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Everything you always wanted to know about France |
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Rentals-France Newsletter September 12 1999. Number 6. We are here to help you find the perfect spot, from one day to a lifetime.http://www.rentals-france.com/ I try to give information and provide links to other sites which are accurate and useful. Please write to me with any comments and let me know if there is a special subject you would like mentioned.
We are trying very hard to make our sites at
Our policy is to only offer properties in these regions
which we know or which a local manager knows
personally, which offers good value and which we are
confident to recommend. Our client is you, the person
or family taking the vacation, not the owner of the property.
We do not make any charge to the property owner for
putting their home on our site, this is to ensure we are
free to act in your interests and to try to make your
vacation in France the best possible. If we receive
complaints about a property, we remove it from our lists.
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This week.
The Wine Harvest.
Salt Wine Oil and Cheese
Provence to Languedoc THE WINE HARVEST When I last wrote about the harvest (the vendange) I said the countryside here in Nizas seemed to be holding it's breath in anticipation. Last weekend, just before the harvest was due to start, the sky opened and a storm lashed the countryside here all Sunday night. Some have said it was the worst rain they had seen for 25 years. Monday morning revealed some fields devastated and thick mud everywhere. The farmers here are tough, but it was clear that there was deep concern about the weather, more rain could wreck the whole harvest. However the vendange did start, and then, stopped when the levels of sugar in the grapes proved to be too low. The paradox is that this is due to a lack of rain earlier this year. By the end of the week the sun returned to normal, the men and machines were out in the good weather and the harvest is now coming in. The French phenomenon that the size of the tractor is inversely proportional to the driver is evident everywhere as the miniature vineyard tractors haul huge trailers full of grapes and these are driven by giants of men who look as if they could carry the toy tractor back to the farm in their pockets. From five in the morning until after midnight, the machines are in the vines driving over the rows with their floodlights playing in the fields. These machines 'whine' like a lost banshee as their hydraulic systems are driven at full throttle. However, many fields are still picked by hand, the edges of these fields are 'decorated' with a motley collection of transport belonging to the "vendangers", meals are cooked in the open air and the wine (over 4 pints per person per day) is supplied by the farmer, there are some advantages in doing this hard work for less than $8 per hour.
======================= SALT, WINE, OLIVE OIL and CHEESE Southern France is an area where mankind has lived for over 450,000 years. The climate, water, food and shelter have supported the nomadic hunters and, much later, the farmers who settled the land. The Pheonicians, Greeks and Romans are recent visitors and the rich heritage of Roman buildings and towns, many over 2000 years old, is one of the reasons why France is the most visited country in the world. The Romans, of course, are justly famous for their engineering and road building. Many of the roads here are built on the foundations of Roman roads. The farmhouses are often on the site of Roman villas. If you take the Autoroute, the A9, in many places it is built on the line of the Roman Via Domitia which still goes from Nimes to Spain. Older still than the Roman roads are the paths and trails going from the Mediterranean to the center of France. The village we live in, Nizas, is on one of these very ancient roadways, the "Cami Ferrat". The name "Cami Ferrat" means the Iron Road in an old local dialect, this is a name probably given in the 10th century, the older names for it are lost in antiquity. This road was (and still is for many miles) a well made paved road, about 10 ft wide, with strong walls on either side. It went from the Roman town of Cessenon (now St Thibery) where the via Domitia crosses the River Herault, to the Larzac plateau and then on into the center of France. It was a very busy road and was in full use until early this century for pack animals, sheep, goats and travelers. I had often heard that salt has always been a vital commodity. The salt was evaporated from the sea from large shallow lakes all along the Mediterranean and shipped inland on mules and donkeys. I had never thought how this was carried, I only see salt in tidy boxes on super-market shelves. Two thousand years ago, before plastic sacks, how did they transport this valuable product, for weeks at a time through rainstorms without losing it? The answer, I am told, is that the salt was dissolved in water as a brine and this liquid was carried in goatskins. This made it much easier to carry and of course it was protected from rain. When the salt (brine) got to the other end, often many weeks later, the brine was evaporated to give the salt for preserving food. The goatskins, now empty, were put to other uses, from the center of France cheese was now put in the goatskins, from further south olive oil and from our region wine. These products were shipped all round the ancient world. The oil and wine was transferred into the earthenware "amphora" which stacked neatly in the holds of the ships. The village near us, "Aspiran" was one of the most famous villages on the Mediterranean for the manufacture of amphora. The Cami Ferrat is now a wonderful walking or cycling trail, on a clear day you can see the Pyrenees over 100 miles away.
======================= PROVENCE to LANGUEDOC The South of France is in two regions, to the West there is Languedoc-Roussillon and to the East, Provence-Cote D'Azure. These two regions cover all the country from the Spanish to Italian borders. The regions are divided roughly in the middle by the river Rhone. Of all the 12 regions in France, Provence is possibly the best known name. This is in part due to recent books and publicity, but more to the fact that for over 150 years the rich and famous have 'wintered' on the Mediterranean coast in places like Nice Cannes, Menton, Monte Carlo and more recently St Tropez. In the whole of France, Nice is the second most visited place (after Paris and before Carcassonne). Because of the Publicity, a lot of places seem to "relocate" themselves into Provence. Avignon is right on the edge of Provence, but some publicity claims that they are in the heart of the region. In fact Avignon is just over an hours drive from us here in Nizas, so is Carcassonne When we moved here we chose to live in the then less fashionable region of Languedoc, partly to escape the over commercialized aspects of Provence but also to live away from the Mistral, a fierce and mean wind which plagues much of Provence in the Winter. We do have our own wind, the Tramontane, but this is more to the West from Narbonne to Perpignan and is not as cold or cruel as the Mistral.
Last week I made a long visit to Provence to inspect and
photograph suitable properties for our vacation rentals business.
We only select the best properties which offer good value and
wherever possible I take the photos myself so as to be able to
represent the property fairly. I did find some new places and
will have these on our site at I found the tourist industry more developed in Provence than in the Languedoc, the street cafes were lively and there were more tourist buses and cars on the roads. We try to select only properties in an area of outstanding natural beauty, where there is a strong "feel" of the real France and where you can drive, cycle or walk in peace and safety. I was interested to find that the wines from this region and in Provence are made from the same grape varieties. The Coteaux du Languedoc, Cotes du Rhone and Coteaux du Ventoux all have the same type of grapes. I know which I prefer, but it proves that it does not really matter where you go for your vacation, as long as it is in the South of France. ================
MILLENNIUM RENTALS
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them. An excellent way to find property for exchange is to use
the services of
================= http://www.rentals-france.com/links/ All the pages have been checked by us and we only add links where the content is interesting useful and relevant. Please let us know if you know of any other sites which can give help and advice to visitors to France.
================== Fruitcake is a dog, by all accounts a very ' special ' dog, I hope the owners will send me a photo or write a story (which I can print) about this aptly named canine. Failing which, a recipe would be welcome. ================== PARIS IN SITES NEWSLETTER
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