Our gite La Roque-Riviere is already heavily booked for 2012. Peak prices have been held once again, and some offpeak prices have been slightly reduced. For details see our website. A special offer for the end of August/beginning of September (see offers page) represents particularly good value. Our other property La Roque-Piscine is unfortunately not available for rent in 2012.
La Roque has a new logo (see below), incorporating an iPad picture by Martin.
Two great new experiences – the restaurant O’Bontemps at Magalas, half an hour away, a smart place with a really interesting surprise menu from €28 at lunchtimes (we had the €32 menu and really enjoyed it), and (newcomer of the year, and just ten minutes’ drive) the tapas bar Cave St.Martin at Roquebrun – see also this video of its opening party. Here you’ll find a truly excellent combination of carefully sourced ingredients (Spanish ham, French cheeses, locally grown garden vegetables, the very best of local wines) and friendly, relaxed, but attentive hospitality from Raymond, his family and staff, makes for the best evening out in the area. Open all evenings in summer, it is now open, in the down season, Fri.-Mon. 11.00-23.00.
Our holiday home at La Roque, Vieussan, is available at a reduced rate for these periods. Instead of the normal low season weekly rate of €395 (£330), we are offering these with 20% off – at a weekly rate of €315 (£260). You may book for any number of days during these periods. The low season (October) pro rata rates are available on our website. To book email us or phone (UK) 07972 760254 or (France) 06 42 95 43 97. Please quote ‘October offer’.
People occasionally ask us about the road that passes La Roque, the D177. This narrow road crosses our bridge and connects Vieussan with the neighbouring hamlet of Boissezon (population 50, at a guess). After several kilometres it reaches the even tinier hamlet of Mezeilles, before winding eventually to the market town of Saint-Chinian. It’s a sleepy road, and at this time of year (the season of the vendange or grape harvest) the traffic consists mainly of occasional tractors trucking the grapes that have just been picked back to the caves. Because it’s quiet and also very beautiful – after you’ve climbed to the Col de Mezeilles, you have spectacular views back to Vieussan on its little hill underneath the Caroux mountain – it’s much favoured by cyclists. On Sundays we get whole clubs of them in their regulation lycra.
Normally a lorry is such a rarity on the D177 – they can only just squeeze across our single-lane bridge and then there are far too many narrow bends – that we all come out to see what’s up. In July, however, a sign appeared at the end of the bridge saying ‘Travaux. Relentissez. Circulation difficile’ (Works. Slow Down. Difficult driving conditions), and shortly afterwards the lorries were fairly streaming across the bridge for a short time each morning, each filled with gravel. This continued until the 15 August public holiday, which signals the beginning of the end of the main holiday period, when suddenly it went quiet again.
We went up to explore. A large section of the road between Boissezon and Mezeilles had been dramatically widened, although it hadn’t been finished, so that with lots of loose gravel you had to negotiate it with care. This didn’t matter so much, as there was as usual no traffic in the opposite direction. But why go to such huge trouble to widen a road which has barely 50 cars a day in winter, and not so many more even in the peak summer period? One explanation we discussed with our neighbours was that it was precisely because there was virtually no traffic that this was an ideal road to work on even at the busiest time of the year, in July and August. You couldn’t work on a seriously used road at that time – indeed all the roadworks on the autoroutes (motorways) sensibly pack up for the holidays.
Yet we remained puzzled until one day, early in the morning, a convoy of small white vans (the vehicle of choice of the French countryman) suddenly whizzed passed our house. Of course! The chasse! The ultra-quiet section between Boissezon and Mezeilles is much favoured by the chasseurs (hunters). Most Sundays between September and March they position themselves, guns at the ready, at the side of the road, ready to drive the sanglier (wild boar) into a trap. (Sanglier hunting here is rather different from foxhunting in England: boar, whose growing population is a problem for agriculture, are killed quickly and straightforwardly, and their meat is much prized.) Could it be the impatient hunters, all too probably members of local councils, who had prioritised this sleepy section for what seems to us quite unnecessary upgrading? We’ve no proof, of course, but it’s the best explanation yet.
Our holiday home at La Roque, Vieussan, is available at a reduced rate for this period. Instead of the normal September weekly rate of €535 (£450) we are offering this period at the low season (October) weekly rate of €395 (£330).
You may book for any number of days during this period. The low season (October) pro rata rates are available on our website. To book email us or phone (UK) 07972 760254 or (France) 06 42 95 43 97.
Vieussan is only 3 hours 15 minutes by car from Barcelona – it’s the nearest really big city. OK, Montpellier is quite big and it’s cool, also Toulouse which is a bit nearer than BCN, but neither of them really match it for size, let alone exuberance. We’re spending quite a bit of time there this spring and early summer and on a preliminary foray this month we’ve already tasted the street life, which in January and February is almost exclusively local even in Las Ramblas, as the tourist season isn’t underway. Anyway we had a wonderful time, not least eating out … a wonderful, and pretty inexpensive, evening at the tapas bar Enopia, owned by the brother of the El Bulli superstar chef; and a great, Catalan-style lunch at the bar-restaurants Elisabets.
Note, September 2010: Tony and friends report that Enopia has now become Lolita, but is still very much worth a visit.
2010 rental prices for La Roque, our gite in Vieussan, Languedoc, with its own river beach, have been held at the same level in euros as in 2009, which is actually 10% under the 2007 price level. The school-holiday weeks in July and August, priced at €1050, are already going fast, and we have bookings for weeks in April (priced at €395) and May-June (€535). Altogether, despite the recession, we have more advance bookings than in any of the last 5 years.
The only change we have made for 2010 is that we are now no longer listing sterling (£) and dollar prices. Instead on our redesigned website, on the Rates and Availability page, you’ll find a currency conversion tool – simply type in the correct euro rate for the weeks you want, and it will give you the current pound and dollar prices. You can then choose which of these currencies – euros, pounds or dollars – you want to pay in. Contact us via phone or email and the price will be fixed in the currency of your choice, regardless of subsequent currency fluctuations.
Click on the image below for details of the holiday home.
La Roque
| £355 / €395 | £470 / €535 | £715 / €795 | £945 / €1050 | |
| additional days | £55 / €60 | £60 / €70 | not usually available | |
| Short lets - flexible in low season: | ||||
| 2 days | £160 / €175 | £195 / €210 | ||
| 3 days | £200 / €220 | £245 / €275 | ||
| 4 days | £235 / €265 | £300 / €340 | ||
| 5 days | £280 / €310 | £365 / €405 | ||
| 6 days | £315 / €350 | £420 / €470 | ||
The weather is mostly pretty good in Vieussan, at least from a northern European perspective. In summer we have dramatic thunderstorms, and in winter torrential downpours, violent winds and even severe frosts. Snow falls only occasionally and hardly ever settles; when it did for 24 hours on 26 December 2008, this was reputedly the first time in 20 years. But mostly it’s pretty sunny and dry, even in January. We do, however, still have weather, which means that it can be quite unpredictable, and we have good days, weeks, months and years, and not-so-good ones. Taken all round, 2009 has been an excellent year. It became warm enough to swim in early March (in a pool of course – the river wasn’t warm enough until the beginning of May), and as of early December there really hasn’t been any cold weather since. April was probably the only under-par month, with rather a lot of rain, in contrast to last year when it was lovely. From May onwards it was almost always gloriously warm, and the summer was the hottest for four years, with temperatures peaking at 40 degrees in August. The autumn has been sublimely warm – temperatures were still touching 20 in late November, when the leaves on the trees and vines were a glorious mixture of colours. They are dipping only slowly … but winter will come sooner or later. MS
La Roque, Vieussan
