IF YOU'VE JUST STUMBLED on this post, you’ll probably wonder where it’s at, what’s it for, and wasn’t I going to answer some e mails and get that cobweb down?
In the thirteen years that we have been tax payers here in La Belle France (and counting) together with numerous years before that of course, we have witnessed the spread and development of much municipal gentrification, far and wide: it has been going on for decades. All good of course, some certainly, desperately needed, much of it welcome. But, the style of it has become rather anonymous. Franco-Universal. Standardised.
Communes, towns and departments do try to weave in distinctive features where they can but the tendency is nevertheless towards neat and tidy rather than characterful, charm, distinctiveness. Can you blame them? Funds are limited, my dears. But even so, there are places and things where free reign still can come to the fore. For example, we have noted stylistic distinctiveness often lovingly applied to that great french obsession, the roundabout. They are a study in themselves. A pity that it isn't a prerequisite when yet another one is born.
Un Sens de Lieu (this post) is just a few locations around here where Mme Melling and self have passed by, returned to, noted and even possibly, slightly sentimentalised, and which generally fall well outside the rationalisation described above. This time, in Spring 2025. Could be a road, a tree, a plain, a hill, a garden, a view, even just a bench. Some are. You'll have similar places and things that do it for you too, this 'Sens de Lieu'.
So, as we contemplate the possible approaching conclusion of seasonal returns to Vaucluse we have perhaps become a little more conscious of opportunities to reacquaint with these spots being more limited, finishing even – hence several particular returns to places with, for us, that Sens de Lieu.
Lots to go at then. Because these places score for us. In fact, many of the posts that have gone before this one are indeed about this business of Un Sens de Lieu.
Not to say that I for one, am not intrigued by the diversity and imagination of the authorities to express their very own Sens de Lieu in the general improvements municipale that the dear tax payers of France shell out for in so many of the diverse environments across the Republic.
Up here we have watched, over the years, a former farm being totally restored and reshaped; it is getting there…rather grand… We favour the simpler off-the-road homestead further up, further out. It has been more modestly improved and clearly has the most wonderful long views. Mme Melling has confessed: she'd live up here if she could, just there, notwithstanding the trip to town it would entail, for the bread, and victuals generally. A lovely walk mind, but severely uphill for the return.
And if nothing domestic could be secured above Suzette, of course… one can fantasise.
St Hilaire, as I say, looks down over all…reconstructed romanesque chapel and landscaped overall with restored terraces and trees… celebrated anew for its exceptional sense of place.
Having gone to replenish our stocks of milk, and having taken refreshment thereafter in a rain-washed Tulette, we rerouted to 1rueFB, via the Plan de Dieu memorial, not visited I think for two or more years: to respect those commemorated there as before, but also to experience the impressive flatness, openness and distance of this landscape which, after all, supplies the fruit that goes to make arguably our favourite Côtes-de-Rhône rouge. Those are the distant Baronnies in the inset. They aren't flat. Follow that ridge to the right and you'd come to St Hilaire. The two amalgamated horizons below are 180° opposed views, from one spot.
So here is a sampling of places and things with which we call upon this spring and which confirm the pleasure of the place we have sensed as being rather special to us – me and Mary. There are others, many others, but here is at least a spring 2025 taster. To bide us over……
