Excuse Me if I Crushed Your Crops

It was an exciting event!  We were invited for dinner by an acquaintance of Jeff's!

They live in the next village- about 3 miles away.  We had returned our rental car 3 days prior and had told them we would walk to their house.  We had been wanting to try to find some of the walking paths and back roads, and this seemed like a reasonable distance, and there was a promise of a ride home!

We set out at 6pm, padding the time we thought we needed so that we wouldn't arrive late.  The afternoon light promised to give us a nice show.  We had promised to be at the village center at 7:30.

We walked down the steep stairs to pick up the road to Cucuron.  It is a narrow road with some gated newer homes. 

We walked on.  Fewer homes, but bigger fields of vines, cherry trees and emerald green.  We came to a fork.  To the right was a road that was not as well paved, to the left a better paved road.  We were certain that we had driven past this fork before and that we had taken the road to the left. 

We walked on.  Another fork.  We took a guess that the road behind the barn was the right one.  There was a man in the back of the barn.  He looked uneasy when I approached the half opened door to ask if we were on the road to Curcuron.  He didn't move any closer to answer, but said yes, we should go straight and when we came to an intersection we could go either way, it didn't matter.  I hoped I had understood his Provencal accent correctly.

We walked on.  We waved to a farmer who was plowing his field.  We talked to the dogs that barked at us.  I had to make a pitstop in a stand of pine trees.  We came to another intersection.  The farmer has said we could go either way.  So we turned to the right since it seemed to head in a more direct path.

We walked on.  The road suddenly took a sharp turn AWAY from where we wanted to go.  We didn't trust our instincts, my understanding of Provencal French, nor the sun to stay up long enough for us to get lost in daylight, so we decided to turn left onto a cartpath which lead into a field.

We walked on.  Through the fields, smugly we walked.  We could see the village getting closer and it was straight ahead.  Wasn't this quaint.  Weren't we clever to have taken this path!  What a nice babbling brook full of the rain from a day earlier.  The cartpath meandered through vineyards, we crossed the brook via an old stone bridge.  The setting sun was making great colors of the village where we were heading.

We walked on. We rounded a curve and the mud starting getting a bit thicker in the cartpath tracks.  The grass was taller and still wet.  We came to a dead end.  We couldn't head in the right direction- the path ended, the stream was to our left and we needed to head left, there wasn't a bridge.  If we went all the way back we would not make it before sunset.  The path had ended at someone's field that had been planted with some sort of wheat (we think it was wheat) in very neat narrowly spaced rows.  On the far side of the field there was a house.  It must have a driveway to a main road.  We decided to head for the house, even if it meant stepping on the 3" sprouts.

We walked on.  As we approached the house, I began to fear they might have dogs.  Maybe no one was home.  Maybe they didn't take kindly to tourists tromping on their fields.  Maybe they felt the need to protect themselves...I saw a young man round the corner of the house and waved, hoping he would see this as both a friendly gesture and one indicating that we were lost.  As we got closer, I noticed a man sitting on a bench on the edge of the field, which was also the edge of his yard, reading a book.  I called out "Bonsoir monsieur!"  He jumped off the bench looking for wherever the sound might have been coming from. 

At first, with my clumsy French, I tried to explain that we were on our way to Curcuron to have dinner with friends.  I realized how crazy that sounded since we had just appeared out of his fields!  But I kept talking trying to explain that we had taken the wrong road and couldn't get around the stream to get to the road.  He seemed disbelieving at first and I thought he was going to send us back the way we'd come!  Something seemed to soften and then he was laughing along with us (more likely laughing at us!).  He walked us around to the front of his house where another cartpath started.  Pointed the way through an orchard of cherry trees and assured us that we couldn't get lost if we stayed on the path.  He was right.  We arrived at the village center with 10 minutes to spare!  At bit weary, and happy to have made it!

I would like to thank that man for his help and kindness.  There is no way I could find my way back to his house!

But for the kindness of strangers...

Blue skies!