mother tired of the demands of her offspring.
• • •
Every Frenchman seemed to own un vélo and ventured out regularly, either alone or in groups, spinning in swarms along the roads. Cars inevitably lined up behind, waiting impatiently yet politely for any straight stretch of road to pass. My vélo, an all-purpose bike with fatter tires to accommodate rougher roads, had become a companion of sorts. If I stopped riding for more than a day or two, I missed the exercise and was anxious to get back to it once again.
One morning, as I rode into the village, I saw the owner of the bookstore, the librairie, putting out a stand of road maps, so I stopped and went in. L’Institut Géographique National of France (IGN) published a blue series of 1:250,000 scale maps for every region of the country. When I unfolded the map covering our village, I was surprised at the detail. I could make out even the smallest lanes and trails as well as a black rectangle that indicated our villa. This was a treasure of information for back-road cycling, so I bought maps for all the surrounding areas.
The IGN maps led me and my bike in the ensuing months down lanes and shortcuts to places along meandering routes I never dared to take the car—even to tiny hamlets at the end of remote trails that only the residents drove and few people knew existed.
The new activity of biking that I had taken up on returning this spring was both physically rewarding and mentally stimulating. Riding gave me time to think about the culture of Provence. It was still an exotic place for me, where formal rituals and cultural differences often crept up unexpectedly. At first they seemed subtle and minimal: another language, one that was manageable with effort; the strict formality of greeting someone; rigid restaurant hours with no place open to eat between breakfast and lunch, and between lunch and dinner, unless a McDonald’s had made an unwanted inroad into a village. It was as if the very view of the world in Provence was different from that in Canada. Workers going out on strike at any opportunity and staying out until the country reached the brink of economic meltdown and social chaos was considered normal. The more I learned, the more small things eluded me.
Walking my bike into the garage late one morning, I found Hélène stretching after one of her runs.
“So where did you ride today?” she asked.
“To the east. First to Les Pilles along the D94 and then south on the D185 to Châteauneuf-de-Bordette behind Montagne Garde Grosse. I came out of the hills near Mirabel-aux-Baronnies and then took the D538 back.” I said this rather matter-of-factly, although my pride must have been showing.
“That’s great. You’re getting to know those roads.”
“Col de la Croix Rouge is back there, and it’s a bugger to climb—almost a mountain pass. The road runs over a steep ridge between two valleys. There’s a church with a big red cross at the top in the middle of nowhere. It’s stunning in there—rugged and lonely as hell. I don’t know how people a hundred years ago eked out a living on those barren hillsides; yet there are stone farmhouses up there with no running water or plumbing. They have electricity and TV dishes, but those may be the only concessions to modern life. I actually rode by an old woman who was leading her donkey with a load of firewood on its back.”
“You’re losing weight,” Hélène said.
“Yes, I guess I am. That was my ‘office weight’, from sitting at a desk all day.” I certainly felt trimmer. Then I glanced at her physique, lean from running every other day. She saw my admiration and smiled.
Chapter 5
budbreak and other things ~ where to meet the locals
AS SPRING ADVANCED, the weather improved along with my stamina, allowing me to venture out farther afield. I also noticed that my body felt uncomfortable when I missed a ride. I was becoming addicted to physical exercise. Some days I rode in the direct hot sun, while other days the shadows of clouds chased me over the landscape. I even went out in wet weather, wearing simply a waterproof jacket; the energy I expended kept me warm. Facing into the wind could change everything, making an easy stretch of level road like an uphill ride until I finally tired, turned around and, with my clothes flapping around me in the breeze, let the wind help carry me home.
By mid-April budbreak was well underway in the vineyards and the tight clusters of flowers would soon be replaced by grape bunches. This was a risky time of year, for a late frost could easily damage the flowers before the grapes had a chance to set. The apricots had already successfully flowered, despite a close call with the late snowfall.
Pierre Luc had invited me over to talk about the growing season ahead and show me how his vineyards were coming along. We talked for several hours while walking the rows that I had helped prune a month earlier. As he spoke his pride showed, and I was his willing audience, learning about vineyards and winemaking. His wife, Fanny, had attended l’Université du Vin just after they were married. He had given up on the vineyards, and when their daughter, Violette, was born, he tried working at odd jobs around the area to earn money.
Pierre Luc’s father had taken a risk by planting the Viognier variety of grapes in his vineyard, as well as the vineyard he leased from a neighbouring friend. Unfortunately, Viognier was relatively unknown, and when his wines wouldn’t sell he gave up and simply sold the grapes at rock-bottom prices to the cooperative for blending into common vin de pays wine. After his father died, Pierre Luc did little with the vineyards until Fanny returned with Violette after their short separation.
One day I saw Jean up on his roof. When I asked him about it he said that he was checking to see if any roof tiles had cracked and needed replacing. He suggested I do the same. So I propped a ladder against the house and climbed up. Creeping cautiously to the crown of the roof, I straightened up briefly and looked around at the village below and the surrounding mountains. Mont Garde Grosse dominated impressively across the valley. Heights were never something I cared for, so I bent over again and, feeling like a cat-burglar wearing a pair of old runners, began crawling around on all fours to avoid slipping and becoming a poster-boy for a safety commercial.
The wood or asphalt shingles of Canada couldn’t withstand the summer sun of Provence; much more durable products were needed. The old classic Roman tile was the norm and came in assorted shapes and sizes. In French the word is tuile and in Latin tegula. The tiles were generally fifty centimetres long by twenty to twenty-five centimetres wide, and curved down the length. A bottom course was laid with the concave surface facing up and overlapping as they ran up the roof. The top course was laid with the convex side facing up to drain the water into the trough of the bottom course. The result was a system that was amazingly simple and easy to repair.
Early tiles were made from fired clay that was a natural brownish-red colour, hence the name terracotta tiles. Nowadays they are made of concrete with artificial red colour added. Variations evolved over time. For instance, our roof used an S-shaped product that incorporated the bottom and top course in one tile. In a hot climate, this allowed the air to circulate freely around the tiles, helping to disperse the heat of the sun. One look in the attic revealed a complex system of beams, rafters and struts to support all the weight.
I was beginning my inspection by checking the tiles along the edge of the roof when butterflies suddenly took flight in my stomach. Crawling about two and a half storeys above the ground was not the best activity for a person with a touch of vertigo. I pulled back from the edge and went to work lightly tapping the tiles with a small hammer, listening for the ring of a whole tile or the flat discord of something cracked or broken.
It took time to cover the roof, but only two needed replacing. Luckily, the former owner had left a cache of extra tiles in the garden shed, so I carried them, one by one, up the ladder and across the roof. However, the repair
