Twelve cottages in France

Twelve cottages in France

I am a bass in the Sydney Male Choir.  My choir was invited to sing at the ANZAC Day ceremony at Villers-Bretonneux in France on 25 April 2013.  We decided to take 12 weeks to explore France – each week in a different place.  We wanted to stay in villages rather than towns or farmhouses; mainly because we thought the atmosphere would be more personal.  Helen’s mother is to have her 100th birthday in early May, so we needed to be back for that celebration.

There is no doubt that we would have preferred to have our 3 months in France in spring-summer rather than winter-spring.  However, to fit in 3 months and be in France for ANZAC Day and be back in north Queensland by early May left us with little choice.

The winter-spring season did mean that we would be mainly in the south of France.  We have concentrated on the Languedoc and Midi-Pyrenees regions.

We had the idea for this journey after Helen found a wonderful web-site ‘Six cottages in France’.  www.cottagesinfrance.com These six 14C – 18C renovated cottages are owned by an Australian couple.  We fell in love with the cottages and the wonderful descriptions.  We wanted to go there, but the prices were above our budget.  So, we looked for cottages next door.

We found the French government gîte web-site www.gites-de-france.com limited in that it did not provide us with sufficient photos or descriptions.  However, HomeAway has provided gîte owners with a wonderful place to advertise.

Almost immediately, we fell in love with three cottages.  The three women owners had done a magnificent job at advertising.  Great photos of the cottages as well as mouthwatering photos and descriptions of the villages and surrounding area, plus great reviews from previous guests.  We just had to stay in these three.  (One is in the same street as one of the original ‘six cottages’.)  For the others, we worked out which village we wanted to stay in and then searched for a cottage.  (Strictly speaking, not all of our ‘cottages’ are strictly ‘cottages’.  Several are up several flights of stairs in apartments or old multistory houses; but the idea is there.)  Of the 12 ‘cottages’, 2 are in Paris, 2 in towns of a about 10,000 people, 7 are in villages of about 3,000 people, 1 is in a tiny village of 250 people and 1 is by itself in rural countryside.

We could not have done this without the internet.

I have written about this journey as four stories. The story of the cottage; the district or department that the cottage is in; the food of that district and the story of our journey.