artisan markets, camping, and the beach in the south of France summer 2023
Category: on the road
A Micro Enterprise en France
France has overtaken the UK in the number of millionaires, paper or otherwise, living within its borders. So I learned from reading this week UK newspapers online here in the South of France in the second half of August 2023. The data was used a spring board for another round of prognostications of doom and… Continue reading A Micro Enterprise en France
No pain in the le pain
There are a couple of little birds outside my window right now, feeding on grass grains that they will take back to feed their young, who are housed if I am not mistaken in nests under the eve of the house. I’ve read that nightingales are unremarkable looking brown song birds. Passerine, a somewhat biblical… Continue reading No pain in the le pain
Wild Thing
I have a bird song identifying app on my phone. I occasionally use it and for the last couple of weeks every time I have, it’s turned out to be the common nightingale. The storied nightingale, evocative of sultry nights and the fiendish sophistication of the mainland, that contiguous stretch of humanity that flows from… Continue reading Wild Thing
A gaijin in France
Now that I am back in my natural state of being, an outsider in a foreign land, I observe my fellow wanderers with the deja vu of having seen their sort before, in different places. I always maintained that people don’t know why they are going to a place as much as they know why… Continue reading A gaijin in France
A new French car
So I bought the car. Paid €4k. Did not expect to be the owner of a Fiat Punta, but that’s the joy of movement. Movement stresses systems and devices, stuff breaks quicker and needs to be replaced, in the end making progress quicker. The whole infernal aging machine is sped up and at times feels… Continue reading A new French car
Les Saintes Maries De La Mer
Saintes Maries De La Mer was a nice jaunt. I set the satnav to avoid tolls and we traversed the countryside on a series of D roads, single lane roads of good quality with hard shoulders, and a speed limit of 80kms/hr. The roads were quiet at around 1pm on Easter Sunday and we were… Continue reading Les Saintes Maries De La Mer
La voiture est tombée en panne (Our car broke down)
Our car died yesterday on a roundabout on the outskirts of Arles, as we returned from a day trip to the Med at Saintes Maries de la Mer. The sun is shining, it’s early evening, you enter a roundabout shifting down gears as you navigate the steady stream of traffic from beach goers and attendees… Continue reading La voiture est tombée en panne (Our car broke down)
The French
French people based on my interactions to date are as friendly as anyone anywhere. Walking around our little town most people greet with a ‘bonjour’. The supermarket assistants are consistent across different stores at wishing one, ‘une belle journeé’. They have the friendliness of the financially secure, call it euro-friendliness, observable also in Ireland and… Continue reading The French
Provence
We walked today out of town along narrow one car width roads through a landscape of vineyards and chateaux in a gentle excursion beyond the city limits. We picked up our dog poo and faced that moral conundrum that the porters of dog poo are want to meet, the coming to the garbage bin of… Continue reading Provence