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Dear
friends, Francophiles and food lovers,
Welcome to the second newsletter from Grillou in
Ariège, the ‘other’ south of France. To those who’ve
joined our mailing list since the first came out in
summer 2008, a warm bienvenue; to everyone
else, well, thanks for sticking in there!
"If you've never been
thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower
in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in
bloom."
- Audra Foveo
I’m writing this outside on a warm late May
evening; the birds are singing, the tree frogs are
croaking, the cicadas and crickets and grasshoppers
are chirping. I can hear cowbells from the valley
below, the village clock striking the hours in the
distance … and nothing else. The depth and vibrancy
of the greens that surround us is stunning. Roses
are in bloom, cherries are ripening. There is still
a little snow on the mountain tops. The scent of
fresh growth is everywhere. Next May, you can come
and experience this lushness for yourselves …
Grillou in bloom
We’ve pretty much finished the ‘relooking’ of our
end of the house, including the kitchen; and
admittedly I’ve got my fingers and my toes crossed
and I’m muttering incantations as I say this, but so
far the work to create our new guest accommodation
is going really well too. There have been times over
the last year when, in spite of the fact that I knew
deep down that we weren’t ready for it to begin, I
began to despair of anything happening at all, let
alone in the way that we wanted it to. But sure
enough, once we’d finally found the right way
forward – for us, for our guests, and most
importantly for this house, now and for years to
come – things began to move. And as so often
happens, the right people to work with us on the
project simply ‘materialised’ when the moment was
right.
Strangely enough - and this is not by any means what
we’d planned - both the main man and his sidekick
(!) are of English origin. Even more strangely,
although none of us knew each other in England, both
came out here from the same part of Sheffield in
which I spent several years living myself in the
late 80s/early 90s; one now lives two villages away
from here, and the other in a yurt up in one of the
high valleys. We share a love of this house and what
we know it can become, a fascination with the design
and restoration process itself and not just its
outcome, an understanding of the whole concept of
Slow, and a desire to do things in as organic, and
as green, a way as possible. Oh yes, and a Sheffield
sense of humour! French artisans have, I’m sure,
many admirable qualities (although turning up to
quote for a job seems not to be one of them), but
many seem to have one fixed way of doing things,
which means that the outcome has to bow to the
method rather than the other way round. I’m grateful
to have been spared the arguments that would have
inevitably ensued. So, I suspect, are they …
We ourselves are taking on a fair amount of the
work. Partly because we want to; partly because we
can; and partly, frankly, because we need to to keep
within budget, sterling having gone even further
south than Grillou … . So, for example, amongst
numerous other things, John's doing all of the
outside work: creating terraces, building paths and
steps, creating car parking areas and all the rest;
I'm demolishing various walls and two old shower
rooms, removing what feels like hundreds of square
metres of 80s white tiles, stripping and sanding and
refinishing three floors and four staircases,
putting in a new loo, creating a whole new shower
room with new plumbing and fittings, and tiling
nearly 200 square metres of wall and floor.
Together, we'll be fitting over 100 metres of new
skirting board, windowsills and other woodwork, and
putting around 120 litres of paint and lime wash on
the walls. We’re also going to learn from our
craftsmen the art of plastering and hemp-lime
rendering. Phew.
I
want to book – now!
Amazingly, we’ve actually had a couple of people
wanting to make bookings for 2010. However, while
we’re highly optimistic that we shall indeed be
ready for guests by this time next year, we’re not
opening bookings until we can safely convert our
optimism into certainty. Drying the last coat of
paint with a hairdryer half an hour before the first
guests are due to arrive is, frankly, not my style
(although I’ve known people do just that). I’d
anticipate that we’ll be ready to take bookings from
late 2009/early 2010; when we are, you’ll be among
the first to know.
Sitting silently,
doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by
itself … Zen proverb
Slow Retreats
I talked a bit about Slow Walking holidays in the
last newsletter, and you can read more on our
website. For people who want to take some time out
and discover for themselves how to live more Slowly,
we'll also be offering Slow Retreats, periods of
three or four days during which we'll explore our
own relationship with time, and practice the art of
slowing down. Good (Slow!) Food and wine, simple
meditation practices, Slow Walks and play will form
the core of these retreats, with plenty of time for
reflection and space simply to be in Grillou's
bucolic surroundings. This is a retreat to lift the
spirit and (re)discover life's slow and simple
pleasures, not one for existential angst or
self-flagellation ... but beware, it might just
change your life!
Rimont
Grillou is part of the commune and village of Rimont
(le mont riant – laughing hill). It’s a small
place of around 500 souls, more than half of who
live, like we do, in scattered hamlets and
farmhouses in the hills around the village centre.
It’s also a bastide, a kind of medieval new town of
which there are more than 700 in south-western
France: a planned town or village dating back to the
thirteenth or fourteenth century, built usually on a
grid pattern with the dwellings looking inwards
towards a central square, and gardens behind them
looking outwards. Rimont has a bit of a chilling
history, though, which you can read about
here.
Today, Rimont is a quiet and laid back kind of
place; a typical French village where on the surface
not a lot happens. But in its own way it’s a bit of
a mover and, if not quite a shaker, a tentative
rattler. For instance, it was quite a player in the
long process to create a new Parc Naturel Régional
in our part of Ariège (now agreed, and due to be
formally ‘pronounced’ any day now); currently, it
has an ambitious plan to create a flagship
wood-fired communal heat source for the municipal
buildings and houses within a kilometre or so of the
centre, using wood from the commune’s forests. If
this goes ahead – and it looks likely – it will be
the biggest such scheme in the department.
The village has
a Premonstratensian abbey, the Abbaye de Combelongue,
which is open to the public in the summer and
regularly holds concerts and other events. Almost
next door is a thirteenth century grain mill, one of
only three in Ariège in working order (though not in
commercial use), and also open to the public in
summer. On the all-important stomach front, we have
a good boulangerie; an épicerie-bar-café where you
can buy, amongst all the usual things, unpasteurised
local milk and local mountain cheeses; a very new,
and very good, charcuterie, Le Grenier à Jambons,
which rears and – er – charcutes its own pigs and
has just won a medal at the Paris Agricultural Show;
and a restaurant, the Restaurant de la Poste, which
has an honourable mention in the Michelin Guide and
a big local following. And we may only see a bus
twice a day, but we do get the occasional itinerant
cinema or arts event, not to mention our five day
village bash in August!
Le
Blog
I know that some of you are already regular, or
occasional, visitors, but if you’re not … here it
is:
http://grillou.blogspot.com.
So, enough, already! Thanks for reading, and à la
prochaine …
With our very best wishes
Kalba and John
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restaurant with rooms, unique seasonal vegetable
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