Perfect Provence: A tour of France's foodie region (with a quick search for Van Gogh)

By CHRIS STEWART

Good enough to eat: Chris ate like a king in the Provence town of Moustiers


If you've never been to Provence, it will be familiar to you in one way or another: you've read Peter Mayle's books or seen Jean De Florette; you will have drooled perhaps over improbable images of lavender fields; and, of course, you have been transported to a cafe in Arles or a starry night on the Rhone by the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh.

By all these means and a hundred others besides, I am so steeped in Provence that I can't remember whether I've actually been there or not. But this year I had the perfect excuse to go - my daughter happens to be studying in Aix, so I decided to visit her and take a look. Discarding the heaps of guides that lay to hand, I took nothing but Elizabeth David's book French Provincial Cooking, ready to go where my whims and fancies took me.

Now, Ms David is not to everybody's taste: 'Have some fine, well-hung thrushes,' she suggests, but she's good on things such as bouillabaisse (fish stew) and pissaladiere (the region's own pizza-like dish). I read out loud to the sleeping wife: 'A delicious derivation of the pissaladiere was once, and perhaps still is, a speciality of a small hotel in the dusty, sleepy little town of Saint Remy in Provence. It consisted of tartelettes, little open pastry cases with three different varieties of fillings: an onion and black olive mixture, one with mushrooms and tomatoes, and the third with prawns and green olives...'

Now I knew nothing of St Remy, but the attraction of dustiness, sleepiness and the tartelettes sounded about right for me. So, in the true spirit of spontaneous tourism, my wife Ana and I flew into Marseilles and headed over the little range of Les Alpilles, and down the other side into St Remy.

I knew it would be good, and it was. St Remy is no longer that dusty or sleepy, especially in season, when its picturesque streets run with rivers of visitors - and I sought the tartelettes in vain - but it is the perfect little town. There is almost no ugliness, and there are not so many places of which that can be said. The inhabitants are friendly and communicative and not depressingly over-groomed and smart.

It was late when we arrived, and the only place still serving lunch was the Brasserie du Commerce on the Place de la Republique. It was an ordinary sort of a place, and it was a sunny day, so we both went for Nos Salades, washed down with the most delicate rose, the colour of the palest of pink onion skins and plonked on the table in a plastic carrier-bag full of ice.


French fancy: Chris found that Provence lived up to his (already high) expectations


Soon came the salads, as recommended by the waitress, whose name, unaccountably, was Jean-Paul. These were no ordinary salads but the most divine concoctions of beasts of the field and fowls of the air and all the extraneous and offbeat bits of them.

My salad was composed largely of gizzards (in France, of course, you 'compose' a salad). Lurking among the crisp and well-chosen weeds were bits of pigs and cows, chickens and ducks, each done to perfection and complementing all the others. God, the French know how to do this stuff.

As we staggered out of the Brasserie du Commerce, Jean-Paul directed us to a hotel she knew nearby. And it was heavenly - in a matter of minutes we had tumbled into an enormous bed with crisp white sheets for a brief stretch of blessed afternoon oblivion. One of the great pleasures of the siesta is that you wake up twice to the same day, and if it's a good day and everything's going right, then you get double the pleasure.

The rooms were set around a garden, a glorious garden of extravagantly pruned fig trees, rich with the scent of roses and jasmine, and the chuckle of water from a stone fountain.

Once we were installed at Sous les Figuiers it was hard to leave. It rained one day, so rather than mope about it, we turned it to our advantage and signed up for an afternoon in the art studio with Kups (she's Dutch) who teaches painting. She wanted us to paint figs - and funnily enough there are paintings of figs all over the hotel. June is a bad time for figs, though, except for dried figs which are no fun at all to paint, so we decided to paint lemons.

We spent the happiest of afternoons dabbing away at our canvases, trying to ignore the comments of Kups, who thought we were doing it all wrong. It's not as easy as you think, painting in oils. The wife's lemons looked like a heap of turnips, I thought; my own looked more like quinces. It's hard to get the essence of a lemon.

There are scores of eating houses in St Remy. There was no way to get round them all but we made a pretty good fist of it. At Le Cigalou, where we were unable to resist the coquilles St Jacques, my glasses suddenly fell to bits - the tiny screw that keeps the things on your ears had come loose.

The waiter saw me fumbling with the various inappropriate implements that were to hand, and in an instant appeared with a plate upon which lay three screwdrivers and a red flower. Of course they were no use at all, like trying to open an oyster with a bent stick, but it was an elegant thought.

We ate the most glorious food as we grazed our way around the beautiful little town: the crispest of salads, the freshest vegetables, and exquisitely prepared meats with real taste and texture, all washed down with literally buckets of that incomparable rose.

But you can only eat so much food without the need to burn some of it off, so I persuaded Ana that a good way to spend a day would be to walk along the northern slopes of Les Alpilles to Eygalieres, where there was a market.

We set out early because, unbeknown to the wife, the walk would take the best part of six hours. We left the town, passed the Roman ruins of Glanum and headed up on to the shingly path that leads into the hills.


Arles be back: Les Arenes in Arles is still a masterpiece of architecture, 2000 years after the Romans built it


There were nightingales and bees in the flowers of the garrigue - the scrubland full of lavenders, thymes and rosemary whose scents are the very essence of Provence.

As we climbed through the woods, we were rewarded with dazzling views of the rich country to the north. There's a heartstopper of a painting by John Martin, called The Plains Of Heaven. Well that's what Provence looks like from high in Les Alpilles, with its fertile fields and vineyards, bright now with the early shoots of the vines, and the beautiful plumes of the poplars and planes that line the roads and rivers. It's a land of deep, rich earth that has furnished its blessed inhabitants with incomparable luxury and delight since the days of the Romans.

We came down off the hills and into the picture-book perfect village of Eygalieres where, true to our luck, the market was just packing up. From the remaining scraps, it looked as if it had been the most exquisitely tempting of markets. As consolation, we had lunch at the Bistro Bru, and it was the finest meal that the wife and I had shared in all our many years together.

From exquisitely crafted amuse-gueules, through the gorgeous entrees and perfect plats, and on among the dreamy desserts to the coffee and the bill, we chuckled and hooted with unalloyed delight, helped along by two bottles of rose. We staggered out of there happy as bees for the six-hour slog back to St Remy.

Apart from the tartelettes, all I know about St Remy is that Van Gogh lived there for a time. The Musee Estrine in the middle of town has a Van Gogh exhibition but, as you are told when you enter, there are no paintings by him, only postcards and posters. It's a derivative exhibition that tells you a bit about Van Gogh but has paintings by artists with some sort of tenuous connection.

The curator told us that Vincent spent 18 months in Provence, producing 300 paintings... and that today in the whole of Provence there is just one original left. Fired up by the postcards and with my youthful passion for Van Gogh reignited, we headed for Arles.

It wasn't the best day to see the place: a vicious wind charged with icy shards of rain was roaring down the Rhone and the sky was dark with menace. But Arles, even in the foulest of weather, is everything you ever wanted from a French town: elegant with a pleasing air of decay.

You can wander in the picturesque beauty of the old town with its delightful back streets, and then you burst out into the light and space of Les Arenes with its incomparable Roman theatre. You just gasp at the might of Rome, at the colossal beauty of this relic of imperial splendour, standing proud after 2,000 years and still used even now for concerts.


Food for thought: Provence is alive with charcuteries and patisseries selling glorious local produce


Beside it is the Van Gogh Museum, again with no Van Goghs, but paintings and photos in homage to him. The curator informed us as we entered that there were no originals there. 'There's only one in Provence, and it's in the Musee Anglodon in Avignon,' she said. 'It's railway carriages...'

So we crossed the bridge to Trinquetaille and ambled up the right bank of the river to Avignon where, without even seeing the papal palace, we dashed into the Anglodon just before closing time.

The Railway Carriages is, frankly, not one of Van Gogh's best. It was better than Ana's lemons, but even so it was a bit disappointing. There was a wonderful Sisley in there of somewhere in the snow, which was much more satisfying. The rest of the museum was devoted to the beautiful drawings of ruined Rome by Hubert Robert. It's amazing what a gifted man with a red pencil can do.

We struggled out of the Avignon traffic and raced back east along the gorgeous avenues of plane trees to St Remy, to arrive in time for dinner. You may think that I'm labouring the point about the eating but let's face it: that's what you do in Provence. And besides, isn't the very best way to consummate one's delight in the beauty of a place to slip a hunk of it into your mouth and rejoice in its textures and flavours? It certainly beats dragging round the shops and wasting money on tourist tat.

That night we ate Provence to perfection - I didn't think things could get any better after Bistro Bru's offerings but I shall never forget the improbably named Mon Pere Etait Patissier, set in a glorious garden just outside the village.

Later, we set out for Digne, the reason being that Digne and the Bishop of Digne loom large in the first chapters of my favourite novel, Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. We headed east towards the Alps and in the Roman town of Riez we stopped to ask the way and buy a map.

'Digne?' spluttered the woman in the shop. 'Why ever would you want to go to Digne? Digne's a dump.'

Another woman joined the fray; she said there were some nice fossils at Digne and a butterfly museum with real butterflies. But we all agreed that fossils and butterflies were no reason to visit a dump like Digne. Clearly the people of Riez had it in for Digne.

'You should go to Moustiers; it's very beautiful, very fleurie, and don't forget the Gorges du Verdon,' the shop woman called as we left.

We snaked down a wooded hill into a valley, rounded a bend and gasped at our first sight of Moustiers Sainte-Marie. The village hangs from the lower part of the most fearsome crag, with a waterfall cascading through the centre. Steep alleys with steps and bridges rise from the heart of the village and thread their way among the rocks and water courses. And as a backdrop, there rises a great mountain, ascending in cliffs and pinnacles, dwarfing the village.



In-Vince-ible: Van Gogh spent some 18 months in Provence - but left precious little of his work behind


The sheer drama of the setting is enough to take your breath away. Inevitably, there's a lot of soap and candles and lavender bags on sale, but you can put up with that for a place of such awesome beauty and, besides, Ana enjoys a bit of that sort of thing. If you eat too well - and you will in Moustiers - there are wonderful walks through the woods on the mountain.

Nearby in the Lac du Verdon, where you can swim and boat and camp, is the entrance to the fabulous Gorges du Verdon. There you can take a raft trip down the turquoise river where it snakes deep down in the cleft of the colossal canyon.

Ah, Provence, the most glorious pleasure garden of the world. This trip was but a tempting entree, we'll soon be going back for the plat.

Travel Facts
Room rates at Hotel Sous les Figuiers in St Remy start at €75 (£62) for two people. Call 0033 432 601 540 or visit www.hotelcharmeprovence.com. British Airways (www.ba.com) flies to Marseille from Gatwick from £96.10 return.

Rail Europe (0844 848 4070, www.raileurope.co.uk) offers rail travel from London St Pancras to Avignon. Return fares start at £119.

Tour operators to Provence include Travelzest VFB Holidays (01452 716840, www.vfbholidays.co.uk), and Kirker Holidays (020 7593 2283, www.kirkerholidays.com).
Chris Stewart's latest book, Three Ways To Capsize A Boat, is published in paperback by Sort Of Books at £7.99.


source: dailymail