I've been to paradise, but I've never been to Buis (Note 1)

Nous adorons Buis les Baronnies, c’est encore notre village francais prefere (We adore Buis les Baronnies, it is still our favourite French village).

We have just spent another week in Buis les Baronnies, where we last visited in 2000. Ever since that time we have said that it is our favourite village in France and we even call our little Renault, ’Buis’.

Close up of Buis town Centre

It is therefore fair to say that we returned to Buis with high expectations but they were met, if not exceeded. This time we returned with Simone, Dallas, Jack and Matthew and all stayed in the Richards’ small cottage in Rue de 3 Chapons. The cottage dates back to the 12th century and has 4 rooms spread over 4 floors (plus a basement). It is in a small L shaped rue that is way too narrow to drive a car into. Jack and Matthew loved the experience of staying in a house that is so different to anything that we see in Australia. We adults also loved the cottage but our older bodies were tiring of all the running up and down stairs by the end of the week.

I think what makes Buis most special is the natural beauty of the surrounding country side, which is easily accessible by foot and bicycle. The town itself is also beautiful with its small winding streets and lovely plane tree lined boules courts in the Place Quinconnes. The town’s population is less than 3000 but it has all the amenities you need. I think this is because it is a popular holiday destination with people who enjoy an outdoor lifestyle in summer. Geoff and Kathy’s (Richards) neighbour also said that the town’s success is due to the fact that it is the main town in a small agricultural region. He said that many of the local farmers need to come into Buis for most of the necessities of modern living. The agriculture is centred on olives, apricots and grapes.

A Cigale (cicada), which features prominently in Provencale design

I think that’s enough of the boring justification about why we like Buis. We arrived late on Saturday afternoon and decided to eat out at a local creperie for dinner. Simone is still talking about her salmon crepe and moaning about why we wouldn’t let her go back. The funniest part of the evening was provided by me when I poured water into the glass containing a candle, mistaking it for a drinking glass. This was quite amusing as I’d been marvelling at the decision by the restaurant to give some people red drinking glasses and some people clear ones.

On Sunday Dale, Jack and I decided to participate in a fund raising walk. We filled out our French forms and departed on our 11 km walk. We were given a list of questions that we had to answer on the hike. The questions were in French and were about local matters of importance like which years the frost destroyed the olive crop (not apricot as first entered - thanks AH). We pointed out to one of the officials that we had no hope of answering these questions and she cheerfully encouraged us to cheat. The walk was challenging and covered some beautiful countryside. As we went along we found ourselves over taking all the other walkers. This turned out to be fantastic for our attempts at cheating because we arrived at the first checkpoint before anyone else and we were able to have a long chat with the nice young guy and girl (in French), who gave us most of the answers. In fact we got 6/10 right, which we were pretty rapt with. I should mention that at the same time there were people doing an 11 km run and a 32 km run over the same mountainous course. Shortly after we reached the half way point the runners started to hurtle downhill past us. When we arrived back in Place Quinconnes after about 2.5 hours we were feted as the first walkers to return. After a few minutes the local mayor, realising that we were Australian, asked us to come up onto the stage in front of 50 people and asked if we spoke any French. We said that we spoke a little and Dale then spent a few minutes being interviewed in French about visiting France, what he did for work and why we liked Buis les Baronnies. It was a wonderful experience for us all.

On the Sunday afternoon we went to a swimming place on the Ouveze River, a few kilometres outside Buis that we remembered from 2000. The water was cold and there wasn’t a whole lot of room to sit along the river but we joined a few other French families doing the same thing and had a swim and a small picnic in the shade.


The following day we visited the awesome Roman Amphitheatre in nearby Orange and then drove on to the imposing Pont du Gard aqueduct where we had a lovely swim in the Gard River while enjoying the spectacular views of the Pont. Matthew loved swimming in the rivers and when he couldn’t do so he kept pestering Dallas to take him up to the local swimming pool for a swim. Eventually Dallas relented, and without speaking any French, had to work his way around the bureaucracy of French swimming pools. This involved things like putting your clothes into a tray and handing them over to an attendant for safe keeping, putting your shoes in another spot, wearing a wrist band and walking through the obligatory pool of water to clean your feet before swimming. Dallas said that the pool attendants were very polite with him but were beginning to run out of a little patience by the end of the ordeal.

The tour party in front of the magnificent Pont du Gard

On the subject of Dallas’ French experiences, he made a big effort to say his bon jours and bon soirs so we began to help expand his vocabulary by teaching him bon matin (good morning), bon après-midi (good afternoon) and bon nuit (good night). Unfortunately this proved to be a little confusing, because one evening as he was outside our cottage one of the neighbours walked past and said bon soir, and Dallas responded with ‘’bon sweet’’, which resulted in him getting a very strange look. Of course it is also entirely possible that Dallas was thinking about eating sweets at the time as he was spending so much time visiting patisseries.

The local market is held in Buis on Wednesday mornings so we spent some hours wandering around buying cheese, fruit, veges, sausages and a succulent roast chicken for a picnic lunch. The market also has many stalls selling clothing, jewellery, haberdashery and leather goods.

This little piggy went to market (but to what end?)

Mmmmm......cheese

After lunch we packed our picnic lunch and drove up to the top of Mont Ventoux. We had thought that the second stage of the tour was going to go up Mont Ventoux and that we would be in Buis at the time. However we discovered that, since we had first done our research, the route had been changed and the tour is now going up on the second last stage. We were all pretty disappointed about this but we compensated by driving up to the top and imagining what it is going to be like for the riders on the second last stage. It didn’t take all that much imagination because a lot of people were in fact cycling up. Are they mad? It was freezing at the top. It was actually about 14 degrees but the wind chill factor made it feel like minus 10 (Ed – The wind is so strong here trees cannot grow). The views made it all worthwhile. On the way down the mountain we found a lovely spot for our picnic and we all pigged out on chicken, pork, olives, terrine, cheese and cherries.

Bald, windswept Mt Ventoux

We drove on to the town of Sault and to the villages of Roussillon and Gordes in the Luberon Valley. The lavender fields were in full bloom and they were a sight to behold, both close up and part of the overall panorama. When we visited the region 9 years ago we arrived a few weeks later and a lot of the fields had been harvested. This time we got to see the fields around the Abbey de Senanque, which were simply magnificent.

On our second last day we all set off on a hike to the top of Mt. St Julien, the rocky mountain outcrop overlooking Buis. Poor Simone had to turn back after about 25 minutes as she was feeling pretty unwell. What we didn’t know until we returned was that she was quite well enough to steal 4 apricots from some poor farmer’s apricot tree on the way back. She denies visiting the patisserie as well but we don’t entirely believe her. We shouldn’t stir her too much as she did manage to go out and get us all some supplies for lunch when we returned. Dale and Jack have already done quite enough stirring considering that they had a bet about how long it would take Simone to start complaining about how difficult the walk would be. It has been confidentially revealed that Jack won this bet with a spot on prediction of 20 minutes! Apparently Dale was much harsher on his sister, predicting 12 minutes.

Descending the crevases of Mt St Julien

The walk involves some fairly steep climbing right at the end and everyone acquitted themselves excellently, particularly Matthew, Jack and Dallas. Matthew made it all the way up despite his much smaller 8 year old legs and with some excellent help from Jack and Dallas. The views of Buis and the surrounding country side were superb. We also saw quite a number of circling vultures at quite close range during the walk. Dallas was very concerned that they might be after Simone.

Buis from Mt St Julien

A vulture circles above, but for whom?

On our last day Dale and I drove up into the hills about 20 kms out of Buis to visit the place where a couple of women weave scarves and shawls and make pottery. They have a shop in Buis that we loved and they warned us that the location of their home/workshop was ‘’tres sauvage’’ but we didn’t appreciate that this meant driving up steep hills through tiny villages with narrow streets and then on to dirt roads for some kilometres before reaching the house, which was the only one for miles around (Ed – I should point out that because there are 6 of us we are driving a tank sized Peugeot 807). After waking ‘’madame’’ up from her ‘’sieste’’ we had a look at her loom and bought a couple of little things. It was also a good opportunity for a little more French practice. We had been wickedly encouraging Simone to buy something made by these people because the items are unique and exquisite. When we got back, Simone had a look at what we had bought and decided to go back to the shop in Buis for one more look. We sent Dallas around with her to provide a second opinion and she returned with a stunning shawl.

At night after dinner we had fun playing Bananagrams (thanks AT) and a great card game that Dale got as a send off gift from his work colleagues called Guillotine (appropriately centred around the French Revolution).

On our final night, Jack stayed in the cottage with Matthew while Dale, Simone, Dallas and I went around for a lovely dinner at a fancyish sort of restaurant. We had four courses, the food was delicious and we enjoyed sitting outside under a covered archway in front of the restaurant as the light faded away on our visit to Buis.

We are currently in another of the Richards' cottages in the Tarn, with Julia. We are having a pretty relaxing week, psyching ourselves up for the next 3 weeks of hiking in the French Alps and Corsica. Our next blog entry may therefore be some weeks away. Au revoir until then.

Note 1. The title of this blog is dedicated to a dear friend who detests this song and whom we have just discovered upon arriving at the Tarn cottage was the principal protagonist in “Gasbottlegate”