I think a lot of our friends and relations think that we are completely stuck in our ways as we proceed to take nearly all of our holidays in the same country; France.
Everybody, it seems, has moved on.
The modern destinations now are places like Slovenia or Croatia and, in the Irish winter, there is a definite exodus to the islands in the Atlantic.
Meanwhile we remain loyal to France.
I think I have already pointed out the French plusses, the food, the culture, the language, their remarkable maintenance of their culture and their climate. All of these plusses could be observed in several other countries and, lets face it the climate is not all that fantastic in France outside the summer months.
The only logical answer then must be that our attachment must be an affair of the heart, and, like other romantic attachments this one does a fairly good job of shielding us from our loved one’s faults.
If I was to point out the moment when this love affair started I think I would have to say that it was on a family holiday we took on the French Riviera in November in 1990.
Looking back it must have been a moment of great and foolhardy courage for us to head off at the end of October, with our three daughters (aged 13, 10 and 7) with a fly drive ticket to Nice, with very little money, and nothing booked bar the first evening in a chambre d’hote near the airport.
From there we headed off up the Alps, driving on hair-raising corniches (I remember having to stop the car and dry my sweating palms which were in danger of slipping on the steering wheel)
We eventually found ourselves at night fall in the tiny village of Peille and managed to get a some rooms in a small hotel.
(They were a little surprised that we didn’t want dinner, the truth was that we had stopped at a supermarket and, like proper cheapskates, bought a picnic dinner to eat in our rooms)
The first moment of magic happened in the morning when we opened the shutters.
It was a glorious day and we were perched high up in the mountains with a beautiful view all the way down to the sea at Monaco.
It was quite magical.

This is this moment taken on my ancient Instamatic.

The following day we managed to persuade the owner of a campsite in St. Paul en Foret to let us have one of his chalets (we were the only people there) so we at least had the accommodation sorted for the rest of the week.

The chalet in St. Paul

The second moment of magic happened when we headed off to walk the fields by the campsite on our first morning there.
Intrigued by the heady smells which were rising as we walked we discovered that we were walking on lawns of wild thyme, I crushed a black berry growing on a conifer and suddenly was surrounded by the smell of gin, it was, of course, Juniper, then to all of our amazement we found ourselves in an orchard of Olives, the first time any of us had seen these fruits outside jars.
That afternoon we went to Monaco to the aquarium, which the children loved, the moment I remember best was looking out a window and seeing dolphins leaping in the Mediterranean.
As we walked through the town we had another first as one of the children grabbed me and said “ What’s that on the tree?”
So we saw our first growing lemon.
It was while staying in St. Paul that I went to an brocante fair in Feyance and bought my very first absinthe glasses.
This was also the holiday which we visited the Peyraud family in Bandol and were given a full tour of their Domaine Tempier and their amazing wines.

The Dwyer ladies with Jean-Marie Peyraud in Domaine Tempier

(We had no idea what a privilege this was, it was many years later that I realised the eminent food writer Richard Olney has written a cook book, A Provencal Table, which is exclusively recipes from this family and that the house in which they received us features in just about every book on Style Provencal, the family afterwards also paid us the compliment of coming to eat in our restaurant in Waterford.)

So it was a great holiday, a fitting start of a love affair.
I must also point out that we were extremely lucky with the weather which was glorious for the week, so much so that we went swimming in Antibes.
This was when the Riviera showed us its less savoury underbelly.
While we were swimming some thieves broke into our hired car, but again on the plus side all they managed to steal was one of the children’s tape machines and, as the car was a hired one we has a replacement organised in Cannes within hours.

Funnily we have never gone back to the Riviera since.
I think we hit it at it’s perfect month, quiet November.
A good month for starting love affairs.