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Rare activity timeProvence – Grasse and the Arriere Pays
This time we hit the jackpot campsite wise, the beautiful Gorges du Loup in Bar Sur Loup. Our pitch looks down the Loup valley through Cypress and oak trees and up the gorge to its bare limestone peaks.
We’ve been here 10 nights now, unable to pull ourselves away from our hillside eyrie, 30 mins to the coast at Antibes, 30 mins to the ski slopes, the perfume capital Grasse on our doorstep (in the supermarket car park today I actually said to Simon “whats that beautiful smell it smells just like men’s aftershave – he pointed out that we were in the world’s fragrance capital, right next to perfumery Fragonard and hmm do I think it might just be…).
A playground within sight of the caravan and an admittedly freezing swimming pool beside it for which the boys wear their wetsuits. The thermometre hovers at just over 30 degrees but it doesn’t seem to make any difference to the pool temperature.
Unfortunately our attempt to doing our clothes washing misfired when the 27 year old Miele camp-site washing machine chose our wash to finally throw in its towel –
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french air traffic control near miss! grrr. We extracted our semi washed clothes and set of in search of a laundrette, with our pidgin French and Tom Tom. Launderette located 10 miles away, a whopping E9 for the wash was pumped into the machine (not even a service wash!) and we returned an hour later to collect and again the next day with the next load.
Our family favourite visit so far is the Confiseri Florian Sweet Factory in Pont Sur Loup. This veritable Charlie and the Chocolate Factory experience is quite the most delightful afternoon. Upon our arrival, an English guide was summoned for us and we were whisked into the sun filled factory where one employee was taking the petals of baby pink roses and another dusting them with sugar – within days, these and the freshly picked violets would be candied and ready for sale – Miles thinks that they smell like toilets (at least that means we have a clean toilet but Im not sure he will be a fan of parma violets in years to come).
Clementines picked from the hill-top town, Bar Sur Loup home to our campsite, would be dipped in sugar syrup for 3 minutes per
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here you go George - there's still one on the road! day for 45 days until ready for bottling (where they attracted the rather steep price of E35).
At another bench, pastes of boiled sweets were pushed through a mangle-like press and transformed into watermelon drops for us to try. Upstairs the ladies with in my humble opinon the best job in the world – filled boxes of chocolates by hand at wooden benches.
We could try anything we liked in the shop and didn’t even have to sign the wall paper and read the small print like at Willie Wonker’s. Regretfully, our budget didn’t stretch to a splurge though we were alone in this as the old bags in front of us were laden with dears, in the words of Willy Wonker himself “strike that reverse….” damn the exchange rate.
Another beautiful azure ski greeted us in the morning so we set of to Antibes for the beach and a glass-bottomed boat trip. The beach was lovely and the boat called the 'visiobulle' took us out to the Cap Antibes from some underwater creature spotting through its glass hull – the boys were pleased to see baby jelly fish, but us experienced scuba types thought it all
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fountains have become a bit of an obsession with T&M a bit tame for wildlife...
Mummy and Daddy were rather more taken with the enormous yachts moored in the bay... of course, it’s the Cannes Film Festival and everyone who is anyone – is here and because it is the Monaco Grand Prix at the weekend too…
Having spent a day on the beach we decided to spend a day in the local hills so we set off through the beautiful Gorges sur Loup with their waterfalls. Punctuated with the necessary stops at play area and returning via Gourdes and Cabrill two perched towns.
Mini Golf was on the cards for our trip to Nice - its all th boys really care about. But first we stopped at Parc Phoenix near the airport and spent a lovely couple of hours with its musical waterfalls (and wistfully it played Gold Hill’s signature tune - Dvořák’s New World Symphony - for us), waterfalls that you can walk behind and cross over on stepping stones and botanical gardens stocked with Caymen and Iguanas. Great place for an afternoon out.
Our first choice mini golf turned out to be shut so we were faced with going to the MarineLand affiliated
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Nice in Nice! Adventure Golf in Antibes. I’ve seen the admission price to MarineLand for one adult and it equates closely with what I spend on our shopping bill in Tesco’s each week - this was going to hurt. Shunning the 6 euro parking fee at the venue, we chose instead to park opposite and quite handily as it turned out, next to a car showroom.
Adventure Golf was very good, very expensive E18 just for the boys but they were thrilled. Returning to our car was a bit of a shock, it wouldn’t start – empty battery. The car showroom jump-started us and we headed home to get the manuals out, thinking it might be something to do with the overactive fan we had noticed on our mountain trip.
Our neighbour came over to volunteer his opinion, the French being experts at everything – mais oui - but nothing conclusive was found, but by now the doors wouldn’t open either! so Simon called our breakdown insurance people for advice. Next morning the car couldn’t be started at all, by the English, French or Dutch campsite contingent and so a relay lorry came and took us all to the Grasse VW
garage where Jupiter was left for five days to be mended and we were landed with a bill for two new fans and a battery that takes your breath away and most of next week’s budget… luckily we were stranded at a great campsite with lots to do around us.
Welcome Phillipe – the French Opal Meriva Hire Car… kindly provided by the insurance company.
Mercantour National Park
Most of you who know us know that we love big mountains especially those with a bit of glaciation to boot and so we couldn’t wait to take they boys and give them their first glimse of really big mountains (so far Duncliffe Hill has been their highest point).
Off we set to Parc National du Mercantour, in the Alps on the border with Italy in Phillipe the hire car. The parc boasts Europe’s highest pass (Bonnet at 2800m – pah nothing for us Andean adventurers) and so using a hire car and having the steering wheel on the right side for the mountain roads was a good option.
Several hours of windy roads up to the ski resorts with obligatory rests at play parks saw us
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Jupiter off to the garage :-( arrive in St Etienne De Tinee for lunch. We had planned this stop as our guide book (Frommers Provence with Your Family) mentioned that there was a cable car that took you to the top of the ski run and was a good point to start a walk. Predicatably, and unfortunately, it wasn’t open and didn’t look like it had been since the end of the ski season.
A quick calculation on the Tom Tom showed us we could be at Barcelonette via the pass within 1.5 hours – an Alpine town often cut off in winter due to its remoteness. Off we set steadily climbing, and passing cyclist after cyclist – some of them didn’t even look out of puff at 2300m.
Eventually we left the tree line behind and were soon in the snow. We’d packed fleeces and so we had a fun snow ball fight on the way – the boys thought this was great.
The scenery was spectacular, bare peaks at the top and pine forests lower down with tumbling glacial meltwater streams, opaque and turquoise. We were rewarded with a sighting of a 70cm marmot on the hillside which Simon spotted
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Miles rather pleased with his snowball in the car, which he kept warm between his legs for the next 10 miles! and managed to snap for posterity. There are also wild wolves (from Italy) and some introduced ones here but we didn’t see any of them though you can go to a particular part of the park to see these (Senorparc) and the 3700 bronze aged engravings (Vallee de Merveilles) of the area.
A brief stop in Barcolonette for drinks in the town square – the boys playing in and out of the fountain until spooked by a large wolf looking dog.
The trip home was amazing, poor old Simon had to drive it all as he was the only one insured on the hire car. We took in mountain pass after mountain pass, the boys saw their first chair lifts and countless waterfalls. We also saw Lac de Castillon Allos stretching for miles and miles, with its gravel dredgers and turquoise waters.
When we got back to the site (about 5 hours later), we’d put a respectable 400km on the hire car odometer. Long day driving through twisting mountain road but Simons excellent skills got us there (guess who wrote this bit ;-). A brief chat with the German biker campers next door at the washing up
area revealed that the internet is showing the pass as closed - odd. However they were delighted that it wasn’t and have gone up there themselves today.
Fondation Maerght
At last we managed a cultural outing! This time to the sculpture park in St Paul de Vence. It was thoroughly enjoyable, the sculptures being set in the grounds of an exquisitely designed museum and grounds. The boys interpretations being better than our own – of course! Amazing how their minds works at that age.
We also managed a trip to the Grasse International Perfume Museum where we learned everything you need to know about perfumery through the ages. I have to say that the highlights for me were the sepia photos of Edwardian ladies picking rose petals and violets from drifts of petals 2 feet high set out on tressle tables before them. Thomas however was much more interested in the machines, especially the 'smashers' used to extract the essence from the flowers!
Fromers – Provence with your Family
We’ve been using this 2010 guide throughout our stay in Provence and it’s grown on us. Initially I was sceptical of a guide that invited you
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Phillipe the hire car - glad it wasnt my motor being thrashed on these mountains to “give your children their first Michelin starred experience at xxxxx for ££££s” and pearls such as “less financially challenged travellers can use the Heliport in Monaco to reach the ski slopes in under an hour…”. But if your budget doesn’t stretch, and ours certainly doesn’t, it has some good suggestions and we have certainly filled our 3 weeks with plently left to come back to another time.
And so we end our time in Provence and head again to Italy where Cathy and Tony – volcanic ash permitting - will be meeting us at Verona airport on Saturday, accompanied with various red cross parcels prepared by Misha and we will all head off to Lake Garda for our Lombardy Odysee.
We have packed up the Major ready for the trip, just in time as the ants have almost taken root inside the van - clearly we've been here too long and become part of their territory. All systems seem functioning though so off we go, even if we have to take a few insects with us...
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Tania Rogers
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Shame we did not know where you were going as half of my family live in Provence ad that might well have given you a laugh!