On Saturday we farewelled Julia and Carolyn and Anthony and
Dennis. Julia went to Bordeaux for a
week to catch up with Flo and Jean-Mi while the others went to London for a few
days before heading home. Manuela and
Clemens drove back to Zug on Sunday morning.
We welcomed Fiona and Coby and Roelof on Saturday and Olivia
on Sunday.
When Coby and Roelof arrived on Saturday we went for a walk
to La Roche-sur-Le Buis, (La Roche) which is a picturesque town higher up the
hillside away from Buis.
On the way up I picked and tasted an olive. I’ve always wanted to taste one to see how
awful they are. It was extremely bitter
and I could only tolerate one bite.
La Roche is built on a very steep hillside up against a
massive rock face. It is a quiet town
with one restaurant and not many other amenities. The community petanque courts have the most magnificent
views across the valley below.
As with many of the villages in this region there are cats
everywhere. Dale also spotted an old
truck entombed in an overgrown garage.
Who knows the last time that it had been driven.
On Sunday we walked down to Buis to have tea and coffee with
the Richards and to show Fiona and Coby and Roelof the cottage. Geoff and Kathy, and their daughter Kate, had
arrived on Thursday and Ben arrived Saturday night. On the walk down Coby and Roelof helped us to
identify some Tilleul (Lindon) trees.
This had been difficult for us because they had all dropped their
leaves.
We had beautiful weather all week and on Monday Coby and
Roelof did a tour in their car of the various places in the region where they
had spent many camping holidays when their sons were young. They said that they really enjoyed this
nostalgic tour.
Geoff, Kathy, Ben, Dale and I had an earlyish meeting with
the notaire (Maitre Perossier) that was quite intense. There was a lot of information to take in and
the entire meeting was conducted in French.
Maitre Perossier explained that she doesn’t know enough English to be
confident that she is using the correct legal terms and expressions. The most important thing we learnt was that
in France the local council (the Marie) has the right to buy properties that
are up for sale and have 2 months to decide whether to exercise this right. Maitre Perossier assured us that they will
almost certainly not exercise this right because they don’t have the money but,
nevertheless, we may have to wait 2 months to finalise the sale. Another appointment was made for Friday to
sign the contract of sale and to arrange for us to give powers of attorney to
people in France to sign the relevant documents once the sale can be finalised.
After the meeting we all took a deep breath and went back to
the cottage to debrief and to feast on cheese, bread, wine and coffee. Olivia walked down to the village and joined
us. Olivia has known Ben and Geoff and
Kathy for many years and was the person who originally suggested to Dale and me
that we would probably enjoy going to France and staying in the Richards’
cottages. I think we can safely say that
she was right.
On Tuesday we went back into Vaison-la-Romaine to go to the
market and to lunch at Bistrot Du’O.
I had decided that we would host another dinner party on
Wednesday night and invited all the Richards up to the big house. I decided to
cook boeuf bourguignon. After the
earlier experience with the butcher in Buis I wanted to marinate the beef for
24 hours in advance so I bought it in Vaison.
As an aside our friend Alex (who I need to point out is French) said
that our retort to the Buis butcher should have been that as he is not from
Burgundy, what would he know about how to cook beef burgundy. Wish we’d thought of that at the time
although we may have found ourselves permanently banned from the boucherie.
We once again enjoyed the food and service at Bistro
Du’O. This time we were entertained by
the young son of the Maitre’d. He had been sent home from school because his
teacher was sick and clearly it was an opportunity to induct him into the
family business. He helped his mother
serve our meals and was instructed to wish us ‘bon appetit’. Later on he brought someone’s dessert to the
table by himself and was of course thanked.
He turned and took a few steps back towards the kitchen before skipping
around and saying ‘de rien’ (your welcome/it’s nothing). As we left the restaurant he wished us ‘Bonne
journee’.
Wednesday was a magnificent spring day and we felt that the
market and Buis itself really started to ‘spring’ into life after winter. There were more vendors in the market and a
number of shops, that had been closed, re-opened.
We had our usual coffee at L’Etoile and then Dale, Ben and I
had a very successful meeting with one of the local insurance agents.
I spent the afternoon cooking and preparing for the dinner
party for 12, with great help from Coby and Roelof. Dale and Ben went to Avignon to buy a new
washing machine for the cottage. They
found the shallowest washing machine in all of the Republique, which is perfect
for its new position in the kitchen.
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| Like it was meant to be |
Olivia and Fiona toured a number of the hill top wine towns
in the Vaucluse including Gigondas and Beaumes de Venise. It seems that they
spent a lot of time in a cave at Beaumes de Venise tasting many different types
of the local muscat. Olivia says that
she composed her very best French sentence to ask to taste some wine only to
discover that the women she was talking to was Irish. They all got on like a bottle of burgundy on
fire (another story for another day) and brought back a couple of very nice
bottles of wine that we polished off after dinner later that night.
Barb and Rob arrived back from Beaune, in Burgundy, and the
Richards also joined us for dinner. It
was a beautiful evening for many reasons.
We saw a beautiful sunset and enjoyed a great evening of food and
conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed both
of my birthday dinners. They were the
undoubted highlights of these two weeks.
Notwithstanding our big night, Dale and I got up early on
Thursday morning and headed off on one last big hike with Randouvèze. We had said our goodbyes to Coby and Roelof
the night before as they left Buis on Thursday morning for 4 weeks in La
Londe-les-Maures on the Cote d’Azur.
Olivia and Fiona spent the day in Buis and met Ben for a
lovely long lunch at one of the cafes and hung out with the local blokes who
were enjoying the spring weather by playing petanque.
Barb and Rob drove off to the Fontaine de Vaucluse for
lunch. It is apparently beautiful and I
can’t believe that we’ve never been there.
I have read that it’s the 5th largest spring in the world.
Our hike left from Sault (also in the Vaucluse). We have
been to Sault a couple of times before and I have always pronounced it ‘Salt’,
but we learned that it is actually pronounced ‘So’. It wasn’t a particularly punishing hike but
it was still 18 kms long and left us pretty exhausted by the end.
We descended from Sault, which is on a hill that overlooks a
valley and through woods for much of the morning. It was a wonderful way to speak in and listen
to French. Various people would take
turns at wandering up besides us to have a chat. There were even more people on this hike than
the previous one. We think about
40. There were a few more people, this
time, who have holiday houses in Buis and who visit for long weekends and
annual vacations. I met one lady and her
friend who come from Lille in the very top corner of France near the Belgian
border. She told me that she was born
and bred in Lille and that the people there are warm and welcoming but that it
gets very depressing in winter. At this
point we were bathed in sunshine and she was just wearing a singlet.
Dale got chatting to a retired school principal from Paris
who has moved to Buis to live. She
teaches French at the local Community Centre, and had no hesitation in
correcting any errors he made. We might be able to do some conversations
classes there on future trips.
Perhaps the most interesting thing we saw on the walk was
new fields of lavender being planted.
The technique involves attaching a trailer to the back of a tractor that
three people sit on. The tractor then
slowly moves down the field and the men pop small lavender cuttings into the
ground as they go.
As usual we stopped for lunch in a lovely clearing
overlooking a valley. Someone said to us
that selecting the lunch spot is the most important task of the hike
organisers. We had brought our own wine
and cups this time but everyone else wanted us to try their wine. This time Francis brought a spirit of some
description with cherries soaking in it.
Jean-Noel explained that this is how he had tasted alcohol for the very
first time when his mother was preparing liqueur cherries. People also handed out their home made pates,
cakes, jams and cubes of quince paste.
It never ceases to amaze me how much the French love
food. That said, a couple of the
Parisiens and former Parisiens said that most French hiking clubs do not have
the same gourmand standards as Randouvèze.
We continued to learn a lot about the local flora. Thanks to Francis, Dale is now an expert on
Hazelnuts (used to make Nutella) and Hazelnut trees (Ed. but someone pointed
out to me that Nutella is made with palm oil so I will now stop eating it).
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| Hazelnut tree |
Along the way we came across an elevated viewing platform
for hunting. 8X year old Virginie just
had to clamber up the rickety ladder.
The scene was completed when Francis spotted her and came running down
the hill yelling ‘Julietta, Julietta’ and then getting her to strike the Statue
of Liberty pose.
We also came across a grave yard for Citroen Amis lovingly
curated by a farmer who is obviously a fan of these cars. Francis and one of the other hikers started
reminiscing about their youthful exploits in 2CVs and the bouncy nature of
their suspension...
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| Don't mess with this dog |
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| Le Mont Ventoux from the south side where the snow has sharted to melt. Now you can see the difference in the colour of the snow vs the white stones |
At the end of the walk we had a drink in a café at
Sault. About half a dozen of the people
we’d spoken to the most on the 2 hikes knew that we were about to head back to
Australia and came over to shake our hands, give us kisses and say ‘until next
year’. It was very touching.
Along the walk and in the café I had been talking to an
older French woman (Parisien - perhaps close to Virginie’s age) who held very
strong views which amused me. One
example I stumbled into was when I said that she must find my accent a little
hard to follow as she is lucky to live so close to Britain and must be used to
English accents. This led to her saying:
‘We are not lucky to live so close to the English. They want to leave the European Union. They are like people who want to see the
movie but won’t pay for the tickets’.
She had even more extreme views about Americans including, ‘not many of
them are educated and everything they do causes problems’. I attempted politely
to provide some balance but she was not to be persuaded.
Friday was a big day for us because we signed the contract
of sale to buy the cottage and the sale will hopefully complete in a couple of
months. We had a glass of champagne with
the Richards to celebrate.
We took a bit of time to walk around the nearby towns of
Mollans-sur-Ouvèze and Beauvoisin as we prepared to leave.
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| Final Buis sunset |
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| One last glimpse of St Julien at night |
Olivia and Fiona did a big drive to see the awesome Pont du
Gard and Barb and Rob visited the Theatre Antique in Orange. There are some truly amazing Roman sights in
the region. Come and see!
Saturday was spent travelling. Barb and Rob went off to Morocco for 3 weeks
while the rest of us went to Paris, where we spent 4 nights. We did a lot of shopping – yay – but also
managed to see some sights that we hadn’t seen before. We visited the Marriage Frere tea shop in the
Marais which is a great experience.
We went to the Ile de la Grande Jatte, the setting for
Dale’s favourite painting, ‘Sunday Afternoon on the Ile de la Grande Jatte’, by
Georges Seurat (1886). It is also the central setting for the musical Sunday In The Park With George. Then in the second act of the show the grandson of Seurat visits the island to find that is has largely been overbuilt
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| Act II - Sunday In The Park With George (1984 original broadway) |
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| This building looks like the prompt side of the set in the previous image |
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| But there is still a little but of park left |
We also walked around posh Neuilly-sur-la Seine, of which
Nicholas Sarkozy was the Mayor for nearly 20 years, and the Bois de
Boulogne.
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| Some woodland in Paris, but you can hear freeway noise everywhere |
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| Too much... barely enough |
I also squeezed in a visit to the Musee des Arts et Metiers
and saw some wonderful artefacts like one of the first metre measures and a
clock that used a decimal time system i.e. 10 hours in a day.
On our final night we had a sensational dinner with our
friends Penny and Alex at a restaurant called Chez Monsieur. We all ate veal blanquette, which they rate
as the best in Paris.
We flew to Hong Kong on Wednesday to spend a few days with
David and Boh, who have moved here for work.
No room for shopping left in our bags but we have done plenty of window
shopping. We have re-visited Kowloon and
Victoria Peak. David and Boh recommended
a short walk at Victoria Peak which afforded great views and was peaceful and
shady.
We have also been down to Stanley, which we hadn’t been to
the last time we were here. We enjoyed
the less frenetic pace and the pretty, uncrowded harbour (Ed. and did more
shopping regardless).
Back to Australia tomorrow but we are of course planning the
next trip.
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