Old Ansouis

We arrived in Ansouis and the painters wandered off to find their inspiration. There were winding streets, a view over the valley, an art exposition and a fortress church, dark inside, junky-looking and well-used.

Jerry kindly gave me a ride to the nearby walled town of Cucuron for further exploration, dropping me off at the étang, a long rectangular pond lined with cafes and tall plane trees whose branches met at the top.

From the ruin of the donjon on a hill at one end of town I looked over the pleasing jumble of red tile roofs and listened to the church bell clang noon.

Then I wandered through flower-scented streets to the church. A poplar tree as tall as the facade had been stripped of most branches and leaned against the bell tower. The tree had been set in place at Le Mai de Sainte Tullle festival, an annual event in thanksgiving to Sainte Tulle for stopping the plague in the village in 1720 (it had already killed 100,000 in Marseille).

Inside the church one of the chapels contained a forest of delightful wooden trees that had been brightly painted, perhaps by Sunday School children, and decorated with thanks to God for various blessings.

I counted my blessings too: Water from a street fountain in Ansouis to fill my bottle; a little quiche aux lardons (the last quiche) from a bakery; a clean WC with an actual sit-upon toilet in a public park by the étang; directions posted on a bulletin board outside the closed tourist office for an appropriate walk. Properly fortified, I set off uphill from the étang in the sun on a rocky trail brushed by great clumps of ginestra. After a couple kilometers a 17th-century hermitage appeared, set perfectly on a ridge among herbs and scrub pines.

A shaded stone picnic table to the right held a famille en pique-nique. I walked around the lovely little hermitage’s corners and buttresses and found a spot in the shade on a wide ledge up some broken steps in the back to eat my lunch of quiche, two apricots, bread, chocolate and water. Settled under puffy clouds in a blue sky, in the deep and tangled green of the woods, with the buzz of bees and birdsong on whispers of breeze, I tried to fix the scene in my mind for recall on days of unremarkable gray.

Quiche for lunch

Though I had called Maurice from my lunchtime aerie, our phone connections are generally not doing well and I couldn’t reach him to pick me up back at the étang. But the blessings didn’t stop. “Want some candy, little girl?” asked a voice from a passing car. It was Vince riding with Ken, over for a quick trip to see the étang and happy to give me a ride back to Ansouis. As we headed up to town we passed Jerry and waved; when I didn’t call at the expected time Maurice had sent him out to find me. I was well cared for–and back just in time for the 3:00 tour of Ansouis’ chateau, tout en français. The proprietress shepherded about forty of us through the enormous residence that had been in her family for centuries. The original medieval fortress was intriguingly connected to the newer chateau surrounding it. No pictures allowed “because it is private” our hostess told us (as if that is a reason) as she led us, talking non-stop, past a well / escape route, then through stone chambers, guardroom, chapel, prison, dining room, wondrous kitchen and beautifully furnished Versailles-style bedrooms.

Back garden of the chateau d’Ansouis

Just as my tour let out, Maurice appeared with his paints and canvases packed up for the day. We were tired when we got home, though it was still light in the long Provençal day. I whipped up supper from olive oil and garlic and scraps of the Provençal earth. We sat at the patio table until the 9:30 dusk, when Maurice the butler thought to get the dishes done and the laundry folded. Oh, my shoulder….

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