Settling In Tuesday 15th July

The back road to the village

We are settling in and are fast becoming French citizens. For the time being we have no telephone, internet, television or radio. A quick visit to the computers at the local library gives us a window onto the outside world, but we take one look at our emails and decide that it is far more fun pulling the long grass and weeds out of the back garden and filling the courtyard with pots of red geraniums and hanging baskets. St Jean du Moulin is just as I remembered from a few visits twenty years back, and although the house has been closed up and the garden abandoned for nearly three years, it just needs to be brought back to life and it is going to be fun doing it. Within the first twenty four hours, we had swept the courtyard, thrown open all the shutters and opened the large windows. The breeze once again blows gently through the house and we set up home out on the terrace.

Something that has become instantly obvious is that the relatively narrow road outside the house has become something of a rat run to the nearby villages, and during commuter hours, the cars race by. The village has been protected to a certain extent by a series of speed humps, but of course as luck would have it, our house is on the one straight piece of road which doesn’t have one, and on a good day, cars and motorbikes can get up to 70 before they have to slam on brakes and take the corner. However, during lunchtime, it is unusual to hear so much as a wheelbarrow go past, and once everyone is home, the nights are quiet with only the occasional dog barking in the distance to disturb the peace.


St Jean du Moulin has quite an ancient history and the guide book issued by the very organised Mairie or municipal offices mentions that there were traces of a settlement here back in prehistoric times, but apparently the bits and pieces that were found have yet to be confirmed and dated. This could possibly make the village slightly more modern, but there are written records going back as far as 1004 and there was a Gallo Roman settlement here. The village church of St Martin is first mentioned in records in 1011 and the name St Jean du Moulin appears by 1194.


The current number of inhabitants are recorded as being 2300 but I’m not sure if we appear in the tally yet. The summer temperatures are around 24 degrees celcius (although I can vouch for the past few days having been a lot hotter) and in winter we can expect it to slump to a rather chilly 6 degrees which will definitely mean that I will be digging out the thermal vest and pulling on the track suits. The brochure goes on to mention the fact that the population has increased tenfold since the middle of the last century and there is no sign of this surge declining. Listening to the laughter and fun emanating from the children of our neighbour enjoying their swimming pool, everyone is doing their bit to keep the figures up, but when I see the speed at which some of the youngsters race around on their buzz bikes, I fear for the head count.


Two weeks ago, it was a mission to take the car and drive to Publix Supermarket in Miami for a loaf of bread. Now it is an adventure to find an open (or occasionally frustratingly closed) boulangerie filled with crisp baguettes, tempting croissants and the amazing display of twisted, plaited fragrant local bread. Issuing from the small café in the village is the smell of good coffee and immediately we begin to absorb the slower pace of life.


Nobody would dream of entering the “Mairie” or the Bureau de Poste without first greeting the occupants, be they customers or incumbents. I have yet to hear a car hooter blown in frustration, and very often, traffic lights are a good excuse to exchange a few niceties with the oncoming traffic rather than blast the driver in front who has delayed his departure by three seconds. Everyone knows that with a bit of time and care, even the largest truck can pass through the miniscule streets, even if it means occasionally moving of a pot of bright geraniums or shooing away a sleeping dog. Nobody would think of scolding the driver for attempting to negotiate the narrow roads since he is probably the bearer of cool drinks for the café, pastis for the bar and meat for the charcuterie. Soon it will be lunchtime and then everything closes anyway, so why rush and hurry. We quickly learn that everything closes between 12.30 and 2pm, and on Sundays and Mondays, very little opens at all.


Once the heat has abated, we take the car out in the evening and meander through endless vineyards and take our lives in our hands by attempting to drive through villages where the houses are built sufficiently close to allow goods to be passed from the upper windows of one house, to its neighbour across the street. No wonder the cars in this region are small, nippy and easy to turn in extremely tight corners. For the time being, we are borrowing an ancient VW Golf from Jean’s sister and are learning to cope without power steering, with a diesel engine which needs to be warmed up first, and a rather recalcitrant gear box. Never mind. It’s cheap and it does what it’s supposed to do, so until we can afford something more modern and agile, we will putter around the countryside, and park next to similarly ancient vehicles that abound in every small space available. The very thought of driving “Big Bum” in these conditions is laughable, and the idea of gas guzzling Hummers and SUV’s forcing their way through the French countryside, makes me heartily glad that they stick to the Florida Turnpike, and leave us in peace.