Provence from Fayence: Provence Guide

Holiday makers fleeced in Provence

I am horrified to discover that inn-keepers and hoteliers on the French Riviera are exploiting innocent levels of higher consumer interest in the region by doubling their prices - more than any other place in the world. "Biggest premiums were on the French Riviera, where a typical three-star hotel bill for a family of four peaked at £1,667 in mid-August but fell to £887 by early September." Even more than what the Turks are doing.

Brits flock to Provence

"There's £11 billion of cash sitting in pension funds ready to be released to purchase property," said the man at the conference, and a big pile of it is coming to Provence.

According to the Scotsman, UK buyers now account for 40 per cent of international sales of property in France - a figure that has doubled in the past five years. Some 80 per cent of people currently house-hunting along the Côte d'Azur for properties at the higher end of the market are British, says Caroline Oron, a notaire from St Tropez.

I love it, but am naturally concerned about more of us coming. Maybe they'll prefer Spain or Italy.

Lavender

I loved this article from North Carolina about the single best known product from Provence: lavender. I have been to Raleigh and there was not a lot to get excited about, especially if you were selling software with IBM. I had no idea you could include lavender with tea, lemonade or roast chicken with it. "Correspondent Debbie" writes well - I hope she escapes Raleigh!

Pollution alert in Provence

Just in case, we found a nifty online service which shows just how bad pollution is around Europe and France. Provence (Nice, we assume) looks frighteningly yellow and red.

Montauroux gets acknowledgement it deserves!

Montauroux has finally been included in Provence Beyond  (da da, I hear you shreik). It is strange that Fayence, Seillans and even Callian have been included for donkey's years, but poor Montauroux has been allowed to wilt on the vine.

Still, of the above list, it ranks....last in my humble opinion. It has limited visitor appeal (i.e no inspiring/charming walks I am aware of), minimal class-act or "typical" restuarants we can recommend and our only trips there are to the Casino for provisions or to drive through it to the Leclerc.

Best things about Montauroux:

1) The plane trees on the way to Callian and the view of Callian as you leave the village
2) The view towards the Mediterranean from the village square
3) The cinema
4) The summer-only outdoor restaurant Le Jas de Soupie down in the valley (book to avoid disappointment).

Sorry, Montauroux (village fleuri), or am I too harsh?

Provence cream?

Provence cream is the new yellow, in Decatur USA at any rate. How preposterous, I thought, that one could rebrand a colour by adding an emotionally potent word like "Provence". So I checked on Google, and there are precedents.

Thinking about it, I am not certain which colour I believe to be fundamentally "provence". Lavender, azur blue (or better, the blue of a clear sky). Comments welcome.

Provence tomatoes

How shocked am I that France's tomatoes are a) grown in greenhouses and b) now processed by the Chinese, as reported by the ever reliable Fresh Plaza. The French will be buying their tomato pastes from China - with which I do not necessarily have a problem - but, I am shattered to discover that all those luscious, deep red toms with a perfect crisp skin and solid, crunchy flesh are grown in greenhouses. My loving gazes in Leclerc will become suspicious glances.

Fayence's Terre Blanche for "geriatrics"

So the truth is out, and blessed by the Financial Times. The Four Seasons gives "the rather disconcerting feeling of being in a geriatric ghetto." Ha!

Bags

I am prompted by Aussie Lass' bag angst (we all have our baggage) to provide some free counsel on a non-relevant subject (as I am always pleased to do, at no cost).

Firstly, avoid the annual psycho-drama altogether by renting your bags. (See Bag, Steal or Borrow for instructions.) In a swoop, your whole perspective changes, you can relax knowing that there is no pressure to get the perfect bag. If you don't like it, trade it in. Secondly, make your own. I bought one of these as a gift: you take your own snaps, print 'em out and load them in the side panels. Customise your identity and mood with your own photography.

Crowded Riviera beaches

I saw this picture on a list of the best European beaches and was amazed that people would pay good money for this "pleasure". It also reminds me of those photos that dentists put on their ceilings to distract you when they wrenched out a molar or gouged out some plaque. For conoisseurs, Pampelonne in St. Tropez is singled out by the Telegraph: "When topless sunbathing took off here in the late 1950s, women circumvented local strictures by covering their nipples with Coca-Cola bottle tops. Now, on parts of the three-mile-long strand, you'll look overdressed in a thong."

I am pleased that we are up in the hills and that the closed thing to a beach is a bank of sand in the Siagne. Fortunately, most sunseekers would be put off by the glacier-fresh water.