Blissful Adventures

This is Charingworth Manor on the outskirts of Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds…

We’ve written so much about England in past blogs that we decided to take a break this year. Then we came to the Cotswolds to stay in a country mansion that was built before 1316 AD and decided that we couldn’t keep it to ourselves. Charingworth Manor was built on land given to Randolf de Todeni by William the Conqueror following the Norman invasion of 1066. How do we know this? It’s all written down in the Domesday Book – the great 1086 chronicle of all lands and possessions ordered by King William so that no one could avoid paying him tax. The tax in 1086 was six English pounds, which won’t even get you a pot of tea or a swim in the Manor’s heated pool today…

Charingworth Manor has only been a luxury boutique hotel since 1987 but, in nearby Stow-on-the-Wold, the Porch House Hotel has been an Inn since 947 AD when it was built by the Knights Templar to house pilgrims…

Centuries meld into millennia in this part of the world and old is simply a relative term. For example: the Market Hall in Chipping Campden could almost be described as a recent addition having been erected just four hundred years ago in 1627…

Many of the houses and shops in Chipping Campden and nearby towns are more than five hundred years old. Harper’s Cottage in Stow was built in 1394…

This is a truly ancient land where every Medieval high street is lined with edifices of honey-coloured Cotswold stone buildings and ancient scenes greet us at every turn. This is the riverside at Bourton-on-the-Water…

But stone constructions were the norm here thousands of years ago…

This is the five-thousand-year-old stone circle known as the Rollright Stones near Chipping Norton. While its original purpose has been long forgotten, it is surrounded by a wealth of myths and supernatural folklore involving witches, fairies, invading Danes, and the famous prophetess Mother Shipton. Whatever the Rollright Stones’ original purpose, it is claimed that the nearby group of giant stones known as ‘The Whispering Knights’ was a burial chamber built five-thousand-eight-hundred-years ago as a tomb for three knights who were accused of treachery…

We may never know the truth, but in researching this blog we came across a snippet of interesting, (albeit frightening), history. In 1124 King Henry I summoned all 150 of the kingdom’s official moneymakers to account for the fact that some were making and distributing substandard coins. Ninety-four were convicted and were each punished by having their right arm and one testicle amputated. Apparently, the quality of coins dramatically improved thereafter.
On a more cheerful note: while visiting the Cotswolds we just had to drop in on the farm shop made famous in the Amazon Prime series Clarkson’s Farm. Here we are at Diddly Squat Farm…

And if you haven’t watched the series, maybe you should. We found it most enlightening, (and very funny).

The uniformly grey skies that greeted us on our return to England finally relented and gave us glorious vistas of copper, bronze, and gold as the deciduous trees and hedgerows prepared for winter…

This friendly little English robin posed patiently for a photoshoot at Stourhead in Wiltshire...

The only thing missing was a dusting of snow. It’s forecasted to arrive soon but, with temperatures hovering in the low teens, we have revelled in the rural beauty of England’s West Country while visiting some of its prettiest communities. This is a timeless land where entire villages of thatched cottages transport us back to the Middle-ages…

…where cathedrals, minsters and abbeys have withstood religious intolerance, secular wars and deathwatch beetles for a thousand-years or more. Peasants and nobility, including Sir Walter Raleigh, have worshipped here in Sherbourne since its inception as a Saxon Abbey in 705AD…

The chanting of Benedictine monks filled the air for the Abbey’s first 800 years, while more recent congregants have been summonsed to worship by the heaviest peal of eight bells in the world. The fan vaulted ceiling is said to be the finest in Europe…

With the cities of Bournemouth, Salisbury, Dorchester and Weymouth behind us, we headed along the Jurassic Coast to the birthplace of Agatha Christie on the palm-fringed bay of Torquay, (the self-described ‘English Riviera’)…

This happy couple dressed in authentic 1930s attire were joining hundreds of like-minded enthusiasts for a weekend of music and dancing celebrating the 30s and 40s.
From Torquay we carried on westward across Dartmoor, the onetime home of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and setting for Sherlock Holmes and ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’, to the dreaded penitentiary of Dartmoor Prison, and then to the historic fishing village of Kingsand on the Rame Peninsula in Cornwall….

After our Tour de France took us to so many ancient places, we hadn’t planned on an historical excursion around southern Britain. But history is unavoidable here. The tiny village of Kingsand, and its neighbour Cawsands, survived for centuries on fishing and piracy but, today, they are the refuges of the well-heeled escaping the rat-race, and weekenders taking a welcome break. This hardy group of year-round swimmers called, “The Brixham Batty Bathers,” were happy to give us a smile before cheerfully braving the frigid Atlantic waters…

After a lengthy swim they assured us that the water was a balmy 13 or 14 degrees, but we weren’t tempted. However, we loved their spirit and their flambouyant headgear. We also saw that many of the post-boxes in England had pretty woolly hats like this…

It seems that these knitted and crocheted art installations are a nationwide phenomenon made by people called ‘yarn bombers’ that celebrate Britishness in several ways.
Now we are back on the road; heading north to the Cotswolds in the heart of England where we will probably encounter even more history. Oh well – someone has to do it.

As we stand in the central square of Montpellier in front of the Le Comedie Opera House, we wonder if we have taken the wrong train and ended up in Paris by mistake…

The elegant facades of the 17th and 18th century buildings of Montpellier surround squares and boulevards that make up the largest traffic-free city area in Europe. Only trams, bicycles and, (annoyingly), electric scooters, are allowed in most areas. Sleek electric trams run silently through the main streets and pop in and out of tunnels…

Montpellier was a major Aragon city until it was sold to France in 1349. Its university was founded in 1220 and a quarter of its population today are students. We benefitted from this fact as all the delightful young women working in our hotel are studying for careers in tourism and hotel management and were keen to show off their skills. While tourism is important today, the university’s medical faculty is one of the oldest in the world and its buildings were once the cloisters of the Monastery attached to the Gothic cathedral…

Like many Medieval and earlier buildings, the cathedral and cloisters have been rebuilt and remodelled several times following wars and general decay. For example: this Arc de Triomphe was built in 1692 to replace an earlier one…

…and the “Romanesque’ aqueduct that brought water to the city from a spring 14 kilometres away, was actually built in the 1750s…

Many of the buildings of Montpellier have older bones hidden beneath elegant stucco facelifts and it is very difficult to tell what is ancient or modern. King Louis XIII was responsible for much of Montpellier’s elegance in the 17th century and his son, Louis XIV, decreed that no buildings should overshadow his father's legacy. This is Louis XIV…

While Louis’ decree was religiously observed, an entire area of the city known as Antigone was constructed in the 1990s and its architecture reflects a much earlier period…

But enough history for this trip. Montpellier is a beautiful city that also has some award-winning modern architecture that may appear out of place in the seemingly ancient city…

In the end, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. While there are many great fountains in the squares of Montpellier, we found this one to be the particularly amusing…

Our Tour de France is now coming to an end and family awaits us in England. However, unlike the cyclists of the Tour de France, we won’t make it to Paris this time. But we will be back. Drawn by the history; the food; the sun; the wonderfully kind and helpful young French people; and the fabulous scenery glimpsed through the avenues of plane trees that are so much a part of the south of France...

À bientôt for now.

Avenues of giant plane trees shade us from the sun as we drive through the Provençal countryside, and we are frequently enticed to stop as we glimpse an ancient church, or the remains of a castle, perched on a mountainside and silhouetted against the intensely blue sky. This is the chateau of Oppède in the Luberon Massif…

But something is missing in the Luberon and on the slopes of the Vaucluse mountains this year.
In 2016 when we were here at exactly this time the vineyards were a kaleidoscope of fall colours as the newly picked vines prepared for winter. This is how we saw the vines of the Luberon at that time…

But now, just eight years later, the scene has changed. It has been 4 or 5 degrees warmer than on our previous visit. Despite some well-publicised recent rains, the vines appear exhausted following a hot, dry, summer, and they lack the energy to put on a colourful autumnal display. The vine leaves that were previously so vibrant are desiccated and brown now and we are disappointed as we look across the valley from the hilltop village of Bonnieux to the ruined castle of the Marquis de Sade in the village of Lacoste….

Not all is lost. There is still plenty of colour in Provence where almost every grave is adorned with bouquets of chrysanthemums in memory of the dearly departed…

…and the Provençal markets are full of life and colour. No matter how many times we stumble across one, we can’t resist the allure of the local produce – especially the breads and cheeses…

Some, like the Sunday artisans’ market in Aix-en-Provence, are clearly geared towards the tourists, while others like the Thursday market in Orange are packed with stalls selling clothing, shoes, household appliances and even beds, alongside all manner of foods. However, one of the most eclectic and interesting markets that we stumbled upon in Provence was the Saturday market in Lourmarin…


The winding Medieval streets and tree lined boulevards of this village in the Luberon were heaving with stallholders and shoppers on the sun-filled long weekend of All Saint’s Day. Once we had bought some local callisons and jellied fruits we sat down for lunch and watched the world go by. This is truly La Vie en Rose in the Luberon…

Now we are in the elegant city of Montpellier – only an hour by train from rural Cavaillon, but in another world.

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The Roman theatre in Orange was opened to the public in thirty-six BC and it is still used for performances today. While many Roman amphitheatres are in existence in Europe, Asia and North Africa, many of which are used today, only the Theatre of Orange still has its completely original stage wall. This is the enormous backstage as seen from the street…

And this is the stage...

It even had a retractable sunroof made of multiple curtains that were suspended on ropes. To appreciate the awe-inspiring enormity and complexity of the stage it is necessary to visit this architectural masterpiece. However, some idea of its size can be gauged from this photo taken from the Upper Circle…

You may just see Sheila waving from the back of the stalls.
Comedies, dramas and musical extravaganzas were performed on this stage at least one hundred days a year. All performances were free to attend and as many as ten thousand folks attended each presentation. However, the seating protocol was very strict with the highest ranking men sitting on chairs in the front rows while lesser mortals and women were relegated to the various levels of circles depending on their place in society.

In its early years it was common to have beautiful young women performers who, to the delight of the men in the front rows, often ended up naked on stage. Anyone who has seen ancient Roman statues will know that public nudity wasn’t an issue, even mixed naked bathing was the norm, until the rise of Christianity. This is a statue of Ceasar’s wife in the centre of Orange, (although it’s certainly not an original)…

Orange was a magnificent city in Roman times and, in keeping with tradition, its entry was through a triumphal arch…

There are many historic buildings in and around Orange, including the sprawling centuries-old farmhouse where we stayed, but perhaps we are focussing too much on the historic and ignoring those things for which Provence is famous. The beautifully clear air and vibrant colours that brought Van Gogh and all the other artists here can be best appreciated in its nature. These olives and persimmons were growing at our farm stay…

However, Provence is best known for its wines, and we were fortunate enough to have a friend from Lyons guide us to the finest of the areas vineyards and treat us to a superb lunch and some excellent wines from these casks at Beaumes de Venise…

While many tourists visit Provence, few get to explore the roads less travelled. With Patrick we were able to explore some of the ancient villages that dot this beautiful area of France. This is the Medieval gateway to the tiny village of Camaret-sur-Aigues…

We are still racing hard to complete our tour in the next few days and will join the public holiday crowds to celebrate All Saints Day – a day to remember the dead.