WHAT DO YOU DO when you’ve taken delivery of a good friend as a guest in what most people would identify as Provence (Sablet) and where the sun shines more than 200 days a year (so the boast goes) …… and it doesn’t do that. Instead it sets out to thwart one’s anticipated plans by being unseasonably wet, if mild, following on a week where it was windy and cold (and described in another post preceding this one). Well this is what we do, given our visitor is an infrequent one, is not so nimble as she once was but is well prepared with a classy waterproof, zebra walking stick and positive outlook. We dedicate a goodly portion of petroleum distillate, and take ourselves off out into it.
Don’t get the idea that we can and will do this to all comers: we are not a holiday package corporation. We do it this time though as much as anything for ourselves. We need to get out. After the windy cold week that is.
The portents from France meteo are dire so Mme Melling determines we'd had best get the local jolly done, to fulfil the centre d’art at Crestet undertaking, and you can brush up on that in the post entitled centre d’art, if you’ve overlooked it as yet. I’m confident that this potter meets with our guest’s appetite for sights of special interest, plus you’ll be thus readied for the further twaddle to come hereafter.
We’ve already alighted on the tried and practised plan to take a turn up to Nyons and beyond but are dismayed by the grey skies and threat of ongoing precipitation. But off we go, notwithstanding. We reach Nyons but find it full to capacity, and lacking anywhere to anchor the motor within a day’s trudge to get to a café or similar… so continue on the road to Gap before deviating towards Ste Jalle, as we oft have done heretofore, to inspect the underwhelming lavender fields (almost dormant at this season, see above), then enticed away from our intention to go right over the Col d’Ey to Buis-les-Baronnies, instead popping over the Col de Soubeyran and down to Rémuzat for refreshment – at last – and thus through the gorges leading back to Nyons, and home via Vaison. We could have added further deviations I guess but don’t this time: our guest isn’t strictly a fan of vultures……
You know, I really like that circuit? And here’s the thing, don’t broadcast this now, but I like it in grey overcast conditions also! Shock horror! I do today at least, although apart from a few drops we are largely spared the 80% chance of rain forecast by meteo. I am assured that sister W enjoyed it also. True, it is quite a bit of une hike: good in any weather I’d maintain, although we’ve not tried snow, and these days of course one must have the correct tyres and/or chains after November 1st on pain of prosecution if caught out. This round is not on in holiday season either, leastways not the main road from Gap through Nyons section. We like our roads unfrequented or as near as damn it, and that's a fact.
Next day. Malaucène market has to be visited so we do that. We have to eat. So far we've not scored a lunch for our visitor except snacks at 1rueFB. Not raining as yet but coming. When, during our customary coffee stop, post shop, we discover sister W may not have been trundled over the Suzette col (she is hazy about this, she might have, she might not have), we decide to return to HQ that way, over the hills to Beaumes, and en route go right up the hill (above the usual road and Suzette Central) to La Bori. We don't pass through Suzette at all in fact but look down upon its almost perfect layout of roof tops and central cross-road from the slopes of St Amand. Suzette has featured in the blog before… if you cared to look.
La Bori then. Mme Melling waxes as lyrical about this house-and-garden as I do. We love it to pieces. So do the owners. We’ve spent time musing on how we could persuade them to give us the place. It is so inconvenient after all. Level walk to the shops? Forget it. Facilities? None beyond running water and elec. But this lovely modest stone house has wondrous views, for sure, but more remarkably it has a singular garden, who knows how extensive and refined — but a road edging terrace as well, where all the very diverse plants have been gifted piped irrigation and discreet labelling.
And at this time of the year? Oh my. Blossom amidst the natural occuring cistuses and brooms. We are tacitly invited to look in detail or gawp at the whole. Whoever you are, La Bori owners, thank you for sharing your singular contribution to the already superb landscape, with all those who trek up to La Bori or pass by to the wine domaines even higher up the hill. Respect! I personally hope it remains largely undiscovered: we’ve never had to share our visits with anybody else except once with one of the tenders of the terrace, quietly weeding his wonderful road side plot, trimming a bit here, earthing up a tad there. Was it him what done it?
As it is, the slopes hereabouts are one of the few places that Mme Melling has declared: if we had the chance/money/energy and yet needed to make considerable sacrifice, she’d do it, all just to live up there and soak up the views the birds and cypresses, not to mention the shadow of Ventoux, off to the left.
Ah me. Dream on. No shops though. The post van calls…
On the thursday (may second) it is raining: I mean persistently and soakingly: it is Dreich. Hence the masthead (which is a wall where we are off to -in Grignan- amalgamated with a non-potable water icon from Richerenches, superimposed upon it… in case you were wondering).
We make a valiant attempt to provide at least one small cultural offering to Wenders, but it comes to nought. She’s been to Grignan before and despite reassurances from the Tourist Office that the doors are not locked, the cemetery chapel light-show we’ve trekked over to see is denied us. I can see the bloody door is locked fgs. We refresh in a coffee and ice cream parlour converted from a resto we once ate twice at when looking for a shack in the area to invest in, then return to Sabbers via Richerenches, just catching the Templars’ Hall (now a gallery) open to view a rather awful show of flower paintings, so bad that one or two of them looked good. We hurried through. Vanson’s carved basques are gone of course. I liked them (tut tut). All in the rain (not outdoors thankfully, the flower show).
And do you know I liked all this trip out too? The rain keeps the masses at bay! I think Wenders quite likes the jolly as well. She is a stoic you see. Has coat (waterproof, rather classy, actually) –will travel.
Finally on the last day of W's visit, sunny for a change, we are treated (by our guest) to a lunch under the white mulberries (not yet in leaf much) at Roaix, then take our generous guest on the wild road to Rasteau, so show off a bit more by way of views, traverse a bit of the Plan de Dieu, contemplate the great expanses of the Baronnies as seen from Rabais Sud, etc. (– but not in this order, I have just inserted the names of the places in the random recall they came back to me). Poppies. Irises. And all the rest. Nightingales even, one or two. We also take Wenders to see a just-released Danish-Mexican feminist ‘western’ at the Florian Cinema in Vaison, in a late attempt to provide a bit of culture. It does not receive the hoped for A grade from sister W, just an indifferent C or maybe C+. Rotten Tomatoes give it 88% fgs… and it's the first cinema visit your author has made since before the pandemic. I enjoyed it, so there. It wasn’t a western really Mme Melling maintains. Want to know the name of the film? I can’t remember already.
Oh… The Dead Don’t Hurt I’m told. Have I seen that then?
The weather clears as our guest departs for Paris. It has been wall-to-wall soleil almost ever since [hem-hem: at time of writing –ed]. Typical. But as I have said before in a previous post, years back: Some Like It Wet: I can count myself amongst those, at least for some of the time I’m on earth… We did our best, even though the plan to check out Arles was still-born. Another time maybe. After all, Arles in the rain and cold has been tried – it was a bit grim.
We didn’t get a good grade then either I seem to recall, from our guest of the moment, back then.
