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 For a growing number of tourists to France, the visit includes two tiny villages tucked away down south, amid the vineyards of Languedoc. (Shutterstock) |
For most travellers, France means Paris. But for a growing number, it includes two tiny villages tucked away down south, amid the vineyards of Languedoc.
Oupia, population 250, and Beaufort, 160, represent the French connection for many who yearn to rent a place in the countryside -- what the French call a gite -- for a week or longer.
That link was forged when Susan and Tim Wallis, who'd moved from London, Ontario to Oupia in 1999, renovated a cottage behind their new home and started renting it out in 2001.
It was strengthened when three London friends, Nancy Evans, Carol Panzyk and Brenda Innes, and a fourth from Toronto, Mary-Anne Swire, opened their gite in Beaufort, just a kilometre away.
The Wallises, avid cyclists, were drawn to southern France because they could ride there year round.
Nancy Evans and her friends had travelled together in France for years and had dreamed of one day owning a country home there.
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It was Susan Wallis who suggested the Beaufort house.
"Susan e-mailed and said she'd buy it if we didn't,'' Evans recalls.
While Maison Beaufort, as it is now known, was being renovated, the Wallises were hard at work transforming the upper floor of their barn into another rental unit, a two-bedroom apartment they named L'Ancien Pressoir.
My wife and I rented that apartment the last two weeks of March, and also visited the Wallis cottage, called Lou Recontou, and Maison Beaufort.
All three gites are up-to-date and well-equipped, their owners familiar with what Canadians want. Photos on their respective websites, www.lourecontou.com and www.maisonbeaufort.com, illustrate their attractiveness.
A big selling point is that English-speaking help is available should a problem arise. The Wallises live beside their properties and offer new arrivals aperitifs and information. Maison Beaufort's tenants can call on Gerry Tribillon, an expatriate Brit who lives in Beaufort and looks after a couple of gites.
Gites abound in southern France. The British, in particular, have been going there in droves for decades; many own places they rent when they're not using it. We also saw enclaves of new, Dutch-built houses and apartments an Alberta doctor owns.
Even in low season there were lots of visitors. I shopped alongside Dutch- and German-speaking visitors in the supermarket, and kept bumping into some of the 15 women from Texas and Oklahoma renting a chateau not far from us.
The Wallis cottage was occupied by two retired couples from Halifax while we were there, and Maison Beaufort was being readied for its first spring guests -- from London.
When I asked a former Quebec chef who owns a restaurant in an out-of-the-way village about her trade, she said 80% of her customers were foreigners.
Languedoc isn't as well known as its neighbour to the east, Provence, but it's considered cheaper and quieter.
From Oupia or Beaufort, you can reach Carcasonne, the biggest medieval walled city in Europe, in 40 minutes, Mediterranean beaches in an hour. Thanks to a high-speed toll road, it's only 90 minutes to Collioure, a seaside resort town near the Spanish border whose movie-set looks inspired many French painters.
Our greatest pleasure was exploring the immediate area, the Minervois. It's best-known for its wines, but we were more impressed by its geographic diversity.
Drive half an hour in one direction and you're climbing part of the Massif Central. Ten minutes the other way is the Canal du Midi, busy with pleasure boats in summer.
In between is a network of narrow, winding, lightly travelled roads. They bisect countless vineyards, pass farms selling cheese, berries or honey, and creep through shuttered, grey-walled villages you might think were deserted were it not for the pots of flowers and the carefully swept sidewalks.
Like Oupia and Beaufort, they don't look like they've changed much in a century or two -- and in some ways they haven't.