Where-ever I lay my hat

On Wednesday 4 June we left La Cledette at 7am and basically spent the day driving to Fayence in Provence. We went past Nimes, Arles, Aix-en-Provence and down to the coast to Cassis. Cassis looked really pretty and we spent about half an hour looking for a park but found none to look around the town. It looked pretty modern and brightly coloured in a very pleasant way and was certainly bustling. We eventually found a parking area on the way out of town by the sea and so had our lunch on the rocks beside the med. It was hot and sunny and we had this wee bit of coast all to ourselves for a while. We couldn’t see the town, only the cliffs outside town and a few houses scattered up on the hills, a couple of rocky points jutting out into the sea with wee stone huts on the end and a few yachts. The med really is a beautiful blue and the sky is a slightly different shade of blue like in the paintings and that surprised me. Lunch was also pretty impressive in a very simple way, we had a fresh baguette which was great and some Roquefort and a white cheese from Roquefort too which I think was about the nicest cheese I’ve eaten. We took a couple of motorways through Toulon, which we saw nothing appealing about and headed to the coast again at Lavandou and followed the coast raod along and up to Saint Tropez. It seemed pretty otherworldly for us to driving along these gorgeous Mediterranean beaches and towns following the signs to Saint Tropez. We had a stroll about in Saint Tropez and looked at all the huge posh boats parked right up in town and their inhabitants sunbathing in full view of everyone. Some of the boats were magnificent and some just clearly indicated more money than sense and for showing off rather than being much to do with boating. We didn’t see anybody famous (although I probably wouldn’t recognise them anyway). The beaches are actually quite a long way out of town and there is a bus service that runs to them, although I’m sure the rich and famous don’t take the bus! The traffic leaving there and all the way along to Sainte Maxime was terrible and we crawled along, although some of the views were pretty. There was more lovely coastline and bright Mediterranean villages along the coast until we headed inland and north. Fayence is a gorgeous town that sprawls up a hill and is postcard perfect. We arrived at Lisa’s place and had a look around and got settled before dinner. It’s a beautiful old stone farmhouse with an addition on the side and a lovely covered porch outside our room and a pool that looks over the hills and the village. Its rather luxurious compared to some places we’ve been and we were not at all anxious about coming here as after talking to Lisa on the phone it felt more like we were coming to visit a friend than to work in some strangers garden. There’s a 500 year old oak tree sheltering the house that is pretty stunning. There’s also a Scottish couple here WWOOFing and they are really nice. We had a very pleasant dinner and chatted for the evening.
On Thursday we had agreed to work a bit extra and then less on the next two days. We had breakfast in our little porch area and then had a tour around the property to see what needed to be done. Steve was to do mostly strimming and me mostly weeding in the garden. Theres a bit of pruning to be done as well. The morning was pleasant and I sat in the garden and chatted with Sue and Neil while pulling out weeds but Steve had big problems getting the strimmer going and it involved several trips to town for fuel and help with Lisa. It eventually got going and then it was time to stop for coffee!!!!!! We sat at the table outdoors and had coffee and biscuits then carried on working for a while till it started raining. Despite the rain we couldn’t resist a dip in the pool and since the showers we’ve had have been not that great. It was lovely to actually be wet and completely in the water and we felt cleaner than we have in a while. We had lunch and spent the afternoon resting and chatting indoors as it stayed wet till evening. Lisa is a massage therapist and asked me to give her a massage despite being 20 years out of practice so that was interesting and a bit scary to massage a massage therapist. We got a bit more work done in the evening and then had dinner all together which was very social and very pleasant.
Friday morning after breakfast we got on with weeding and strimming once everyone was awake and worked till 12 then had a quick swim in the pool. We were going out for the afternoon so lunch was meant to be prompt but the salad had proved time consuming and we didn’t finish eating till closer to 1.30. We headed through Grasse and down to the coast at Antibes and drove along to Monaco. The colour of the sea was beautiful and despite the rain inland it was fine on the coast so we saw a bit of sunshine on the Cote d’Azure. It was really cool to go to Monaco and we got to drive the car around bits of the Grand Prix circuit. It took a bit of effort but we found the tunnel, the casino, piscine and a couple of other bends. We followed a Ferrari around piscine which was pretty cool. We had a walk about and looked at the huge and very posh boats parked on the waterfront. They were more impressive than the ones in St Tropez but seemed more about big boats and less about being parked in St Tropez. On the way back we had a stroll around the old harbour in Nice and along a small part of the Promenade des Anglais, which is the place to be seen strolling. However the day was overcast and threatening to rain by then and anyone who was worth being seen had gone indoors and left only regular people. So we missed all the ostentatiousness of Nice and were not sad about that. The drive to and from the coast passes lots of amazing hillside villages that are completely stunning and everything is still really green from all the rain. People are saying the weather hasn’t been like this in Provence in twenty years and its usually warm, sunny and dry by now. It seems the whole of France is having a wet summer. Dinner was also fairly late and it was 11.30 before we got to bed. Lisa also seems to bake most days and we have dessert every night and coffee and cake after lunch. Its extremely civilised.
It was hard to believe Saturday was our last day with Lisa. In some ways it seems we’ve been here ages and in most not nearly enough. It is really comfortable and more like a holiday as the work is not very hard and Sue and I just chat all morning while we’re weeding. Unusually it rained again and we abandoned a trip out for the afternoon. Work stopped at 12 for a trip to the market. I had a nice long soak in the pool and chilled out while everyone else went to the market. The town is really pretty and probably well worth the trip but I felt in need of an afternoons rest. I have always wanted to sit and paint in Provence and being able to sit by a pool at an old stone villa and paint surpassed my wildest dreams so I started painting a picture, but got interrupted by a torrential downpour, which is not part of the dream! We had a great chicken salad for lunch then all just relaxed for the afternoon and got our own various personal chores done. I spent a while chatting with Neil about furniture design and looking at Lisa’s sunken lounge and modular table and we came up with some ideas for the furniture in our house. The sun came out again later and I finished my picture then Sue and I both painted till dinner time and Steve served us wine. It was frightfully civilised. We all just chatted for a while after dinner and looked at photos and got to bed late again. We said our goodbyes to Sue and Neil as Sunday was their day off and I think they were planning to hibernate till the summer arrives.
On Sunday morning we got organised and got the car packed up and said goodbye to Lisa and managed to leave about 8.15. We drove to the Gorges du Verdon and went around tis north side. We had a wee walk down into the Gorges, which is pretty spectacular. Its very narrow and very steep with walls possibly only 30m apart at the top and up to 100m deep. The rock is also interesting colours and shapes with what was clearly flat ground long ago now at 45degrees and then a gorge cut through it. We decided to skip the very long scenic drive around the rim since it was pretty steep for the car and we had a long way to go. There is a gorgeous blue lake at the end of the gorge and the landscape opens up really quickly. We stumbled across another market just closing up and got bread and a nice farmhouse pate for our lunch which we ended up having fairly late at an uninspiring roadside bench. We looked around a bit for lavender fields in case there were any fields of early lavender flowering but didn’t see any. We found one field that was about to flower, so faintly purple, and with poppies all through it too. It also had a view up the mountains so was rather pretty and a little imagination helped out the purple. Then we headed to the ochre quarries and had a bit of a stroll through some spectacular coloured hills and collected a bit of ochre for painting. The hills vary from cream, yellow, orange, red and some incredibly rich deep shade of red that’s almost black. We stopped for a walk around in Rousillion which is unbelievable colours on all the houses and also built on top of ochre cliffs. It was so bright and rich without being brash at all because it was earth colours. There were of course some bright shades of blue and purple and green but they all blended nicely and made a very cheery looking place even though it started to rain while we were there. Then the dreadful chore of looking for a campground started. I’m sure there are campgrounds in Provence but we didn’t see any except one that looked rather dreadful and unkempt. We were also trying to get out of the rain a bit because our tent doesn’t stay dry if it gets wet being put up. We ended up, very grumpy, in Avignon, which was pretty far from the vision of a lovely campgound by a river surrounded by lavender fields. Instead we had German football supporters and were recommended not to go into the town. We did go and look at the lights of Avignon after dinner and its actually rather pretty. Even though its big the old town is surrounded by intact medieval walls and from across the river at the campground we could also see the chateau, cathedral and the half completed bridge across the Rhone. The Rhone is definitely small enough to be pretty now and since there was only half of it on that side of the island it was actually rather bonny.
We had a fairly decent nights sleep despite the hard ground and after breakfast went for a walk into Avignon. It replaced Rome as the centre of Christianity for a hundred years when the pope lived there and had a palace for the pope, which had some elaborate frescos in the entrance and looked quite luxurious inside although the outside was very plain. There was also a pretty cathedral that was also small but elaborate and had a replica of the shroud of Turin. The gardens above the palace were nice and had some lovely views of the river and the landscape around. After Avignon we drove to Chateau-neuf-du-pape which is a famous wine region and had a drive around and took pictures of vineyards with the chateau behind and then drove up to the chateau, which is a ruin, and strolled towards the town a little. Steve found a really cute cellar built into the rock which was also doing tastings so got a wee taste of some really good wine. He had also tasted at a cellar slightly out of the town that also does chocolate, which we tasted too. We had plans to do some scenic detours on the way up the Rhone but every time we tried to go anywhere the roads were blocked for the Dauphine cycle tour, which we found out later is pretty important and one of the build-up races to the tour de France. Eventually the race caught up with us and we had to stop and wait for them to go by before we were allowed across an intersection. However it meant we really didn’t get to drive along the Rhone at all and it is small enough to be fairly attractive up here. We got to St Christophe around 5pm and met the family and the guests (they have B&B). Everyone speaks French and we had a fairly tough evening, particularly beign tired and at dinner there were 12 people which was simply too much to understand. There is a kiwi guy here who speaks brilliant French and helped us out a bit, and we chatted with him about travel and WWOOFing in English. They serve a proper dinner that begins with homemade aperitifs on the lawn at 7.30 and carries on with salad, homemade local specialities, cheese (some of it homemade) and dessert then finishes with a tisane about 10.30 – 11.00. The food was fantastic and they even do all their own meat products so we have great hopes of learning lots. We had to clean out the car as we found lots of ants again and another batch of eggs so we hovered them up and then found their current nest which was in Steves boot!! He picked up the boot and ants just swarmed everywhere so they must have only moved in there in the last two days because you couldn’t have not noticed and he was wearing the boots two days ago! It took about 5 minutes just to hover the one boot! Yuk!
We have a room up in the attic above the family and share the bathroom with the children. Guests live in a separate house with 4 bedrooms or in one of the room in the main house and they eat in the main house.