Le Lavandin

My next stop was Le Lavandin, a luxury bed and breakfast near the old provençale town of Pernes-les-Fontaines owned by the inspirational Georgia Perrin, a long-time friend of my sister. I was here for a week to help her run her place and to enjoy her very gorgeous house and large garden complete with swimming-pool, labyrinth, huge vegetable and flower garden, lavender field, pétanque court and various other delights. Amazingly nearly 80 years old, Georgia from Utah in the USA has been running this guest house for nearly 15 years with the help of the wonderful Rachida and her husband Ali, as well as a team of fabulous gardeners who come in once a week to keep the place looking beautiful.

This is a big undertaking. There are four double guest rooms as well as a studio apartment that sleeps 2 -3 more. All are ensuite and have outdoor terraces or balconies with views onto the garden or over to distant hills. The sunset views are magnifique - every night a huge red ball dips slowly behind the distant hills and everywhere glows orange. There is also a summer kitchen for guests' use with fridge, sink and barbecue, and plenty of peaceful spots for outdoor dining. Guests are greeted individually on arrival, shown to their rooms and offered a bottle of wine, and the week I was there the place was full with most guests staying for nearly a week.

My days here started not long after 7 and my first job was to head downstairs from my room up in the roof and open the shutters outside Georgia's sitting-room. I love French shutters. Often old with peeling paint in shades of faded blue, grey or green, they keep the heat in in winter (I can't imagine it!) and the sun out in summer. What is second nature to most French is a novelty for us Kiwis and the knack of opening and closing the ancient things quietly takes a while to acquire.

Next, I had to go into the garden to cut the flowers. What a pleasure this task was. The air was always fresh and almost cool, even though every day would be well over 30 degrees, and the sun had yet to heat up. I cut apricot-coloured roses, white and purple hydrangeas, yellow daisies or purple-blue delphiniums to the sound of birds singing and sheep bells clinking gently in the distance. I even got used to the art of arranging the flowers nicely in vases for the breakfast tables, always trying to match their colours with the crockery, place mats and serviettes that Georgia had carefully chosen the night before.


When we had a full house (10 adults and 2 children) there were two breakfast tables to prepare. Everything had to be perfect: the position of the plates and cups, the teaspoons on the saucers just so, water glasses, juice glasses, jams, honeys, sugar cubes, silver jugs of cream or milk. After setting the tables, I had to make the coffee, yes, me! Hehe, good job Georgia is a good teacher, it wasn't hard. Grind the coffee fresh every morning, count the number of spoonsful into each coffee pot (usually 3 pots), at 8.50am pour on hot water, stir and leave, at 8.55am pour into two thermos jugs through a strainer, wipe down the jugs and take out to the tables along with a thermos of hot water for the tea. And then there were the guests who didn't drink tea or coffee but instead had Coke in a glass full of ice, yes, for breakfast!

As well, I had to squeeze the oranges for juice, pour and serve, fill the water glasses with water and leave a jug, sorry, a pitcher of iced water on the table, paint the slices of bread with butter and bake them in the oven, take out the fruit to be prepared by Rachida (maybe melon with fresh mint, or strawberries and cream, sliced peaches or nectarines, pears coated in lemon juice and served with Bleu de Bresse (a delicious creamy blue cheese) and a sprinkling of red peppercorns, or rhubarb compote with yogurt. On alternate mornings there was granola (home-made by me and super-tasty with the addition of grated orange rind) or something cooked by Georgia - French toast (here called, strangely, pain perdu - lost bread), or leek and red pepper frittata with pepper pecorino and lots of thyme from the garden, or boiled eggs and strips of crispy bacon (cooked to perfection by Rachida not me!), or grilled fresh chèvre (goat's cheese) on crostini with thyme.

Of course, there was always fresh bread (pain sportif - hazelnut and orange rind; pain aux olives; pain complet - whole grain; or just plain baguette), and pastries. These might be sacristans ( a kind of flaky almond sticky mix), pains aux raisins (custardy raisin sticky buns), chaussons aux pommes (pastries stuffed  with apple), or maybe beignets au chocolat (little donuts covered in sugar and filled with chocolate), my favourite! Once breakfast was over at 10am and we had cleared the tables and filled the dishwashers we got to eat the leftovers, well I did. Rachida and Ali are Muslims and it was Ramadan while I was there so they were not allowed to eat or drink anything from sunrise till sunset. What torture! It's daylight here at the moment from about 5am till 10pm so they didn't have much of a window. A long afternoon siesta is the only way to get through these hot days without even liquid and one day Rachida nearly passed out at home. So I alone was stuffing my face every morning. Probably a good job I stayed no longer than a week!

 

Chez ma soeur en Provence

My sister, Frances, lives in the south of France in the Vaucluse area of Provence north of Avignon near the hamlet of Le Barroux whose 12^th century château of the same name presides over the village. Frances’ beautiful home looks out to the west towards the Rhone Valley past the Dentelles de Montmirail so the views from her outdoor terrace are magnificent, as is her swimming-pool.

First up was an evening walk down to some (French) neighbours to pick cherries. They had an excess and had invited all the neighbours to pick as many as they wanted. We picked (and tasted) our fill of rather too many huge delicious shiny ones then sat on their shady terrace with a glass of local Muscat and olives and talked French politics all in French of course!

You can’t stay with Frances without going for a hike around the local area. Some wildflowers were still lingering from springtime when they’re prolific along the roadsides and in the fields. As well as cherries and apricots, it’s very much a wine-growing area and there are sturdy gnarled vines across the valleys and squeezed onto small terraces up and down the hillsides.

Usually visible from anywhere around here is the summit of the famous Mont Ventoux (1,912m), the goal of every serious cyclist. Said to be the hardest of all the mythical Tour de France climbs, it has claimed the lives of a number of bikers heading uphill on too hot an afternoon. From a distance, its bare white top looks like snow but it’s actually white rock that glistens under the provençal summer sun.

From Nelson to France in 40 hours

Nelson was heading for a cold spell, a blast from the Antarctic, so it was time for me to leave behind our huge feijoa crop, oh and Tony too, and head for the northern hemisphere already in the midst of a heatwave and 29 degrees even in London! First stop was St Cyr-sur-Mer and my dear friends, Dodo, Gilbert and Nico who live in a lotissement on the south coast of France between Marseille and Toulon, five minutes' walk from the Mediterranean. From Nelson to St Cyr took 42 hours. Sigh! And within 24 hours of arriving, I came down with the flu and took to my bed for 3 days even though it was 26 degrees outside. The woollen jersey I had packed for an English summer came in handy and Dodo even managed to find me a blanket, but I was still cold! So I missed out on all the things that she had planned for us to do together before Gilbert arrived from New Caledonia, a visit to the new museum in Marseille, a hike in the Calanques, and then, as soon as I started to get better, she came down with the same thing! Oh la la, how guilty I felt. She never gets sick and neither do I, and she has so much on her plate at the moment. So Gilbert arrived from New Caledonia and she couldn't even drive to the airport to meet him. Meanwhile, Lydia flew in from London for the weekend and somehow they managed to put on a huge family

lunch on Sunday (a real French tradition with grandmas, cousins, nephews and nieces) while refusing any help from either of us! The outdoor kitchen was cleaned and the fire cranked up which grilled not only meat but also a whole Camembert in its box which came out between courses and we scooped it out, dripping, with baguette. The fruit tart ordered from a boulangerie from Aix-en-Provence, a town many miles away, was enough to serve about 50 people! It was hard to find any room for a piece after aperos, main course, salads, melted Camembert, more cheeses and far too much rosé on a hot afternoon!