Get this picture in your head…

You’re sitting in Holland with a couple of days off over a long weekend, and an (overdue) appointment in the south of France.

What would YOU do?

It’s 1300km’s… One way! Would you catch a plane? Wait for the summer holidays?

Or… Throw some clothes into the back of your car on a thursday afternoon (after ‘work’)… And head south…? Could we do it in four days??!

Also Switzerland was beckoning from the Alps……

Naturally we didn’t bother checking – and found out the night before – that it was the busiest weekend in Europe (France on holiday, Switzerland and Germany as well…). They call it “zwarte zaterdag” (dutch for ‘black saturday’) because of the chaos on the roads and the traffic jams blocking all of Europe south of Paris.

Everyone was going to the coast – one way or another!

Thursday night? We spent in one of those motels on the highway – that everyone spends the first night in. No frills, but a bed for some weary travellers.

This was on the outskirts of Nancy but naturally we didn’t get to see much of the town. Half a day’s work as well as half-a-day’s driving (500km’s) kind of makes you long for that pillow …

The next day, after a quick French breakfast (we didn’t find the eggs, only croissant, cheese and orange juice…), we found it prudent to get on the road as soon as possible. We had another 800km’s to go…

Along with the rest of Europe it seemed… It was VERY busy on the road…

Queues for petrol and restroom. Queing at the toll booths. Queing… in the middle of nowhere because of roadworks or an accident… More queing at the tollbooth.. and so it went on…

At last we were ´doing´ the infamous Route-du-Soleil…

Eventually, though, we did get a little tired of the highway. It looked strangely familiar… A bit like South Africa in the region of Johannesburg with rolling hills and a reasonably level wide highway. We had done a fair bit of ‘roads’… (see three-weeks-aroundthe-coast-in-S.A.)

At Grenoble we left the highway and decided on a ‘shortcut’.

At least – that’s what it looked like on the map.

It was slow going through them hills… But what hills they were!

Beautiful scenery. Winding roads that zigzagged up the mountain and did the same back down the other side. The pace was pedestrian. A line of cars stuck behind some guy with a huge boat on a trailer. But we didn’t mind. Any faster and you would miss the view. It’s amazing how a small road running parallel to the highway can look, and feel, so different!

We were now getting into the ‘French Rhythm’.

A little bit anyway. There’s no rush, it seems, and most locals just sort of lope along at a comfortable speed enjoying the great weather with windows down and sunroofs open.

Getting past the town of Gap we had another 200km’s or so to go (if I remember correctly) and our schedule was slipping slightly (by about two hours!). As we kept getting further south – still on the backroads – the scenery got more and more pretty. The roads became narrower, almost country tracks winding through the trees. Less cars on the road and thicker forest and the road kept twisting and turning.

At one junction we had to take a right turn followed immediately by a left thirty metres later. I think two roadbuilders left from opposite towns heading toward each other and somehow missed the connection by a couple of yards. They couldn’t see where they were going! And with the trees all over the place it explained the winding roads. Which prompted a theory: if you can tunnel under the ‘English-Channel and meet up exactly in the middle….

Anyway. At around six thirty pm we found the tiny town of Cotignac. I say ‘found’ because we somehow managed to get there by the ‘back’ route. Set into the hillside there is not much to the town except a treelined central townsquare flanked by restuarants. To our dutch-accustomed eyes incredibly quaint and oozing history. We parked the car and headed for the bar called ‘Modern’ (now there’s humour…). Ordering a beer, we sat down to wait for our host to fetch us in their little red citroën. (The house apparently being impossible to find. How very french indeed.)

Seven minutes later we had to cancel the beer and rocket off in pursuit of our host (I now understand why these french love their little cars!). Back up the hill and down a narrow single road…  Through the trees.. Along some stone walls… Aalong an impossibly narrow track…

And then there it was….

A two hundred year old farmhouse….

I know that the comparison cannot be made (it’s a French-Italian thing) but imagine the perfect Tuscany house (at least to my mind) and you’re getting there…

Beautiful! Shutters… Walls a metre thick… Vines growing almost into the house… Worn-out stone steps… And a ‘pool’ – jutting up to the house at window-level to the upper-section (that had been the watering hole for the animals)… It seemed like we had stepped into a movie set!

And then – after 22 years – Vix reunited with her aunty Penny and uncle Wolf; and I met them for the first time.

Naturally not knowing what to expect I was taken aback… by their warm openness and relaxed welcome…

We sat at a table under a small shadenet ‘roof’ between the lavender and overhanging trees. In the distance you could see the valley stretching out in the distance, the town below dipping steeply down the edge of the hill beyond the trees out of view. The excitement was palpable as we all told our stories from the past years…

The wine flowed freely (red wine from the local vineyard – very nice) and we dined a light dinner in typically french style – paté, fromage, jambon, bread, ‘confit of rose petals’?, and of course the dijon mustard. Great to sit under the stars and enjoy the moment…

But then - and you’ll never be expecting this – at around midnight, Wolf – in a freak accident – managed to get a gash on his head. It started bleeding quite a bit and we thought it best to summon an ambulance for an expert opinion. All the while Wolf was insisting it was just a scratch. This may have been. But the amount of red on his shirt was saying different!

Ten minutes later four (four!) paramedics had appeared! Having navigated their truck down the track and found the house straight away. I thought the Germans were efficient…

Having passed on the responsibility to the professionals, we decided to head for our guestroom…

With the blue flashing lights reflecting off the old walls we fell into a deep sleep with the doors, windows and shutters wide open (as you do… in France).

The following morning…  And Wolf was still missing!

The ambulance had carted him off to the local hospital (half an hour away) where he had received something like ten stitches to his scalp (head wounds can bleed, believe me…). Also, they had kept him for the night and were doing tests all day…

The doctor would then come in and sign-him-off at around eleven am. Terribly over-cautious but at the same time quite reassuring…

Naturally Vix and I decided to wait for Wolf by lying at the pool and nursing our terrific hangovers (long day, light supper and french red having conspired to level the old dutchies – welcome to France!)

I must say though, that we got more of a tan that one day (it was over 30 degrees); compared to four months in Holland! (every time the weather was good enough to justify firing up the cobwebbed barbecue). And it was a cloudless sky…

A lot dryer than I had expected, albeit an hour inland from the Cote d’Azur. Lovely and quiet and terribly relaxing.

Penny arrived back from the hosptial in the mid-afternoon; sans Wolf. The doctor hadn’t been yet!

So we would just have to wait some more… Luckily the weather was agreeable…

Suddenly an old van arrived out-of-the-blue!

The local  plumber had decided to mend the dishwasher that (we suspected) he had failed to mend the first time around. He just pitched-up with no warning; as if it were the most natural thing in the world. This time no swearing (as we’d been informed of an earlier visit from the “efficient” frenchman). Apparently you have no way of knowing when; and are lucky if; they arrive at all…

A short siesta later and a taxi came up to the house. It was now after six pm!

Wolf got out, bandaged head and all. It turned out that the doctor hadn’t bothered to do his ’rounds’ at all that day! (there goes that kernel of “efficiency” out of the window replaced by the more recognisable french “cest la vie” (or whatever it is that they say in this instance))

And Wolf was expected to stay another night at the hospital! The nurses may be nice, and all, but this was now too much! A day already wasted…

So he checked himself out – against the nurse´s advice – and got a cab to drop him at home.

Awfully “Provencál” in my book!

Obviously we needed to celebrate his “escape”!

We dined outside again; where we attempted to finish our stories… All too soon it was bedtime once again, and tomorrow we faced another long day of driving.

To round off our ‘surreal’ experience we heard an air-raid siren go off three times. This was about five in the morning, and half awake we rushed to the window expecting to find a Stuka divebomber heading straight for us! Instead we found… nothing!!!

The birds kept on chirping and it seemed as if the town rolled over and continued their slumber (later we heard that this was the fire brigade summoning all hands to the pumps in the next valley). We returned to bed and sort of shrugged, thinking that we had been teleported to another dimension.

Their house was brilliant. All the furniture was antique. The kitchen must have been a hundred years old. An ancient fireplace. Rusty chairs in the garden that seemed to have been there before the house was. Even the weeds were perfect! All in the tiny shade of a satellite dish and TV aerial. It seemed to work somehow. And in the middle of this, two genuine people being themselves. This kind of stuff cannot be bought or paid for or manufactured. It just…IS. Very invigorating to meet people who seem to be above the day-to-day grind that we find ourselves in all too quickly. The tunnel vision that overcomes us without even realising it.

Maybe it was the wine or maybe we were more stressed and tired than we realised, but it was worth the two-day drive for a night or two in a parallel world. A crazy couple of days and through circumstances we never did get to explore the town further… This is for the next visit – to finish our stories and learn more about the place. Somehow it seemed a perfect weekend anyway. We had finally met aunt and uncle and had some strangely fascinating experiences. AS YOU DO….. in Provence….

Au revoir! (for now … part 2: the trip back… to follow)