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In order to celebrate our five year wedding anniversary we decided to take a car ferry to France. many English people who go to a wine supermarket for the day and they return to Dover for an evening cup of tea. But we decided if we are going to another country lets make a trip of it.

1838

Driving on the other side of the road is hard to get used to at the best of times. Add to that driving your own left hand drive car, a load of roundabouts, not knowing where we are going, a very long day …and we have a recipe for disaster.
Thankfully not many French men are on the roads at 2am in the morning on a Friday. So we although we drove round Calais aimlessly a lot, we never hit anyone.

Friday morning we stopped at a wine super market for a friend from work. He had requested a box of 2005 Pinot Noir. However in a huge warehouse full of wine this still proved elusive. The wine supermarket did provide for very interesting people watching though. There was the elderly couple who turned up in a late 80’s Rover, browsing small selections of port and other spirits they had obviously come for a day trip. Contrasting them was a gentleman of a similar age who arrived prestigiously in a silver Jaguar. He had with one purchase in mind “Two bottles of your finest Dom Perignon [Champagne]” they were placed into expensive black leather boxes and together cost over €300. Susan and I quickly decided we wouldn’t be buying one of those. Finally the other interesting group of people ruining the relative serenity of the store was the Essex family who piled out of a Range Rover. They had come to by a stack load of cheap bubbly for Christmas. The bigger the bottle, less chance it could fit in the fridge and the more likely it was to be purchased. Susan and I must have seemed very unusual as we quietly purchased a few random cheap bottles and refused the New Zealand wines they were selling.

For the afternoon we went on the lookout for a quaint little French village like the ones in the south of France… only to discover there are no little quaint villages in the north of France. It was nice driving around aimlessly and not working for a day. We spent a lot of time pondering what the big piles of potato like things on the side of the road where.

Our final destination was Grasse the home of perfume north of Nice.

There happened to be a rose expo there which was quite interesting and Susan conned me into buying her some perfume for her birthday.

Getting to Provence
We left the C�te d’Azur yesterday for the Lub�ron area of Provence. Our first and most drawn out trip was to Fr�jus, a roman seaside town. It is the main artery to the autoroute A8 (motorway). Not quite as bad as St Tropez but almost as bad. However we got there before midday and checked out the market.

We then drove along the A8 and A7 to get to Grodes in the Lub�ron. Both motorways were quite and surprisingly picturesque but perhaps that’s what over � 20 in tolls buys you.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent driving around small villages. We visited hilltop Grodes and also had to drive through few towns in search of restaurants Peter Mayle might have talked about in his book.

1950

We end up in a particularly flash one just outside our accommodation in Grodes. It was particularly tasty but suffered from small helping big plate syndrome. Of course it had prices to match.

Meandering Thursday
Waking up this morning we were presented with a selection of homemade jams, lavender honey and breads.

After munching our way through breaky we decided to goto a market in Rousillon and find some honey to bring back. Rousillon is also famous the reddish ochre earth valley. You can even buy paint pigments in the red colour.

1960

I though it might be nice to burn of all the cheese and bread we have been eating so we headed to Foutaine de Vavcluse. It’s basically a small town with a nice river. We had lunch in a restaurant next to the river where being adventurous I ordered andouille (sausage made with chitterlings), it didn’t turn out to be so tasty.

We were going to go canoeing down the Sorgue river but just missed the last trip.

Being around 5 pm we decided to visit Abbaye Notre-Dame de S�nque an amazing abbey. Unfortunately the treacherous road there slowed us a little and it was closing when we arrived. It still looked outstanding from the outside although would have been even more idyllic surrounded in lavender fields in July.

Getting the picture we decided to come back to our B&B lounge by the pool and play p�nque. I definitely could get used to this.
1954

Today I was thinking I must get a shot of Piwi during our
holiday. It was then that I realise Piwi the Kiwi isn’t
even with us. Attempts to contact him at home in Bristol
have been futile. It seems he still has hard feelings about
the Rainbow Warrior bombing. Actually that would explain
why there are so few Kiwi’s in Southern France.

Well we aimed to hit St-Tropez but as Lonely Planet put
it “People who do wrong in life are made to drive to St-Tropez
when they die”. We certainly know what they meant and it
wasn’t even August or a public holiday.

Stopping in Ste Maxime visited a boulangerie and picked
up a tarte Tropénne for breakfast. It’s a local spongy
donut cake with custard cream filling and flaked sugar topping
which probably isn’t such a beneficial breakfast snack.

Being eager Kiwi’s who just aren’t used to traffic. We
then decided to detour the city after grinding out 10 km
in almost 2 hours. We headed for the hills to see Ramatuelle
and Gassin. Both were small quiet medieval villages which
made a relaxing break from the traffic outside St-Troup.
In Ramatuelle the passenger side electric window gave up
the ghost when it was all the way down. Praise the Lord
a bit of prayer and it was working again. Very good as I
didn’t plan on sleeping in the car.

1964

We decided we needed to see St- Tropez eventually and come
2.30 pm we figured traffic must have died down a little.
Also we had a brought a lovely baguette but couldn’t find
any open Fromageries for cheese.

St-Troup was extravagant and expensive. The boats in harbour,
parking charges, middle aged women’s tans and tourist tat
all were over the top and over priced. It was nice looking
around the port and watching the old men play pénque amongst
the trees on place des Lices.

We left St-Troup early to trying to beat the traffic (who
were we kidding) and on the way home visited a huge supermarket.
It has here that someone had been keeping all the cheese
almost an isle of it. I also got some escargots (snails)
but I think I need to cook them before I eat them.

The 1st of may is a bank holiday in France. It seems to
be associated with giving people flowers as a over people
were selling small banquets.

1940

We made good use of our 4×4 beasty and dropped some Canadians
in town. After that we drove to the car rental and swapped
our 4×4 for a diesel Volkswagon Polo. I must admit the Nissan
was growing on me but Susan is much happier in VW.

1942

First destination in our new car was Antibes which was really
quaint Mediterranean town semi-enclosed by an old city wall.

We drove through all the mansions in Cap d’Antibes on our
way to Cannes. Perhaps not surprisingly Cannes doesn’t have
much to do but people watch. Fortunately Susan found a tanned
musclely rollerblader and although he was very good she
seemed captivated by him for other reasons.

Before it got to dark we drove along the windy and quite
busy N98 costal road to St Tropez. The road is called the
Corniche de l’Estél or Golden Coast. We got a little lost
but found our hotel in Ste-Maxime reasonably easily.