Revisiting Corconne Monday 21st July

The barrel roll at Corconne

Yesterday we had made a plan to drive up to Ledignan in the afternoon and visit Mamy and Papy and then take a small detour to Braggasargues to collect a trailer and a rotovator from Jean’s sister. With no phone and nothing to force us to sit here waiting for the afternoon trip, we decided on making a day of it. The weather continues to be clear and hot, but with the car windows down and leafy country lanes providing a bit of welcome shade, we headed off up towards Pic St Loup before cutting across to Corconne.

I am starting to get the impression that France is like a pretty girl and it’s almost impossible to take a bad photo of her. The early sunshine on the butter coloured walls of the old villages, and the shimmer of light on the rows and rows of vines made for photographic compositions that even I in my novice state could turn into a calendar quality picture. I am a member of the “aim and fire” brigade of digital photographers, and there is great joy on returning home, to be able to upload the pictures to the computer and see the results. Of course there will always be those shots when a badly placed vehicle or the left leg of my beloved throws the composition off track, but I am getting better at it all the time.

It was wonderful to return to Corconne after a gap of about fifteen years. Nothing had changed, and being a Monday, it was like a ghost town with only a couple of occupants around. At least we thought there were a couple of occupants until we looked closely and realised that it was the same one. The ancient hill village requires its citizens to be stout of wind and limb in order to get from the levels below the church where things like the Mairie and a couple of small shops exist, up to the high lanes where the views are extraordinary. Gasping mildly on the way up, I was glad to be able to make photographic excuses and sink down onto a wall or lean against a tree and say that I was “framing a shot”.

There are narrow cobbled lanes that rise steeply between the cottages, one of which was used to bring the carts of raw olives up to the mill and then barrels of oil could be rolled down the same lane in the channel which ran between the well worn tracks. Judging by the indents in the cobbled stones, the donkeys and mules used to drag the sleighs upwards must have worked hard and been sorely loaded. Life in Corconne could never have been easy, but thanks to a large number of holiday home owners and a distinct lack of parking and accessibility, the village manages to maintain a fairly tranquil feel, interspersed only with gasps of people climbing upwards who meet their fellow citizens who are carefully descending. Whoever it was who manhandled the large iron cross to the top of the mountain behind Corconne, has my deepest respect.