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Assuming anything in the UK is a tad risky these days.
Assuming your train will arrive, assuming that you are actually
going to get to the airport before your plane takes off,
or worse that the plane will take off with your non-refundable
cheap ticket or just as bad be delayed for twelve hours.
You can’t even assume it will go to the destination
you paid for. You might even assume your Easyjet rentacar
will be in perfect condition and that you don’t have
to spend an hour listing every scratch and dent in a dark
underground garage to avoid them socking it to you when
you return it. (Just remember they will get you anyway).
When travelling assume the worst. But you will travel anyway,
just so you can escape...
When you arrive in Nice, you can also assume that they will
have caught the ‘climate angleterre’ that week
and the rain will be bucketing down, but have no fear, unlike
your actual England, they have drains that believe it or
not, drain! The Cote D’Azure does have floods and gales
and even snow, but it is only a little pageant that they
arrange to entertain the locals. You can be assured that
the very next day the roads will be dry, the sky blue, the
trees upright and the coffee hot.
Of course, being in Nice during a Eurosummit (have no fear
all the others will now take place in Brussels) produces
it’s own cloudburst. The French police have been trained
by Serbia’s finest thugs and they even go to the extreme
of welding shut the sewers during the summit, closing the
stations, the border, imposing a ‘red zone’ to
keep people out and woe betide anyone who wants a cafe creme
in a sidewalk cafe. They just wade in and belt the life
out of you anyway. Cops really know how to make your day
in Nice.
So, you go to Port Grimaud, around two hours away on the
scenic route. This is your place of choice to rid yourself
of SAD (seasonal affective disorder) and here, in the winter
sunshine you can place a layer of vitamin D enriched carcinogens
upon your face. Port Grimaud is one of those sixties dream
concepts - around 3000 homes in a water setting that resembles
a Mediterranean Venetian village. Unlike a real village
however, in winter is is empty, with bored security guards
staring out of their windows at the scudding clouds.
No matter, you are here, the sun is out and you are hungry.
Finding a restaurant that is actually open from Port Grimaud
to St Tropez requires cunning however; and cash. No one
takes credit cards (Carte Blanche) in winter and if you
see someone else approaching the same restaurant as you,
run like hell, there will only be one table left and it
is YOURS!. Naturally you will be shocked by the prices of
the food, but it will be excellent and if you want to eat
in the old port of St Tropez, just be grateful that they
are open at all. Pagnol, situated on one of the narrow terraced
streets of the Vieux Port is one such place. The place is
warm, the service friendly, the music contemporary low key
jazz. (It’s a pleasant curiosity that Cote d’Azure
restaurants place pretty good CDs at night and you can pretty
much choose your food with what kind of music you want to
hear).
Staying in Port Grimaud does beg one question however. Why
does one live in England at all? Even a winter in the community
of ghosts is better than the daily interface with the hell
that is English weather. I write this on a sunny balcony,
warm, not hot, a Siamese cat gingerly making it’s way
off a million pound yacht for its morning ablutions. I can
contemplate a stroll ( actually a rather long stroll) to
the nearest cafe to have a cafe creme and read the Financial
Times (which is published in Marseilles). It probably isn’t
true, but I can feel the aging process slowing down as my
body gets into synch with the unaccustomed sun. (And it
does need slowing down)
Someone once asked me if I ever got bored of sun. One might
as well ask if you get bored of sex or food. Mostly not
I’d say. It is no coincidence that thousands of Finns
go stark staring mad each year for a lack of sun. (And a
rather excessive amount of booze).
When Price Albert was alive, Queen Victoria made this area
her winter retreat . Nice still has the Promenade des Anglais
and a tradition of the rich English wintering there. The
British gentry made Nice their winter home from 1861 onwards
when the Blue Train began its regular run from Victoria
via Paris to Nice. (It still runs from Paris). Artists like
Henri Matisse, Picasso, Marc Chagall, were all inspired
by the winter sun here and writers such as Graham Greene,
Marcel Pagnol of ‘Jean de
Florette’ fame. A recent celebration of the
area and it’s past came with the wonderful movies of
Yves Robert who directed ‘The Glorie de mon pere’
and the ‘Le Chateau de ma mere’ (1991) set in
in the colines overlooking the sea. Travelling up to the
hilltop mediaeval villages of Gassin or Grimaud one can
see little has changed since the turn of the last century
up there and if you want to sample that life, buy those
movies and treasure them.
St Tropez is dwarfed by the stratocruiser boats that crowd
the harbour, empty boats that await their rich owners who
might use them for, at the most, a few weekends in the year.
Curiously, in the adjacent car park there are around sixty
parked motorhomes, a kind of ironic parody of the luxury
yachts. Northern Europeans escaping the worst of the winter
living at the southern extremity of France for a few months.
Modern mock-gypsies in shapeless homes, a curious phenonema
with none of the community spirit and culture that goes
with gypsy life.
St Tropez doesn’t really exist in winter - shops go
through the motions, most hotels are closed but Saturdays
are rather special. St Tropez comes alive on this day in
winter. The Saturday market in Les Lices is much more than
your average English affair . The clothes have style and
don’t look as though have been nicked from a Kosovan
refugee camp. Prices vary here from cashmere sweater seconds
at £15, to pigskin full length coats lined with cashmere
just short of £400. There are stalls laid out with
all the herbs you could imagine at 10 or 20 francs a scoop,
jams, flowers, the usual craft stuff and all of this surrounded
by cafes that don’t blanche at charging 30 francs for
a cafe creme in a small cup. The best part is a winter wonderland
that sprang up overnight in the market place. A forest of
pine trees sprayed with fake snow surrounding an ice-rink
where, for the first day only, young ladies in skimpy costumes
will do things with hula-hops on the ice. (It’s a family
thing, get your mind right). Put it this way, Scunthorpe
it isn’t.
I love the way the French pile everything into one space,
right here is a bijou little cinema currently showing ‘Small
Time Crooks’ the Woody Allen movie (Which is
very funny, even dubbed into French) and ‘Coyote Ugly’
which is good eye candy fodder for those who need that kind
of thing, a kind of ‘Flashdance’
for the ‘00’s. (Come to think of it, it has the
same producer).
St Tropez is dormant in winter on other days, so if you
can, go to Cannes, it provides a rare contrast. Cannes is
lively, the shops offer the best of everything, the morning
fish market is astonishingly huge with the loot of the Med
on display in copious quantities and choice; it is also
a fantastic space when empty.
Cannes Fish Market
The whole town has a busy atmosphere to it and it is friendly
(well it is if you’re buying things). Cannes is a lot
cheaper than St Tropez too, the benefits of competition
at work here. Agnes B may even offer discounts if you are
lucky. Because Cannes is an all year round place with conferences,
film festivals and summer crowds, it feels relaxed, yet
has a positive charge about it. Importantly it also has
a strong sense of civic pride , the best and most dangerous
Mediterranean drive along the coast to get to it and the
most dedicated parking attendants in the world. (Be warned).
St Tropez to Cannes is a good hours drive in winter, at
least two and a half in summer and you’ll pass some
of the most beautiful hillside villas you’ll see anywhere
as you go.
St Raphael is another contrast. This is silver city. Thousands
of refugees from the northern winter have retired here and
it has a slightly down market feel to the place as does
Frejus next door. Property is cheap and although more attractive
than Bournemouth, it has that kind of feel to it. That might
be a little unfair. The weather is a LOT better than Bournemouth
and the greys wear clothes with a tad more style. St Maxime,
on the other hand, is smaller, yet has a kind of sparkle.
With lots of restaurants (of differing quality) it is a
natural stop on the way to Cannes or back to St Tropez.
If I was going to chose to live all year around though,
Cannes is the best choice. It is more sophisticated, has
cinemas that show ‘version original’ and some
excellent coffee bars that are crowded with people trying
to out style each other.
Winter in Port Grimaud if you wish, but like the villages
in the hills that surround it, these places only come alive
in the summer months (April to September) and you’ll
be living with the dead in winter. The silence might be
hard to bear.
Curiously, although southern France is lifeless in winter,
just across the border in northern Spain, it is incredibly
alive. Crossing the unmanned borders to go to Barcelona
on the Med or San Sebastian on the Atlantic side is like
going from 'Sleepy Hollow'
to New York City, it is that bigger a contrast. Something
one should consider if you are thinking about buying a home
out here to escape the cold weather. In the end, either
you will like the slow pace of southern France or the spicier
Northern Spain. Oddly enough, the price of property is similar,
although it is far cheaper to buy in Spain and simpler too.
In France, lawyers have to be paid which will account for
twenty percent on top of the price, massive deposits found
and you cannot back out of a deal under any circumstances
once you have committed! So either have the ready cash or
better yet, find a friend who has a place in France and
just can’t quite tear themselves away from the shopping
in Fifth Avenue or Bond Street. The kind that wouldn’t
be seen dead on an EasyJet flight. But you don’t mind,
pride is for those who can afford it, right?
It’s your call, city life or solitude. For my money,
Cannes is best, you have everything you need and sunshine
and that can’t be bad.
Cannes
Think then of this. The novel you intended to write, that
picture you wanted to paint, that life you wanted to live,
it’s here now, just waiting for you in the winter sun.
If you want to go call Easyjet now:
0870 600 0000 or www.easyJet.com
(it's cheaper to book on the web)
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