Les vacances continuent

 

in the Drôme near Crest

Last week we went on holiday.  Since we can only now start planning trips to England, our current breaks are in France, and this trip was to the area we know well on the other side of the Rhône.  In fact it was the twinning link with Die that pulled us towards France from 1992 onwards, and over more than 10 years we visited the area 2 or 3 times a year.  We made friends there, and gradually got to know the neighbouring areas of Provence to the south and then the Languedoc further west, where we eventually decided to live.

Die is mountainous, and we prefer the flatter lands to live in, but we love revisiting our old haunts and discovering new bits - this was our second visit to the Crest area, between Die and Valence.  We found a simple comfortable gîte and drove around to Die, Châtillon-en-Diois and Saint Andéol-en-Quint (also an early holiday place for us, the first place we took Sam to, and where other ex-Wirksworth friends have now settled), and combined some gentle tourism and a bit of wine buying with visits to several good friends.

The countryside south of Crest and towards Saillans is dominated by an extraordinary mountainous area, a kind of long oval with forest in the centre, the forêt de Saou.  The mountains culminate at their eastern end by the Trois Becs, peaks visible from the A7 motorway as you approach from the south.  Jérôme, whom we welcomed to stay with us in Wirksworth in the 1990s and who now lives and works in Germany, invited us to eat with him in the little village of Saou, only 10 minutes from our gîte, which has a slightly alternative air and was humming with post-covid enjoyment the evening we ate their with him and his son Oscar.  It's a centre for walking and climbing, and Jérôme has known the area well since his youth growing up in Châtillon.

We were delighted to be able to visit Jérôme's parents Pierre and Michelle during our holiday.  Pierre was the percepteur (tax official) in Châtillon while Michelle was a teacher - over the years we stayed several times in their flat over the trésorerie and, when they retired, they built a house in the village righ on the little market square, the Champ de Foire.  they had both had covid but luckily were not too seriously ill.

We spent a morning wandering round Crest and had lunch in a pleasant restaurant there.  The tower, a former prison, is a landmark in the area, and we also visited Die itself, and spent some time with Krys, one of our oldest twinning friends.  On our final evening we also visited old Wirksworth friends Clare and Alan who moved to the area permanently after retirement - a very good evening meal in their garden in St Andéol, but the storm that accompanied our drive back to the gîte was not so much fun!  The links forged by twinning have stood the test of time.

the 7 deadly sins carved on a building in Crest - sloth, pride, envy, wrath, avarice, gluttony and lust