Fluffy sheep munched happily on tender green grass. A creek burbled with melted snows and cherry blossoms shook their show overhead. It was just such a pinch your cheeks kind of moment when we arrived in Collobrières.
For just over a week, Remi and I sliced across the roads of the Var region with Ben, our Golden Retriever in tow. Although it is fairly close to our home in Arles, it is a land that we knew only in highway passing blurs. And what a fine discovery it was. Enchanted is a word that is completely appropriate.
Some smarty in a tourism office had come up with the idea that the Var is the “Provence Verte” or green Provence and I can tell you, they earned their pay that day. Gone is the rushed brush of Olé chants and prickly rosemary, of site-lines cut only by a stone block mas and cypresses straining upwards. No, softness is to be found everywhere with the tickle of new buds and the sweetness of a village life that seemed to be much more from the antan, the olden times.
My ankles wobbled on the uneven paths as my eye zoomed from detail to panorama and back again. Petered out patina, a wash of fallen blossoms…
…hanging gardens to be reclaimed as the sun went down…
…ruins that have forgotten and been forgotten…
…and kittens playing on a lace background. Who appreciates these kinds of things anymore?
Clearly the folks in Collobrières do. Their village radiates a well-kept pride.
But I knew that we had chance on our side. We roamed completely alone and this on a holiday weekend. There was room to see.
We chose a cheery terrace for lunch. And then, ladies and gentlemen, on the day before Easter…
…I ate the Easter Bunny. And he was good.
The sun was a balm and our shoulders fell with a whoosh. How delighted we were to stumble upon a village that was dream-worthy of the “maybe we could live here” kind. Little did we know how many more we would discover in the days ahead…
