It snowed!

Bonjour!

Well, what a morning, I just had to do a blog, it snowed! As you can see in the blog of a couple of weeks ago when we arrived here it was shorts and t-shirt weather. We saw the forecast yesterday for heavy snow, but I was thinking and saying "surely not in the village, maybe in the mountains behind us", where we saw a sprinkling of snow two days ago.

I was like a little kid, up at 4am, had a peak out the window, nothing, 5am, saw a little of what looked like snow, and then at about 6:30am, a winter wonderland! I got Jane up, and then the kids, there was a lot of "wow"s going on. To put the scene into some perspective, I was brought up in sunny Brisbane, Australia and the kids had once seen snow about 100 kms away on some Pyrenees mountaintops a few months ago. I don't know if I have never seen snow quite like this, we were all very excited. Here's some snaps from this morning.....

This was taken first thing in the morning from the back yard, complete with snow flakes falling in the foreground...

This is just after Soph and Connor stepped out onto the snow, for the first time ever...

And of course we had to have a snow fight, here's one in action..

Here is Soph just after she threw a snow ball at me, you can see it in mid-flight heading straight for me!

And another obligatory thing to do when it snows is...... build a snow man of course, here is our attempt, small, but he/she has character I think...

And so I headed out for my usual walk, but this time, the sights, magnificent! I met an English guy who lives in the village, he said there is about four other expats in the village (that's out of about 500 locals). He also said that he has lived here for nearly two years and he has only seen snow like this here once before. We are so lucky to have seen it, and so early in the season...

This is a cute house which sits up against the castle here in the village...

The main street leading into the heart of the village........

Here is a photo from up the mountain a bit on the usual track I take. You can see the castle in the middle of the shot...

Here's another view of the village from a different side, the castle there in the middle again...

 

When I arrived back home I had to take another photo of the house with a bit more light, a memorable morning! I guess we won't be using those sun lounges for a while :). 

Au revoir et bonne chance de nous dans le sud de la France 

Jane, Soph, Connor, et moi

Picnics in Peter Mayle country

Bonjour

The other day we visited Menerbes, about 40 minutes drive from here. It's the town where Peter Mayle wrote his famous book " A Year in Provence". It was absolutely beautiful, your classic rustic, chic, French village. We had a lovely walk around its streets. Here is Jane and Soph, looking out over the Luberon valley from its ancient Place de l'Horloge square.

 

Here they are again enjoying Mernebes....

 

 

And here I am on the other side of the village with the Luberon mountains in the background. Connor is looking a bit serious, not sure why. That back pack has been so handy, especially considering our pram is due for some tyre repairs. Connor gets a much better view from up there too.

 

Here is a cute photo of the two kids standing in front of the door of the 14th century Eglise (church) Saint -Luc which is at one end of Mernebes..

Connor loves a picnic, as you can see in the photo below, when ever we get the esky out, he's a happy man. Even though it's getting colder it's still nice to have the odd picnic in the great outdoors, especially in this beautiful part of the world.

 

 

This was our first "picnic" in Provence, just after we drove through the gorgeous villages of Bonnieux and La Coste. This was the area where a lot of the movie, "A Good Year" directed by Ridley Scott and based on another Peter Mayle book was filmed. It was a cold day, and the day we experienced our first Mistral, which is the infamous strong, cold winds from the northwest that this region of France experiences. The upside is it's usually followed by fresh sunny days. The question is how long the Mistral lasts.

 

This was another picnic we had, just outside of a place called Oppede-le-Vieux. We just parked on the side of the road and picked a spot amongst an olive grove. In the photo up on the hill are the ruins of the 13th century Oppede castle, what a spot, so peaceful and the backdrop wasn't bad either. 

 

One fine day we visited the village of St-Saturnin-les-Apt, only about 20 minutes away, fantastic view...

Sophie, while she has her off days, as we all do, loves school. Looks like she is well liked too. I took the photo below after I dropped her off one day. She and her new friend, Noahlly, came up to the fence to say goodbye. Noahlly invited Sophie around to her home last Saturday for a play.

Have been enjoying my morning walks here. Very different to back in the The Lot, both are spectacular in their own way. Some mornings I head out before the sun rises. The photo below captures that moment just before the sun moves above the horizon, magic time of the day. That's a plane's jet stream across the sky you can see.

 

And about a minute later...... the sun has made its grand entrance...

 

And then looking back across the valley....

 

That same morning, as I was walking back down hill, I cam across this snake, right in the middle of the track. He wasn't going anywhere so I went cross country in order to get around him. I have seen more snakes in France than I have in many years in Australia.  

 

As I walked into our village that morning I took a photo (below) of the 17th century castle which is now the town hall, or the marie as they call it here. The teacher at Sophie's school told us about a "new residents" meeting at the marie so we went along. We thought it was going to be purely a sit down event to hear heaps of info (in French of course so we would understand bugger all as they speak so quickly) on the village. But no it was a meet and greet with the mayor and councilors there along with some wine and snacks, a fun night.  

 

 

At that new residents meeting a nice young French couple invited us around to their place for dinner the following night. Martin and Roxanne have two little girls with one of them in Sophie's class. They are renovating this huge old 18th century mansion a few kms out of town, selling their little flat in Paris to come down here to do so. They're architects, what an exciting project!  

 

 

Sophie and Connor had a ball playing with their daughter, Sophie dressing up in a ballerina dress..

 

 

This is the old village of Maubec which sits at the foot of the Petit Luberon mountains ....grape vines in the foreground showing their Autumn colours.... 

 

I would love to be able to paint some of these scenes. I came across this great, colourful painting titled "Maubec Vineyards" by a talented artist called Karen Walker. You can see that same church on the left hand side of the photo above.

 

 

Thought I would finish off with this photo of the two wee ones. They're at such a gorgeous age! Really enjoy spending so much time with them. 

 

 

Bonne journee or bonne soiree, what ever is appropriate :).

 

A bientot et meilleurs vœux

Jane, Sophie, Connor, et moi

 

Our new home in Provence

Bonjour,

We've arrived! With all the hype around Provence, I thought there was a chance of some disappointment, but no, this place is beautiful.

We have been lucky to find a great house for our stay, as shown below. We have a lease here until the 31st of March, so five months to soak up Provence. We're in the Luberon area near the town of Apt. You can just see in the photo below some of the mountains behind us.

Below is a photo of us having our first breakfast at the house. A couple of things to note, 1) in the foreground on the left you can see some olives, there are about ten olive trees in the yard, and they're everywhere around the house, it definitely feels like we are close to the Mediterranean  2) the fresh loaf of bread which I bought that morning from the local boulangerie (bakery), which is about fifty metres from the house, very handy, but it does create some risk around maintaining the waistline, and 3) the jar of Vegemite on the table, this is an essential wherever we live. 

 

To give you some perspective, here is a photo looking down at our village from half way up the mountain behind us.

Here is the view out our bedroom window. I think it shows some of that "light" that people talk about so much about when referring to Provence. That "light" that famous artists like Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne, and Vincent van Gogh loved so much.

In the afternoon on our first day here we headed up into the mountains to visit Caseneuve, a small hill top village.  A lovely, peaceful place with a fantastic view of the Luberon.

 

Here is Jane and Soph, just hanging out in Caseneuve, watching the world go by. Those are the Luberon mountains you can see in the distance.

On the way down here we stayed overnight in a town called Saint-Affrique so we could visit the village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, the home of the king of cheeses, Roquefort. We visited one of the seven producers there, La Societe, it's by far the largest. La Societe producers 70% of the world's supply of this soft, sheeps milk, mouldy blue-green veined, absolutely delicious cheese. Of the 70% that La Societe producers, only 30% is exported, that clearly shows how much the French love their cheese.  

 

Here is Jane and the kids as we waited for the tour of the caves to begin. These natural caves is where the Roquefort cheese is impregnated with spores of microscopic mushrooms, Penicillium roqueforti, which results in the blue-green veins, and left to mature.

We were not allowed to take photos of the actual caves, but I sneaked this one in of Soph on the way, heading through one of the entrance tunnels.

To give you an idea of what the maturing caves look like, I took this photo of an old Roquefort advertising campaign poster. In the photo you can see Maurice Astruc,  a Master Refiner of Roquefort, and what he is saying here is " To make Roquefort nature takes its time. Me too." Maurice looks vaguely familiar to me, not sure why, maybe I've seen the add somewhere else .......

Just before Saint- Affrique, we came across the Millau Viaduct, the tallest bridge in the world. It's stunning. It's a huge modern looking  cable bridge over the valley of the River Tarn and was designed by the British architect Norman Foster. Jane took this photo on approach.

Here is Connor in the back of Black Betty, supervising the packing up after staying in Saint-Affrique. We couldn't believe we were able to fit all our belongings into the car. Packing the car was like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube. 

On the Wednesday of our last week at La Vallee, Sabina and Mark, the owners of La Vallee, and there two children, Gwen and Keynan, came around for dinner. They brought around some chestnut soup which was lovely and they roasted some chestnuts over an open fire, now they were delicious, so sweet! Sabina took this photo of us four, a happy moment.

I took this photo at the end of the night, it was a lovely way to say goodbye before we left. They were so nice to us,  we feel so appreciative. Thanks for your friendship guys and allowing us to stay in your beautiful house in this special part of the world.

At La Valllee, we saw the seasons change and the effect on the scenery around us was stunning to see. You can see these changes in the following three pictures, looking particularly at the main tree on the edge of that patio area and the hedge on the wall just below it.

When we arrived on the 8th of April this year this was the view out our front door, it seemed like the cold was going to last forever.....

 

 

This was taken one afternoon on about the 10th of July, it was hard to imagine how high the temperatures would reach, eg over 40C in the midst of summer...

 

And below was taken just before we left on the 1st of November, with Autumn well and truly in swing. All up we were there for about six months, we'll treasure the memories.

Jane took this beautiful shot of sunset as we arrived in the Luberon, about five minutes drive before we reached our new home.

Sophie started her first day of school in our new village. The school is all of about fifty metres from our house. We can hear the kids when they're in the playground and we can actually see some of the playground from here, talk about handy. I popped down and waved to Sophie over the fence at morning recess.

Here she is walking down the driveway on the way to school for her first day...

And here she is in front of her new school. At the moment she does the morning session from 9 to 12, comes home for lunch and then heads back for the afternoon session from 1.30 to 4.30. When we picked her up for lunch today she said " I love my new school", what a great start!

We're excited about the coming months in our new home and exploring Provence. Bye for now.

A bientot et bonne sante  

Jane, Soph, Connor et moi