The midst of winter

Bonne journee,

Hope you are well, and if you are Down Under hope you're enjoying all that sunshine! As I write this it's just after 11am in the morning and about 2 degrees outside. But we are keeping nice and snug, and enjoying the novelty of it all. It finally snowed again yesterday. It was beautiful. We had the fire on all day and I made pizza for the very first time from scratch, ie starting from yeast, flour, and water, and it was a success! Here I am reading to the kids with the snow falling outside.

I am in the process of buying two cubic meters of firewood so we'll be keeping warm that's for sure. Here was the view out the front of the house yesterday.

 

And looking out the back window towards the mountains....

Connor staring out at the snow as it settles on the car....

 

The day before I cooked up my first rabbit stew, very happy with that result too. Below is a photo of Buggs just before he went into the pot......yum!

I went for a another great walk the other day with my neighbor Jean-Pierre and one of the walking club members, Bridgette. It was over near the village of Lioux which is at the bottom of an amazing cliff formation. This photo shows the two of them, and six metres to the right is a about a 100 metre drop to the village below...

 

 

A bit further along there was an overhang in the cliff and you could look through a gap and see one the village roads below, that's 100 metres below!

And after we came off the cliff we walked through this lovely, serene valley with lavender fields running along one side as shown below...

Sophie went to her very first French birthday party. It was her good friend Nepheli's birthday.  Connor got a surprise guest pass so he didn't miss out. Here they both are on the left with their faces painted watching the blowing out of the candles....

Martin and Roxanne offered to look after Sophie and Connor one Saturday night so Jane and I headed out to this cool little music venue, " La Fabuleuz" where we saw the "Ioanes Trio", a folk/jazz/rock band from Forcalquier, a nearby town. It was a very French experience, and it was really nice to you go on a date with my beautiful wife :).

And here we are with Martin and Roxanne and Beth, our dear friend who came to stay with us recently. We saw so much of Beth when we were up in The Lot so it was great to catch up. We had duck that night. Beth brought down two duck breasts marinated in cepes, all the way from The Lot, she knew it was our favourite, thanks Beth!

Beth had not been to the Luberon Valley before so I was more than happy to show her around. We visited Rousillon, one of the most picturesque villages you will ever see. It sits on a spectacular ochre hill and the whole village is painted in ochre red.

Here is one of the many beautiful path ways in Rousillon....

Here is Rousillon's mairie or town hall....

And a mural painted on a door way....

I took Beth to the hill top town of Lacoste where this photo was taken. In the distance you can see Bonnieux, another gorgeous hill top town...

In Bonnieux we came across a fountain and a plaque next to it that showed a very old photo of the spot. The grand house on the immediate right was the old village post office...

And here was a photo taken that day from roughly the same spot, hasn't really changed much right...

Here is a photo of the Pont Julien, an impressive Roman bridge built in 3BC. It was part of the Via Domitia, an important ancient road that linked Italy to it's Roman colonies in France and Spain. It was used by cars right up until 2005, that's two thousand years of continual use!

Here is Beth and the kids pulling Shirley Temple faces for the camera. This was taken only last week and shows how beautiful some days are, even in the midst of winter. We miss you already Beth.

We visited Lourmarin, a gorgeous little town about a half an hour from here. It's where Peter Mayle of "A Year in Provence" fame lives. Below is a photo of Soph playing around one of the town's fountains. Interestingly there is a protestant church in Louramin, the first one I have seen in France. It's all catholic churches. The town has a tragic history. In 1545, the whole town was burned and the population massacred by Catholic troops because most of the town folk were Waldensian Protestants. The French Religious Wars went on for a large part of the 16th century.

 

Here is a photo of Connor running towards me with the Renaissance Chateau of Loumarin in the background.  

Well, no snow so far today, but it's still about 2 degrees outside and tomorrow the forecast is that it will reach -1 degrees in the morning, crikey! Time to stoke up the fire.

Bonne sante et a bientot,

Jane, Soph, Connor, and moi

 

 

22,000kms on the clock, ......Pont du Gard, Nimes

Bonjour all

I just checked the mileage on our car yesterday. We've done just over 22,000 kilometres since starting this big adventure back in April 2013, reaching as far north as Dublin, as far west as Bordeaux, as far south as Marseille, and as far east as the champagne capital of Epernay near the Belgium border. We've simply had the time of our lives and feel so, so lucky.

We have been able to live as French people by staying in the one spot for a number of months, six months in the The Lot in the mid south west and then from the beginning of November 2013 in Provence in the far south east. Learning the language has been challenging but very enjoyable. Best of all we have spent so much time together as a family. To lend a quote from our friend Lydia Dean, our time in France has enabled us to "to slow down and enjoy life's simple gifts that surround us - time, food, friendships and natural beauty."

2014 started well, with a New Year's Eve do at Martin and Roxanne's place. They had invited a few of their friends, a mixture of French and Italian folk. Martin had cleared out the second floor of their big old mansion so we had plenty of space for us and the kids to party on. Here is a picture taken at dinner with Jane there just left of centre.

Here is Soph, in her fairy outfit, in a conga line! I'm there at the back of the line. Not the best clarity due to the strobe lighting, but just had to include it. French people certainly know how to enjoy themselves, old school style.

Just near our village here are some old ochre mines. Ochre has been used by humans for painting for thousands of years. This particular spot is now a major tourist attraction due to the bright colours and the interesting rock formations. Seeing the sun setting across these ochre hills from our house is a beautiful site. Here is Jane and Soph enjoying the scenery.

Below is a picture of the folk in the French walkers club I've joined. They're lovely people, made up of retirees, which kind of makes me feel like I'm retired - but I haven't, that's for sure. It has given me a taste of what retirement would be like, and it's not bad at all. The club has been a lot of fun and enabled me to see so many interesting historical sights and places of natural beauty that are off the tourist trail.

Here we are near the top of the Grand Luberon mountain, not far from here. You can just see the French Alps on the horizon, somewhere we hope to visit for a play in the snow sometime soon.

Here is a picture of a nearby old "borie" where shepherds would take shelter during bad weather. Up in these mountains, on the walks, I've seen so many ruins of houses, chateaus, and villages built during the middle ages. These areas were a lot more inhabited back then but due to war and plagues many villages were abandoned.

 

 

Last week we visited the Pont du Gard. Wow, it was breathtaking. It was one of those milestones on this trip, something I had looked forward to seeing so much, and it was better than expected. Below is a picture of the Pont du Gard with Sophie in the foreground.

 

To give you a sense of how grand it is, below is a photo of one of the middle bottom arches with Sophie just on the other side, yes she's that small pink figure you can see. The UNESCO World Heritage listed Pont du Gard was part of an aqueduct that transported water from a spring at Uzes to Nimes, a distance of about 50km! It was built around 20AD under the direction of Augustus' (the first Emporer of the Roman Empire) son-in-law, a guy called Marcus Agrippa. It's mind boggling how these guys were able to keep the gradient at just the right level over 50km, winding through hills and valleys, 2,000 years ago!

After I took this photo I thought, Connor really does need a haircut.....

 

So the next day I took him into Apt to a barber shop and a nice guy who couldn't speak a word of English cut his hair. Connor was not up for it, it was like I was trying to hold down a wounded wild animal, bribery was called for, namely a lollypop. It wasn't easy that's for sure. The end result was a descent, short haircut, a lollypop and a strawberry lemonade drink for Connor and a coffee for me as we both unwound in a nearby café.

 

 

Here we are playing boules with rocks out in the wilderness on the plateau above the Luberon valley, with Mt Ventoux in the background, magic, peaceful spot.

I recently climbed the mountain just behind the village with my neighbor Jean-Pierre. We walked for about three hours with me trying to talk French to him and him trying talk English to me. It kind of works and that way we're both learning.

Here is a photo you may recognize as it is so often shown in most material promoting Provence. It's the Sénanque Cistercian Abbey built around 850 years ago. It quietly sits at the bottom of a valley, surrounded by lavender fields, and to this day there are still Cistercian monks running the place.

Here is Soph and Connor with three girls, all sisters, over for a play date. Here they were making cookies. Two of the girls, Noahlly and Abby, go to school with Soph.

Yesterday we visited Nimes, a great town with a large  amount of interesting Roman history, not least the Arena, pictured below, built in about 70AD. This was were the gladiators used to fight each other and wild animals including lions, bears, and bulls. And today in a slightly similar way it's used twice a year for bullfights, and other public events. As an aside, Nimes is also where the word denim came from, "de Nimes".

I'm a fan of Hemingway, I have been for a long time. I recently read a biography on him, which included a photo, taken in 1949, of Ernest and his partner Mary descending some stairs in the Arena. I just had to walk in Ernest's footsteps, so after some searching and a couple of false starts we found the exact spot......

So here I am.....   :)

And here we are at the Brasserie de la Grande Bourse where Ernst used to drink, right across form the Arena. Salvador Dalí used to have the odd thirst quencher there as well.

Here we are looking up at the grand columns of the Maison Carree, one of the best preserved temples anywhere in the previous Roman Empire. It was built in 5 AD to honour Emporer Augustus' two adopted sons.

The Jardins de la Fontaine is a beautiful area of Nimes, here we are on the canal on the way up to these gardens.

And at the gardens is the Roman Temple de Diane, where Connor had a good look around...

Jane took this nice photo of a ferris wheel in front of the Arena as we headed off after dinner. It was another memorable day out.

 

 Nous vous et votre famille souhaitons tout le meilleur pour 2014

(We wish you and your family the very best for 2014)

Jane, Soph, Connor, et moi

Au revoir

 

 

France's largest spring and a special Christmas

Bonjour!

Hope you had a nice Christmas and all the best for 2014, nice round number hey.

Earlier this week we visited the largest spring in France, and the fifth largest in the world I might add. What an amazing spot. It's at a place called Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. "Vallis Clausa" (the "enclosed valley") is where the name Vaucluse originally came from. This first photo shows the valley as the sun was setting, with the ruins of a castle in the foreground.

 

At the bottom of those cliffs you can see in the photo above is the source of the spring, as shown in the photo below. In 1946, the famous Jacques Cousteau almost killed himself as he tried to dive to the bottom of the spring. At a depth of about 100m a compressor used to fill his tank starting taking in its own exhaust fumes and produced carbon monoxide, he almost didn't make it back to the surface.

This calm, very blue body of water, only metres away, turns into rapids, as shown below. It is the source of a whole river, the River Sorgue.

And about a kilometer further down you can see the full force of this river as it flows over a weir....

At this point there is an interesting 15th century paper mill which is still making paper! You can see the water powered wheels which drive the pulping hammers.

We tried our luck at growing some winter crops. Well, in a way. This is another French tradition, where you plant some seeds on the 4th of December, let them grow, and then on Christmas day you place them on the dining table for good luck. We had a lot of fun in seeing whose seedlings had grown the most each day, we're a competitive bunch.

Just before Christmas we went to Saint Saturnin-les-Apt for their Christmas celebration night. The photo below, that Jane took, shows us walking through the back of the village along some medieval paths, Connor on my shoulders and Soph behind, the atmosphere was magical.

And then, not knowing what to expect, almost the whole village had turned out to see a procession of horses and carts and a couple of miniature trains take the kids for a ride up to the top of the village with all the mums and dads following behind. Here are our two on one of the trains, very excited.

In the church at Saint Saturnin was an impressive chreche. The French love their chreches. Interestingly chreches grew very much in popularity, in an underground way, during the Revolution as all churches were closed, the church was seen as a symbol of the old aristocracy. People would build there own chreches secretly in their homes as way of having their own little place of homage.

 

At the end of this special night in Saint Saturnin they had a fire works display which was pretty spectacular especially considering the back drop was some 13th century castle walls.

This is a classic. Jane took this photo whilst we where at the supermarket shopping for Christmas day. It's a packet of frozen duck foie gras marcarons, remembering foie gras is liver fat, I need not say any more.

 

Speaking of Christmas we had a very special one, just the four of us, and one turkey. Here we are opening presents first thing in the morning. 

 

We had originally planned to have the turkey roast for lunch, but after some skyping with the folks back home, champagne to toast the day, a large bottle of French Three Monts Beer, a few glasses of red, and watching most of the Michael Bubble Christmas Show it ended up being an early evening feast, well worth the wait I have to say. Jane did a wonderful job with the turkey, traditional stuffing and all. We had our own little party basically. Here we are, making another toast....

 

We then decided to go for an evening stroll, before too much alcohol was drunk. Jane took some lovely photos of the Christmas lights in the village. The photo below was of the little pottery shop. A Christmas day we will always treasure.

Au revoir pour le moment et heureuse nouvelle année!

 

(Good bye for now and happy new year!)

 

Jane, Sophie, Connor, et moi