Life in the French Backwoods

Gentle Reader,

If you have heard of the Cévennes, it is likely from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. It is a little known mountainous, or rather hilly, region in central southern France, beginning 100 kilometres north of the Mediterranean. 

Even most French consider it the back of beyond. In a country full of unspoiled and lovely regions (and I do not number Provence among the unspoiled) it remains as yet remote and rustic. 

The area is much loved by the Dutch, perhaps as an alternative to a country whose highest hill measures 100 meters. My then partner, later husband, fell in love with the area while hitchhiking as a student decades ago and dreamt of buying a house near where I live now. The “peasant” (in French paysan means farmer, not bumpkin) who owned his dream house with its dream vista of hills folding to the horizon never wanted to sell, so we set out to find a house with a similar exposition, and voilà: twenty years ago we found a pile of granite blocks in a small hamlet with the same dreamy view. 

This blog is my chance to ruminate on life here, and perhaps on life in general.