Salut!

If you can’t stand the heat, avoid southern France for now

 

 

Just now, down in the south of France, it feels impossible to go out without seeing an air conditioning installation van outside at least one house in every street. After the sleeplessly torrid nights of recent past, we'll soon enough be raiding the savings ourselves.

This is a piece I wrote about la canicule for The National.

 

The photograph of the monument below shows us things have been worse: it commemorates the Landes forest fires of 1949 that killed 82...

 

 

Image:  'Par moi'   

A Middleton banquet chez Lord & Lady Brexit as royals invade Bormes-les-Mimosas

 

 

 

 

Once I'd turned my back, the royals arrived. Wills and Kate, their three children, her sister Pippa and their parents, all present in the beautiful village of Bormes-les-Mimosas for the wedding of the Middleton brother James to his French fiancée, Alizée Thevenet, at the little town hall a mile or so up the road from us.

Then it was on to Chateau Léoube, set in a glorious vineyard on the coast and offering a stunning private beach. Plenty of Léoube's vaunted rosé wine was reportedly quaffed by guests. Our invitations, it seems, were lost in the post.

 

Anyone for some smashing bouf at the Cavalière tennis club?

Would I expect to eat like a king or, since this is France, president at an establishment calling itself the Smash Club? To be honest, probably not.

In defence of this Smash Club, it exists primarily for tennis players even if the poolside restaurant draws a clientele that looks, for the most part, as if it hasn't seen much action on the courts for a good few years.

In its rural setting a mile or so back from the resort of Cavalière, west of Saint-Tropez, the Smash Club is a gem. It comes at a price and we don't (can't) faire des choses en grand - push the boat out that often. But with birthdays falling within five days of each other, we usually make that an excuse.

 

Italy, and more sumptuous food, beckons during a short break in Alassio and Cinque Terre from tomorrow but the dinner at Cavalière will be hard to top. It was by far the finest restaurant meal we've had in a couple of years.

Making a song and dance about the cigales of Provence

What kind of person visits Egypt and complains about those wretched pyramids obstructing the view? Or objects to flamingos in the Camargue, camels in the Sahara or Gustave Eiffel's monstrous heap of metal just when you're trying to enjoy the Champs-de-Mars?

 

The same sort, perhaps, as marched last year on the town hall in Le Beausset, near Toulon, in the beautiful southern French department of the Var, to lodge formal protests about the noise. But what noise? Unruly fellow-tourists? Unexpected major building works? A new airport that no one mentioned when they booked?

 

None of the above. Step forward the guilty parties: cicadas, or les cigales as they are charmingly known in French.

France chooses Emmanuel Macron, not Le Pen

First estimates based on exit polls gave Emmanuel Macron victory by 65.5-34.5 per cent. However you look at it, that's a landslide. Here's a piece I contributed before results were known* ...

CAVALAIRE-SUR-MER, FRANCE // After a breezy night, the stubborn mistral wind whistled through the small boats berthed in Cavalaire-sur-Mer’s picturesque marina on the Cote d’Azur on Sunday.

At a harbourside restaurant, a waitress declared she would vote later "as a civic duty" in the second – and decisive – round of France’s presidential elections.

Too much! Saint-Tropez de trop

J'aime l'hiver a Saint-Tropez. In shop after shop, business after business, a sign bearing that slogan - and, often enough, another announcing fermeture annuelle - was displayed.

And why not? At the prices they feel entitled to charge, for no matter what goods or services, they must surely earn enough in the summer to see them through the winter without the need to head off to the mountains to replicate their trade for the skiers. It is also beyond doubt that this beautiful corner of France becomes more beautiful still when there are not hordes of peoples and, especially, when there are empty berths along the exquisite harbour front.

No to the burkini, yes to the roar of warplanes. Brigitte Bardot protests ...

Brigitte Bardot comes out with heaps of nonsense, not least of them her occasional declarations of support or sympathy for France's rotten far right.

For once, she has my support when complaining in what has become a stock-in-trade - an angry letter fired off to the mayor - about the "intolerable and violent noise" of warplanes streaking through the skies above Saint-Tropez in preparation for the Free Flight World Masters, an air show held at neigbouring Sainte-Maxime over the weekend.

Her letter to Vincent Morisse, the mayor of Sainte-Maxime, was written while pilots were practising their formations. I suspect her mood was not improved when the show actually took place.

Off the beaten track in France: (2) Le Lavandou to Saint-Clair

Apologies first about this walk along the bottom of the cliffs that separate the resort of Le Lavandou, halfway between rugby-mad Toulon and rip-off Saint-Tropez, and neighbouring Saint-Clair, occasional home of Tracey Emin, Jerry Hall and others you may have heard of.

Off the beaten track in France: (1) Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume

At the western edge of the sprawling French departement of Var lies Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, a town I have long meant to visit without ever quite getting round to it.

The name has lived in the consciousness throughout Monsieur and Madame Salut's 20-odd years in this part of France.

So British on the Côte d'Azur: singing in Le Lavandou's rain

Stop Press: the winner in the Big Floats category was the one you see above - Satisfaction, the work of Les Amis du Quartier de la Gare - and that would have been my choice, too. In the medium-size section, the honours went to Terre Neuves du Soleil for their depiction of Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest

In London, we were reliably informed, the sun was shining. Only a couple of weeks ago, Boris Johnson had raised chuckles when boasting to a London conference about a "fantastic climate" better than Rome's.

On the Côte d'Azur, his words rang true. It was raining on the parade at Le Lavandou's annual floral carnival, the corso, and this year's theme was So British.