Grass snakes and marrons glacés

Yesterday we went back to the Massif des Maures, the scene of our nocturnal adventures with the hound of the Baskervilles. This time, though, it was in daylight, and the sun was glinting off the mica in the schist outcrops. This was the last part of France to be Muslim, as the name suggests, and it's likely that they were not bothered by anybody else for quite some time: it really is an isolated spot, with little in the way of roads, and those few roads are barely passable by motor traffic.

The destination was Collobrières, the capital of the Maures, once famous for cork processing, and now best known for its chestnuts. The name Collobrières is said to come from the word for grass snake, coluber, if I remember enough Latin, certainly couleuvre in French. Didn't see any, though.

We bought a picnic of bread and cheese, and headed out on foot into the hills, following the sentier botanique. There were plenty of botanicals, indeed so many that progress was laborious, climbing over fallen trees, roots and negotiating thickets of tree heather in bloom. The one or two spots where the thicket permitted a panorama were quite lovely.

Not far from Collobrières is the Carthusian monastery of La Verna, to which Petrarch claims to have journeyed to see his brother Gherardo. Whilst there are considerable doubts as to whether Petrarch actually climbed Mont Ventoux (and I firmly believe he didn't, at least not at the time of year he says he did), if he did really travel to La Verna, then he was pretty tough customer. On the sentiers de grande randonnée scale, this is a demanding one. Whether he could have actually seen his brother once he got there is another matter, as the Carthusians were pretty strict about visiting rights.

Having earned a reward through our exertions (some pretty steep inclines both ways), we headed to the Azuréenne de la Confiserie, a cooperative which conditions chestnuts. There was a small museum, full of strange and probably dangerous machinery, but, as usual with these places, it was the collection of old photographs which was the most suggestive, with faded, early twentieth century images of tired but still coquette factory girls leaving their shift after hours peeling chestnuts, and even more moving ones of nineteen sixties hippy types, with hairnets for their ponytails, probably high on a locally cultivated spliff, still operating the antiquated machinery now consigned to the museum.

The main reason for visiting the Azuréenne was to try their ice cream made from marrons glacés. Who cares about long shifts for the factory girls! This was food for the gods, even if mortals had to do the peeling...

On the way back from Collobrières, we picked up some wine at the cave coopérative at Gonfaron, a sleepy town with an exquisite, plane tree lined square, surrounded by delicate pastel facades, beautiful shutters and lace-like ironwork balconies, but full of chavesses in track suit bottoms seeking mutual support, mostly by complaining of man (men?) problems, whilst allowing their multi-fathered offspring to run wild. I heard one overweight specimen shout after her three children (or at least the three visible ones), calling them by name: Hajji, Kevin and Pierre. That contrast sums up the Côte d'Azur. Beauty which is almost too much to take in, and a gritty arrière pays full of the kind of problems familiar to the more depressed parts of Northern England. Still, the sun shines here, and it doesn't much in Sunderland.