Vintage Departures / My Twenty-five Years in Provence

Chapter One

Early Days

It started with a lucky break in the weather. My wife, Jennie, and I had escaped the rigors of the English summer to spend two idyllic weeks on the Côte d Azur, which according to popular rumor enjoys three hundred days of sunshine a year. But not that year. It rained, hard and often. The beach umbrellas hung in sodden clumps. The plagistes, those bronzed young men who patrol the beaches, were huddled in their huts, their shorts soaked. Cafés along the Promenade des Anglais were filled with forlorn parents and fractious children who had been promised a day splashing about in the sea. In the International Herald Tribune, there was news of a heat wave in En­gland. As we prepared to leave Nice, we hoped the heat would last until we got home.

A situation like this requires some kind of consolation. We considered going across the border to Italy, hopping on the ferry to Corsica, or making the long drive down to Barcelona in time for dinner. But in the end, we decided on exploring France. Instead of taking the autoroutes, we would stay on the smaller secondary roads. Even in the rain, we thought, they would be prettier and more interesting than joining the procession of trucks and caravans on the main highway to the north. And besides, our experience of France had been confined to Paris and the coast. This would be virgin territory.

In those days, long before GPS, we used maps. And one of the few familiar names we found was Aix-­en-­Provence. There would be restaurants in Aix. There might even be sunshine. Off we went.

The Route Nationale 7, I think, is the French equivalent of Route 66, which the old song taught us was where to go to get our kicks. The kicks on the RN 7 used to be at their height each year in July and August, when most of Paris took what was then the main road down to the south. It, too, had its famous song, performed by Charles Trenet, the lyrics dripping with le soleil, le ciel bleu, les vacances, and the promise

Peter Mayle wrote fifteen previous books. He was a proud recipient of the Légion d’Honneur from the French government for his cultural contributions. He died in January 2018.

Full of thoughtful reflections and trenchant observations. . . . It s wonderful to get to go on one more journey with [Mayle] and remember why we fell in love with him and his writing. San Francisco Chronicle

Idyllic. USA Today

A warm, nostalgia-soaked look at the place [Mayle] loved so dearly, packed with fond recollections of the pleasures of life in the region, from pastis to Pétanque. Travel + Leisure
 
[Mayle s] keen eye and wit are much on display. The Philadelphia Inquirer

[A] well-loved writer s contented recap of a life well lived. . . . Mayle set a new course for travel writing. Minneapolis Star Tribune
 
Delightfully quaint anecdotes from the years since Mayle and his wife, Jennie, escaped office life in New York and London in the 1980s for a simpler, sunnier life in Provence. . . . Composed in a uniformly bright and jocular voice, this is a breezy valedictory note for a much admired writer. Publishers Weekly
 
A welcome, if bittersweet, victory lap. The book s final sentences are particularly resonant of a life well lived: I must go. Lunch is calling. The New York Times Book Review
 
Mayle takes readers back to the idyllic, slow-paced and occasionally befuddling world that [he] first wrote about in his best-selling memoir A Year in Provence. . . . [My Twenty-Five Years in Provence] treads delightfully familiar ground for fans who succumbed to the charms of Mayle s first book. The new volume transports readers to the South of France through the eyes of an Englishman who never ceases to marvel at the sunshine, fine food and sometimes inscrutable culture of his adopted turf. Associated Press
 
In this final memoir, Mayle returns to the beginning. . . . This is France, so of course food and wine play a large part in his writing. But while Mayle can pen a mouthwatering description of bouillabaisse, what has always drawn readers to his writing are his loving portraits of people, community and the