vanessa Redgrave, Dennis Hopper and, appropriately, Sharon Stone.

The afternoon was getting greyer and damper and we walked around the edge of the event till we found the famed red carpet where my own A++ celebrity made her entrance.

Celine receives the red carpet treatment.

By this time my tummy was rumbling as usual and we found a small café overlooking the beach where we took shelter from the drizzle, across the road from the elegant old hotels, luxury apartments and casinos that lined Boulevard de la Croisette. Somewhat fortified we turned our backs on the festival and walked back into the normal life of the city, to find our car, stopping only for a few groceries at a little Arabic store on Place de la Gare, as well as finding some rather tasty pastries in a local patisserie, to consume as we drove back through the pouring rain to Lorgues.

Not exactly convinced by the attractions of Cannes, a few days later our next trip to the coast took us on our first of two visits to Toulon, France’s main base for its Mediterranean Naval Fleet.

Also the centre for many different industries, Toulon had seemed to be a rather inauspicious place to visit as we did our research back in California, until one damp evening in Lorgues, I sat and read the city’s reviews in the Michelin Guide I found on our host’s bookshelves. And we really did enjoy our visit there, starting with the busy port itself, a delightful mixture of yachts large and small, fishing boats, local ferries taking commuters back and forth across the bay to Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer, larger ferries servicing the island of Corsica, and of course, warships of all shapes and sizes.

Toulon, home of the French Mediterranean Fleet.

Some of the small inshore fishing fleet alongside in Toulon.

As usual we headed off into the mainly pedestrianised old town behind the port, initially poking our noses quickly inside the elegant 18^th century convent church of Saint-Francois de Paule, and then walking along Cours Lafayette, an ordinary shopping street with market stalls down the middle, catering to a pretty broad cross-section of this port-city’s society. We took a closer look inside the more magnificent 19^th century Cathedrale Notre-Dame de la Seds, before finding ourselves in Place Puget with its extraordinarily calcified fountain, on top of which a veritable copse of small trees and shrubs grows in and around the central sculpture of three dolphins, now nearly lost among the greenery. It is always easy to get a strong, tasty, but decaffeinated café in France, so coffee in the late afternoon is never a problem for those of us who don’t wish to stay awake all night! So in this square, once frequented by the likes of Dumas, Flaubert and Hugo, we indulged ourselves in the café culture once more, watching the late afternoon ladies passing by with their shopping and young lads challenging all on their skate boards, as we enjoyed crèpes with our decaffs.

Old Toulon is pleasantly ordinary, with some eye-catching architecture, yet not at all sophisticated or overtly touristy. Its streets and passageways are somewhat artsy, sometimes a bit dilapidated and one passageway in particular smelt so strongly of urine that, in spite of the beguiling street sign indicating more artistic work at its far end, I could not persuade Celine to explore further! With the day nearly gone, to finish our visit we searched out, with some difficulty, the route to the top of Mont Faron, from where, in the light of the setting sun we had a terrific view over the town and the port laid out below us, the peninsular of Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer that protects the port, and all the way west to the nearby village of Sanary-sur-Mer.

Traditional fishing craft, “pointus”, line the dock in Sanary-sur-Mer

I had wanted to visit Sanary-sur-Mer ever since reading “The Little Paris Bookshop” by Nina George, in which the narrator, bookseller Jean Perdu, winds up there at the end of an extraordinary odyssey on his floating shop/home/barge, along the inland waterway of canals and rivers from Paris to the Mediterranean. So one of our last day-trips in Provence was to explore that lesser travelled part of the Côte d’Azur to the west of Toulon, starting in Bandol, which we liked a lot. It has to be said that everywhere on this coast is extensively developed, but Bandol seemed to be less than most.

Celine relives her childhood on the waterfront in Bandol.

A pretty sandy beach, a busy little marina with plenty of sailing boats of all sizes, including a large fleet of pointus, the traditional fishing boats of the area, a late eighteenth century carousel, and a waterfront of modest buildings with the usual mix of cafés, restaurants, small hotels and local shops, all combined to give the village a warm friendly feeling that beckoned us inwards, where we found more tidy narrow streets and a pretty tree-filled square in front of the small church. Sanary- sur-Mer, a few miles further east was equally likeable and we even managed to find a little second-hand bookshop that I easily imagined to be the one where Jean Perdu ended up his days. Between them, these two villages gave me renewed hope that there were places along the Riviera where life was lived at a more normal level than we had seen in the fleshpots! But then again, we weren’t there in “the season”! We had barely scratched the surface of the Riviera’s hedonistic offerings, and we still had to visit another seaport renowned for it’s lowlife past!

Provence part four – Exploring Le Dracénois

With villages aplenty to discover and explore, we started by heading east to Bargemon, partly because it was the only village in the area that I knew anything about. My first wife and I had spent ten days there many years ago when our sons were still little more than toddlers, staying in a very basic, very rustic one-bedroom cottage, with a view of the distant hills from it’s rough, untended garden. I thought it would be fun to find that cottage, not realizing that forty-year-old memories tend to be so vague that it would be like looking for a needle in a hay-stack. Bargemon is actually much bigger than the official population of 1,400 would indicate, but it is still “lovely with its shady narrow streets and 12^th century town-walls”.

Shady narrow streets and 12th century town walls. . .

It is also quite chic, and “a bit of a haven for middle-class professional Brits” [https://theguardian.com/travel/2003/may/24/france.guardiansaturdaytravelsection]. So it was indeed a search in vain, but all the same we enjoyed wandering up and down the steep streets of the pretty village tumbling down the hillside. We “oohed and arghed” at the superb views of the valley below and of the neighbouring village, Claviers, hiding in the green forest in the distance; we peered through mysterious doorways as we tackled the damp stone paths down between the gardens of the many beautifully renovated village houses, all the while becoming slightly envious of the people living there.

There were lots of studios and artsy shops, most of which were closed in mid-October, two or three museums such as a typewriter museum, Musée des Machines à Écrire, and several B&B’s, all fairly good signs of an active ex-pat community and steady tourist business. The ubiquitous drinking fountains seemed to be everywhere, as well as sturdy, ancient oak doors set in the stone-walls. But, as it was a rather cool, grey, damp day, we soon required a warm cup of coffee, which we found in Café de Commerce, across from Eglise Saint-Etienne on Place Philippe-Chauvier. I chatted with the proprietor as he prepared our much-needed beverages, whilst Celine grabbed a couple of seats at a small table outside, from where we could people-watch, and immediately found herself drawn into conversation with an elegant, elderly, Spanish gentleman, with hair and beard as white as his shirt and trousers.

Martin Frias turned out to be an established artist and iconic celebrity photographer, well-known among the stars of film and rock music, who was visiting the local Beddington Gallery where his work and some paintings by his girlfriend Christina, were on display. We chatted awhile, learning about his friendship with that other famous Spanish artist, his mentor Salvador Dali, and his intimate knowledge of Dali’s rather unconventional sex-life. (Coincidentally, in the last few days as I am writing this post, in keeping with his surrealist way of life, Dali’s remains were exhumed at the request of a Spanish psychic Pilar Abel Martinez, eager to prove she was Dali’s daughter. Sadly for her, the DNA results proved negative!). He then invited us to visit the gallery where we met the willowy Christina, and were made welcome by Guy Beddington, the English proprietor. It was interesting to get a peek inside one of the old village houses, and to see what great things can be done with a virtual ruin, an innovative mind and a chunk of money. We spent about an hour there admiring the works on display; I think we both liked Christina’s work the most, but Senor Frias was eager to tell us more about his many photo assignments with some of our favourite rock musicians like Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Alice Cooper and Mick Jagger.

Anyhow, we still had a long way to go to complete our day’s tour and so we eventually took our leave, grabbed a second coffee at the Commerce, and set off westwards through a landscape of small fields and woodland and then winding through the wild Gorge du Châteaudouble towards our next village.

Tourtour, nicknamed “the village in the sky”, is a much smaller commune (population 536 in 2006), sitting atop a small plateau, surrounded by sloping meadows with grazing cows, small farm buildings and copses of oak trees. A member of “Les Plus Beaux Villages de France” association it does indeed have a quiet, rustic charm and, as it’s nickname implies, also has wonderful views towards the Mediterranean coast. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived, the evening cool was setting in with a vengeance and we only managed a quick circuit of what was definitely a place to be visited again at a more leisurely pace. So before long, we jumped back into our warm car and drove home through the dusk.

Thunderstorms and heavy rain over the next two days confined us to barracks, except during a brief sunny respite the second afternoon, when we went for a quick walk up the hill into the countryside above Lorgues, picking up a few handfuls of fallen walnuts along the way, following the example of an elderly local lady we saw, who had come out well prepared with a large bag to collect her share.

In the end it was more than a week later that we eventually returned, this time on a glorious sunny day, and we were able to take in the full beauty of the village and it’s rural surroundings. Tourtour is another village on top of a hill, but on a far more gentle slope than Bargemon. The highest point in the village is occupied by the delightfully simple, Romanesque church of Saint-Denis.

A solid stone construction with only two windows, a narrow slit above the altar, and a small rose window high above the entrance, it gives the impression of having been built to provide sanctuary from marauders. A little way downhill from the church is another unusual edifice, Le Château Communal; now housing the town hall and the post-office, its windowless round towers at its four corners strengthening the idea of a village built with a need to protect the inhabitants, a feeling further reinforced by a second castle, Le Vieux Château, at the other end of the village. Again this is a village that has attracted the wealthy over the years and so many of the fourteenth and fifteenth century dwellings have been converted into luxurious modern homes, though this in no way detracts from the prettiness of the place. The heart of the village is Place des Ormeaux, with a full retinue of art studios, cafés and restaurants, and an office of Sotheby’s estate agents, belying the wealth that evidently prevails in the village. At one side of the square is the local men’s club, L’Union, where an affable old man was painting a gate, and we had an interesting chat with him and his wife about the history of Tourtour. A nice experience that made us realise there are still a few true locals living in the village, in spite of the overall impression of affluence.

Moving along again among more wooded hills, we came to the fairly unassuming village of Aups where we took our daily coffee in the Café du Centre while chatting to the owner, learning only that her husband was an interior designer! The local church, La Collégiale Saint-Pancrace, was nothing special but did lay claim to having been where insurgents against the coup d’état of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte took refuge during the battle of Aups in 1851. So finding little else of interest, we drove on, pausing in the small village of Tavernes only to buy fruit for the navigator and a pain au chocolat for the driver, to eventually arrive in the town of Barjols, as dusk drew down around us. This was a shame, as we later realized there was a lot to see in Barjols, a town huddled in the crux of a semi-circle of hills and built directly below a limestone cliff. There are 42 fountains and wash houses in the town and four rivers flow through it, and consequently it was historically renowned for its tanneries, which these days are celebrated by the Fête des Tripettes.

So once again, the shorter days of autumn had beaten us, making us realise the one problem of touring at that time of the year, realistically the only disadvantage, given the joy of having so many places almost to ourselves and being able to appreciate the calm that can be found in a touristy venue when the summer crowds aren’t there. Luckily we still had plenty more days to explore the many villages that remained on our recommended list, but we decided our next escapade would be to head north to see the dramatic Gorge du Verdon . . .

Provence Part Three – Local peregrinations.

After “doing” Saint-Tropez, we felt we should get back to reality and start looking around at the sort of places where we might consider living, which after all was the primary objective of this Grand Tour.

Provence, is quite rightly renowned for it’s wonderful scenery and its profusion of ancient villages perched on hilltops and flowing down hillsides. The department of Var, and particularly the region of Le Dracénois, has more than its fair share of these villages [visit www.tourisme-en-france.com/fr/regions-france/340/le-dracenois for an interactive map of the region].

A local example was Les Arcs-sur-Argens, just a few miles down the road from Lorgues. However, the approach was not very encouraging; the village, actually a town these days, is fairly close to the autoroute and consequently we initially found ourselves in amongst several factories, and some not very attractive, fairly modern, housing developments sprawling down into the valley. We could see the ancient village on the hillside above us and, not really knowing where we were, followed our noses till we found a parking place next to the elegant Eglise du Martyre de Saint-Jean-Baptiste. Looking inside churches is something this irreligious travelling couple does unfailingly in every city, town or village we visit. The art and architecture are what we admire the most, and even this unassuming edifice did not disappoint having some unusual stained-glass windows,

The stained-glass window in Eglise du Martyre de Saint-Jean-Baptiste

and the remnants of quite beautiful wall paintings in the small chapels along each side of the nave. Outside the front door was a fine specimen of France’s ubiquitous plane tree population, spreading its branches across the little car park, as well as a small fountain against the retaining wall with the all-too-common notice “Eau non potable”, a sign of the deteriorating environment in this modern age. The ancient village of Les Arcs, originally named Archos in 1010AD, mainly dates back to the 13^th century and is fortified, so first we needed to find a gateway to get in. A wander along narrow streets in a slightly uphill direction found us at the Clock Tower and our entry into a beautiful medieval environment, meticulously maintained and evidently a chic place to live.

Inside Le Parage, the old centre of Les Arcs-sur-Argens

The old center is oddly called the Parage, a word which in both archaic English and French seems to refer to social rank, family lineage, or feudal land tenure. So it appears it has always been a snobby place to live! All the same it was also a very attractive place to stroll around for those prepared to plod up and down steep, narrow cobbled streets.

La Tour de Taradel and Chapelle Saint-Martin

Our route home took us through the village of Taradeau, on the hill behind and above which is the 12^th century watch tower, La Tour de Taradel. You can’t normally enter either the tower itself or the small Chapelle Saint-Martin next door; but while we were walking around outside, we met a French lady who was trying out the acoustics of the chapel by singing most melodiously through a small open window in the wall, a truly angelic voice in such a peaceful place. We also discovered that from the adjacent car-park, a rough road that provides firefighters access to the wooded hillsides above, was also a designated footpath leading along the side of the ridge back towards Les Arcs; later during our stay in Lorgues, we returned two or three times to take what proved to be one of the loveliest walks we found in Provence, wending alongside vineyards from which we gleaned the odd bunch of dried-out, but very sweet, raisin-like grapes as we passed. We befriended a couple of local ladies who seemed to take this walk regularly in the afternoon sunshine, and whom we bumped into each time we were there.

And the time we took the upward detour to the very top of the small colline, we discovered the Oppidum, the remains of an ancient pre-Roman fortified settlement, in a commanding position with views across the valleys on both sides of the hill. All that is to be seen today are the old walls, which have been slowly revealed by local volunteers clearing the thick brush which had kept the site well hidden over the centuries. There is a wonderful rocky viewpoint nearby, overlooking the valley below, from where one can see all the distant peaks towards the Mediterranean thirty miles away, and below us, the trains on the railway and traffic on the autoroute looking like toys in the distance. On the track on the way up, we found some very soft, red and orange fruits, a bit like little strawberries, fallen from a nearby tree, one of which my trusty taster boldly bit into and proclaimed to be delicious; so we happily ate several handfuls of them. During our descent we came across a friendly local gentleman scrabbling among the brush for plants and, chatting to him as was our wont, we learnt that these tasty fruits were called arbouses . It seems they are not commonly harvested [www.tous-les-fruits.com] although a few weeks later we were offered them when we went to dine with some friends in Languedoc.

. . . and this was the warning that we missed!

Always eager to walk the local trails and footpaths, one day we had an interesting experience on another trail a couple of miles outside of Lorgues, when we found ourselves walking past a line of chasseurs standing at regular intervals beside the track. It seems we had unwittingly marched into the middle of a hunt for wild boars, and these worthies in their camouflage clothing, though also wearing dayglo orange baseball caps (!!?), and armed with powerful hunting rifles, were waiting for their fellow human predators to flush out the boars in our direction. Not wearing bright orange caps ourselves, we deemed it unwise to hang around to chat for long, and can only assume the hunt was successful as we heard the distant sound of several shots as we headed on up the hill through a lovely green forest. We later learnt that the local winegrowers do not take kindly to having wild boars snuffling the ground around their precious vines and are happy to sponsor these gun-toting hunters to eliminate as many as they can. A not altogether happy compromise between the commercial needs of viniculturists and the ideals of environmentalists, it is quite a common occurrence throughout the wilder areas of southern France, as we were to find out later in our travels.

Enjoying the afternoon sunshine in the quiet calm of an out-of-season visit to L’Abbaye du Thoronet

The simple plain architecture of L’Abbaye du Thoronet

Another find in the immediate area was the Abbaye du Thoronet. Built between 1160 and 1230 this beautiful Cistercian abbey, one of three abbeys known as the “Three Sisters of Provence”, came to be restored as a Monument historique in the mid-eighteen hundreds, after it was brought to the attention of the writer Prosper Merrimée who was also the first official inspector of monuments in France. We thoroughly enjoyed the peacefulness of the location in a river valley surrounded by olive groves, as well as the plain, yet precise simplicity of the architecture, which is said to have been the inspiration of many modern architects.

We met a couple from Switzerland and sat on the grass chatting with them for a half hour or more until the afternoon sun settled behind the surrounding hills and the autumnal cool of the evening made us glad to return to the warmth of our car that had been sitting in the sunshine all afternoon. Definitely a place not to be missed, although I suspect the quiet ambience we found so attractive, would be missing in the busy tourist season.

Of course no visit to this part of France can be complete without a stop at at least one wine store. The next afternoon, having had a lazy start to the day, we drove to nearby Flayosc, another pretty little village with a simple small church. On the way back we pulled in to the Sarl Cellier des 3 Collines, tasted two or three of the local wines, and came away with just one bottle of vin rouge, d’huile d’olive, et des herbes de Provence et Gressini! Those few items, along with the wild thyme that Celine, who always kept a keen eye on the ground for the many wild herbs that grow profusely in the area, had picked on our walks, would provide us with a few of the basics for another healthy Provençal style meal.

And so the time arrived to expand our horizons a bit further, a circuitous route to Bargemon and beyond . .

Provence Part Two – Saint-Tropez

Five days into our stay in Lorgues we had explored the village pretty well, and decided to take our first trip to the “seaside”. Saint-Tropez dates back to pre-Roman times, and with its natural harbour and ideal defensive position, has, over the ages, often been fought over, and has been under the control of many different peoples including Greeks from Phocaea, Romans, Saracens and Genoans, Germans during the Great War, and Italians and, again, Germans in the second World War. It is also believed to have been where the first contact occurred between the French and the Japanese, when, in 1615, a Japanese delegation on its way to Rome, was obliged by the weather to take shelter in La Golfe de Saint-Tropez. And interestingly, the name Saint Tropez, comes from “Torpes”, a Roman officer under Nero’s reign who was beheaded after making the mistake of being converted to Christianity by Saint Paul; his body was set adrift in a small boat in Pisa, together with a cat and a dog, and supposedly they drifted ashore in this sheltered cove.

In more recent times, Saint-Tropez attracted famous figures from the world of fashion such as Coco Chanel in the 1920s, it was one of the landing sites for the Allied invasion of Southern France in August 1944, and in the 1950s gained some renown as the location for Roger Vadim’s film “And God Created Woman” that launched Brigitte Bardot into the public spotlight.

And since then it has become very much a destination for the rich and famous, an image which justifies the exotic boutiques we found throughout the town, and the beautiful luxury yachts moored along the quay in the small harbour.

The 52km scenic route across the Massif des Maures gave us a slow, but exciting drive through some lovely countryside, along a road of many twists and turns and lots of steep drops, most of which were on the passenger side, to Celine’s slight concern. Although the town now predominantly conveys the feeling of opulent luxury, the highlight for us was a visit to the fascinating Musée Maritime, which gave us a very different perspective of the history of Saint-Tropez. Climbing the hill upwards from the port, and passing several busy restaurants that teased your scribe’s taste buds, we arrived at the foot of a long set of steps leading up to La Citadelle on top of Colline des Moulins.

The first fort was built there in 1589 but was destroyed just six years later. The imposing hexagonal keep and the bastioned outer wall that we see today, were constructed in the early seventeenth century. The tower encloses a large interior courtyard and houses the maritime museum, a dozen rooms in which one discovers the maritime heritage of Saint Tropez from antiquity to the modern-day. The beautifully presented collection of ship and boat models, engravings, paintings of boats and documents recording the lives of famous local people, sea-captains and adventurers, kept us enthralled for a couple of hours. It was fascinating reading extracts from the letters to his wife, sent by the captain of a coastal sailing ship, as he tried to maintain his schedule in spite of the vagaries of the weather. Lying on our backs in a darkened corner of another room and watching a video of the terrors of life aboard one of the last of the old sailing ships on the passage round Cape Horn with cargoes of nickel from New Caledonia, was a relaxing novelty for two sets of weary legs. And it inspired us to stop in the museum shop on the way out and buy “Carnets du Cap Horn”, the journals of Pierre Stephan, one of the brave young captains who, at the turn of the twentieth century, still preferred the rigours of life aboard a four-masted barque to the comforts of the steamships of the day. The friendly Museum staff themselves made our visit complete when, quite out of the blue, they offered us free cups of coffee as we chatted with them and browsed the bookshelves.

The town’s marine heritage on display in La Musèe Maritime.

Eventually, pangs of hunger obliged us to return down the hill in the late afternoon, passing the now-closed restaurants with the tasty-looking menus, and we stopped at a small crêperie to eat very moreish Grand Marnier crêpes. This kept us going nicely for a while as we ambled through the narrow streets leading down to the sea. Being the good tourists that we were, who had yet to get used to French eating hours and afternoon closures, we eventually feasted cheaply on paella and escargots in one of the few quayside restaurants that stayed open all day.

The old town of Saint-Tropez seems small and intimate which added to our enjoyment of this out-of-season visit, without the hoards of tourists that we are told flood the place “in the season”. We wandered through some of the many charming small streets behind the old port, down to the pretty little La Ponche beach where a twenty-first century Dad flew a kite for his toddler, and then onto the concrete remains of a large concrete jetty sticking uglily out into the well protected Golfe de Saint-Tropez, where a young boy was trying his luck with rod and line on the edge of a darkening sea under threatening grey clouds. It was easy to imagine what the town must have been like when it was a small undeveloped village, the home of fishermen, boatbuilders, sailors and captains, many of the latter having learnt their trade at the local School for Captains.

A mega-yacht dwarfs the old quayside buildings

In stark contrast, the tall wooden masts of classic sailing yachts and the gleaming superstructures of megayachts, moored stern-on to the quay around the main port, itself encircled by fading four-storey dwellings, on the cast-iron balustraded balconies of which, sat several comfortable-looking elderly residents, together with the 4km of clean sandy beach just outside of town facing the Mediterranean on the other side of the peninsular, gave credence to understanding why the rich and famous adopted the town for their summer pleasure ground.

It also left us wondering how it would compare with the big casino cities further east on the Côte d’Azur proper, Nice, Cannes and Monte Carlo. But they would have to wait for our visit; before that we wanted to get a picture of everyday Provençal life, away from the razzamatazz of commercialized tourism, and for the next few days we concentrated our explorations on the many beautiful old villages to be found in the rolling countryside of Var and up into the hills towards Gorges du Verdon. . .

Provence Part One – The Commune of Lorgues

Part 1 – The commune of Lorgues

Our month in the beautiful city of Lyon completed, the time to start the main business of our trip had arrived. We were both beginning to feel at ease with the language after two weeks of intensive training at Inflexyon, shopping in French had begun to seem quite natural, and chatting with the locals was becoming much easier. Now we were able to start looking around us and begin that search for the all-elusive perfect nesting place.

Our stop in Lyon had been a great success, having found the city even more delightful than we had expected. However, as many of the people we met there quickly confirmed, it was probably not the ideal location for two people who were hoping to live in a warm(-ish) climate. The September weather we had experienced there was lovely, but the general message was that we might not be quite so appreciative of the winters. To make the point, it was raining heavily as we left Lyon behind us that first day in October, driving our brand new short-term lease car, a well-equipped and very comfortable Peugeot 308 diesel. We headed south through quite murky weather, along the A7 autoroute following the Rhône valley, as we anticipated our next destination, the village of Lorgues, located in the midst of wineries and olive trees in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region.

Provence is one of those places that has been written about so often, and is almost revered by many, and yet neither of us had been there for any length of time. It appeared to have a lot of potential, the climate is temperate, the countryside was said to be beautiful, and culture and history abounds. With so many expats having made their homes there over the years, it surely must be worthy of a visit by a couple of European retirees, disappointed by the Californian Dream, and looking for a place to re-connect to their roots. So we had found a rental apartment in Lorgues, which seemed to be fairly centrally located between sea and mountain, the famous Riviera destinations to the east and Roman antiquities to the west. The sun started to appear among the clouds as we arrived in the late afternoon, and, pleased to be out in the countryside once more after a month of city dwelling, we found our new temporary home easily on the edge of the village, in a small gated community of similar apartments in two three-storey buildings. We had to wait half an hour for the cleaning lady to arrive with the key and let us in; but once the car was unloaded, and we’d had our supper of left-over groceries from Lyon, we settled down to our six-week term of Provençal life.

The first sight of our new Provençal home. Sadly, our view did not include the nice garden and the pool.

There is a lot to see in Provence, chic holiday resorts, tourist trap casino cities, market towns full of history, ancient small villages perched on hilltops high above green valleys, and acres and acres and acres of vineyards interspersed with olive groves. Lorgues fitted somewhere between the market town and ancient village category, far enough north of the A8, the main east-west autoroute, to be relatively unaffected by traffic speeding towards the Italian border, but far enough south to be easily accessible and out of the more extreme hilly regions to the north. It seemed to be, and indeed proved to be, an ideal location to have all of Provence within a comfortable day’s drive. However our first day in the village was all foot-powered, as we took our first stroll around our neighbourhood, including a stop for our daily baguette at what turned out to be the only boulangerie with Sunday opening hours. Then, getting down immediately to the business in hand, we included some window-shopping at the half dozen agents immobiliers in the main street.

The smallest kitchen area I have ever used apart from one in a motor-home!

Our open plan living/dining room. Actually there isn’t a dining table at all!

The apartment that we had booked through the FlipKey website was adequate but much smaller than we had expected, which just demonstrated how deceptive descriptions and photographs can be. The view from our balcony at the back of the building was a distinct disappointment, in the shade all day long and looking straight at the back of a very run-down building that housed the local grape and olive crushing plant, which became noisily active several times during our stay. We were also disappointed to discover that our mobile phone signal was too weak to be of any use when downloading e-mails from the internet or making the comforting Skype phone calls to family and friends at home; and the “café with internet facilities just around the corner” had very erratic opening hours, and wasn’t exactly the kind of place we would have wanted to spend a lot of time chatting to the grandkids. This was our own fault, because we were fully aware of the lack of internet in the apartment when we made the booking, but your scribe had rather foolishly chosen to ignore this lack of what has become such a necessary adjunct to the comfort of our modern travelling lives. Still, by late afternoon the next day, a 40 kilometre round trip to the local Orange outlet in Draguignan, our nearest town of any size, had us returning happily connected to the world again with a new mini-SIM in our IPad and a contract that seemed to give us plenty of gigabytes to play with for the next three months, though we were soon to learn how many of the bytes one Skype call consumes!

The Var department – Lorgues is just slightly north-east of the exact centre.

The local tourist office, very conveniently situated just round the corner from our gateway, was staffed by a couple of very friendly local ladies who gave us lots of good information about the places we should visit in the Draguignan arrondissement of the Var department, and we came away well armed with maps and guides.

To find your way around in France, and to understand a bit about the local politics, it is helpful to have an understanding of how the administration of the country is divided up. There are twelve mainland régions, each region levying its own taxes, and having direct responsibilities for high school education and discretionary powers over infrastructural spending such as public transport, universities and assistance to local businesses. Regions are then subdivided into the ninety-seven main administrative divisions of France, the départements. The departmental seats of government for each department, the préfectures, are usually in a town reasonably centrally placed, historically nominally accessible to all corners of the department within twenty-four hours on horseback. However, slightly surprisingly, the coastal port city of Toulon is the prefecture for the Var department. Further subdivisions of the departments are the arondissements, such as Draguignan, the town of that name also being the seat of the sous-préfecture of the arondissement. Each arondissement is then further subdivided into cantons, the chief purpose of which are to serve as constituencies for the election of members of the General Councils of each department. Within cantons there may be several communes, France’s fourth administrative level. Lorgues is one of fifty-eight communes in the arondissement of Draguignan, and one of five communes in the canton of Vidauban. Communes are roughly the equivalent of civil townships and incorporated municipalities in the United States, and resemble urban districts and rural parishes in the United Kingdom. Each commune has a maire (mayor), a conseil municipal (town council), and a mairie or town hall. Amazingly, a legacy from the French Revolution means that all 36,552 communes, with the exception of the commune of Paris, have more or less the same legislative powers over such things as the local police force and emergency services, even though the population of communes can vary from two million – Paris – to towns of ten thousand, to a hamlet of just10 persons. However, as one might expect, the maximum allowable pay for mayors and deputy mayors, and other financial items such as municipal campaign limits, do vary according to the population echelon into which each commune falls! Lorgues, though, was a larger than average commune of nearly nine thousand people.

Entering Vieux Lorgues through the narrow passage above Place du Revelin.

The original small fortified town around which this community has grown, dates back to the 11^th and 12^th centuries, and is still entered through one of the several old “portes”, or gates. The old town is a small maze of medieval streets uphill from the present day main street, Boulevard Georges Clemenceau, and Cours de la Republique. As one approaches the village the most prominent feature is the 18^th century collegial St-Martin church. Locals told us it had a very impressive interior, but this we never saw as the building was closed to the public during our stay, due to construction work. Every Tuesday there is a large market all along the main street and extending into Rue de l’Église and down Avenue de Toulon. Selling pretty well every type of household accessory, a wide selection of clothing and lots of meat, cheese and fruit and vegetables, one might never need to shop anywhere else if one was not too choosy! A Casino Supermarché, an Intermarché Super and a small Bio store completed the basic grocery shopping options; for the more selective gourmand there was a half dozen boulangeries and pâtisseries. The main street was mostly cafés and restaurants and the aforementioned agents immobiliers, all very much oriented towards the expat and tourist community, of which we were part of course. The local expats came out in force on market days and Saturdays, when one heard as much English as French being spoken.

In line with our intent to live like locals as much as possible, we rarely dined out in the village. Our first experience was a wonderful meal with friends on a damp wet Friday evening, at Chez Vincent (sadly, I see, now under new owners and renamed Chez Flo.) Superbly cooked confit de canard together with delicious starters, yummy desserts and a very nice Chateau les Crostes rouge earned it a well deserved five-star review on Trip Advisor. Then on our last evening in the village we treated ourselves to another very tasty meal in the quaint ambience of the interior of an old olive mill. La Table du Moulin had received mixed reviews, but the unique venue and the warmth of the Maître D and the Chef when, out of hours, we popped our heads inside as we passed by one afternoon, tempted us to find out for ourselves, and we were far from disappointed; it turned out to be an enjoyable parting song to our stay in Lorgues. Of course, we did enjoy the café culture more often, finding the temptations of mille feuilles and tartes aux pommes irresistible more times than we would like to admit, stopping by to rest your scribe’s weary knees on our regular walks to the Bio store and our favourite boulangeries.

Five days after our arrival and we realized we had explored our commune pretty thoroughly and the time had come to start discovering what our département, Var, had to offer. . . .