Saturday duly arrived, and we made our leisurely way down south. A short detour took us via our favourite Coteaux du Tricastin viticulteur and a picturesque tea room in Grignant, and a longer detour took us on an increasingly desperate search for petrol. Fumes and a kindly boulangère eventually got us to a service station, and we thus managed to arrive at the gorgeous Mas de l'Hermitage in the early evening, to a friendly greeting from the proprietors and an enormous dog named Jazz.
J&C duly made it through the fishermen's blockades and arrived an hour or so later, comfortably in time for the table d'hôte. An interesting evening all told, from our hosts - an exotic couple, in both the gay & unusual senses of the word - to the copious supply of wine. The tales of past lives as ballet dancer, biochemist, restaurateur and nuclear physicist were finished off with home-produced peach schnapps. Not a good idea.Needless to say, the following day was a bit of a write off. La bienheureuse & I did make it out in the pouring rain before noon to the local village to buy provisions for the day, but that finished me off and necessitated a couple of hours in bed to recover. I did later manage to offer a modicum of help and advice during the cooking of the evening meal, but alcohol consumption was drastically reduced.
Still some way off full health the next day, we ventured out for a drive round the Camargue. The Romany gathering at Saintes Maries de la Mer was virtually over, but we watched the local cowboys delivering a bull for the evening event at the bullring. Flamingos and other birds aplenty were on view at the Parc Ornithologique de Pont de Gau. An elusive aquatic mammal was less in evidence, but eventually turned out to be a coypu. Non-indigenous...
Le maitre cusinier was in action in the evening, which meant more good food and more good wine, consumption ominously on the rise again. And it stayed dry until the end of the evening, allowing us to eat outside with faithful companion Jazz.While JW went on a forty mile cycle ride to collect croissants the next morning, the rest of us stayed in bed. It was Tuesday and going-home day for la bienheureuse et moi, so we bid a sad farewell to our hosts and Jazz, but J&C accompanied us on a drive up the Alpilles to visit an umpteenth pretty Provençal village named les Baux de Provence.
The sun almost shone and after lunch it was time to point la voiture north and set off for home. And wouldn't you know, it was a lovely sunny day by the time we reached Lyon...
