Southern France is the place to find effortless sophistication — or to buy a vintage bargain
The Vintage French Farmhouse Monday—Friday 4.30pm BBC1 - 22 September 2023
Of course Provence is a place, but for older generations like mine, accustomed to Findus dinners, bulb glasses of liebfraumilch and rainy bank holidays, it’s so much more. Beamed sunnily into our lives via film and literature, interiors, food and wine, Provence has long been a state of mind, from Bardot movies to Peter Mayle books, rosé to ratatouille to wrought-iron beds: a thoroughly British mode de vie.
Who needs to visit the idyll to live the life? Of course, we all do – but if you can’t for the forseeable, pour a Pernod and tune in to The Vintage French Farmhouse on BBC1. Add a little envy, too, of the antiques dealers fronting the show, among them Moses Otunla, Viki Knott, Ian Humphries and Jo Roberts from BBC Daytime’s The Bidding Room.
THEIR MISSION: To scour some of the region’s most beautiful brocantes (flea markets), rooting out bargains to take back and renovate at the Provençal farmhouse they’re staying in, posting the results for sale online. The dealer netting the biggest profit will be the day’s winner.
And for the rest of us? Good news – the dealers will be sharing tips on how to spot a vintage bargain, as well as advice on haggling and fail-safe strategies for selling at a profit. Best of all, each 45-minute episode promises pure sensory escapism, radiating the distilled nostalgia of France’s beautiful south...
If I could, right now I’d be back drinking rosé at a café on the Cours Mirabeau in Aix-en-Provence, Easter 1984; holidaying with a language-degree friend whose good sense it had been to spend her “academic” year abroad there gallivanting with handsome Frenchmen. I’d picked the short straw, in a strait-laced little German town called Wipperfürth, in North Rhine-Westphalia, where every day was like Sunday, it never rained but it poured – and never was a “beaker full of the warm South” (as the poet Keats put it) more needed.
Can’t stretch to a full 365 days, like the late Mr Mayle in his memoir A Year in Provence? Its crinkly littoral, biscuit-brown medieval hill villages and lavender-braided landscapes are easy to conquer in a week. For the perfect start, Aix marks the spot. Sure enough there’s a sprawling brocante on Saturdays (more frequently in season): head for Place des Combattants en Afrique du Nord, on Avenue Victor Hugo, to browse among old mirrors and decanters, battered cases and other pieces of pre-loved Provence to take home.
The elements that make the region so adorable are all in place in Aix, founded by the Romans: stalls brim with bright flowers and fruit; cafés spill across squares where fountains splash; stony streets worm their way about the sunny old town; and in the countryside all around are views worthy of post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, who was born here, along with his childhood friend, novelist Émile Zola. Cézanne worked and died in the town – and you can tour his atelier (cezanne-en-provence.com).
NEXT STOP: The coast, skipping high-maintenance Cannes for low-key Cassis, about an hour and 15 minutes south of Aix by train. Cocooned in a blue bay below tall flanks, it’s a town of pavements patterned with shade and light through plane trees, and a harbour of paintbox-bright façades and boat hulls. Time is measured in alley-cat yawns and wine slowly sipped with bowls of bouillabaisse, before the ascent, perhaps, to the ramparts of Cassis castle.
Southern France runs wild further in the western Camargue National Park, 90 minutes by car the other way from Aix: it’s an exhilarating expanse of marine ponds and salt marshes defined by two Rhône tributaries either side and the Mediterranean sea.
Pummelled by the hooves of feral horses, visited by flamingos off to Africa for winter, the Camargue is untamed yet steeped in centuries of human culture, from production of fleur de sel (sea salt) to plates of gardiane de taureau – a wine-laced stew made with the beef of indigenous roaming bulls. Base yourself in Arles, the so-called Camargue capital, where Gauguin painted scenes along the main avenue, as did Van Gogh. Year round, the Fondation Vincent van Gogh (fondation-vincentvangogh-arles.org/en) brings crowds to the town.
To Avignon, a holiday in itself with its Palais des Papes (the city was made the centre of Christendom by 14th-century papal decree). Its fairytale medieval looks are utterly Insta-glam, the historic quarter pops with blue shutters and scarlet awnings, and the celebrated Pont d’Avignon arcs photogenically across the lazy Rhône.
Beyond the town, have your close up with vineyards, lavender and lovely villages of the mountainous Luberon Regional National Park. Lacoste, Bonnieux and Ménerbes, near Mayle’s first home, are among the hamlets doable in a day from Avignon. But better to allocate a week. Or why not a year? After all, you’ll know where to haggle for the best vintage furnishings.
Of course Provence is a place, but for older generations like mine, accustomed to Findus dinners, bulb glasses of liebfraumilch and rainy bank holidays, it’s so much more. Beamed sunnily into our lives via film and literature, interiors, food and wine, Provence has long been a state of mind, from Bardot movies to Peter Mayle books, rosé to ratatouille to wrought-iron beds: a thoroughly British mode de vie.