The northern border of Province is where the olive orchards end. Beyond them are the foothills of the Alps, where the border between France and Italy has shifted for centuries. The terrain is green and grey peaks; sliding, sideways striations of layered rock, pastures and lavender fields. There are enough flying insects to support a nation of birds, if only the French didn’t wring their necks for various gastronomic delights. Crickets imitate butterflies, butterflies imitate moths, moths imitate flies, flies imitate bees. The roads are silent tree-tunnels, nuts and maples with bark like paint-by-numbers, trunks striped with white paint replacing a guardrail. The spotty shade and breezes are a relief. It seems as though it’s been summer for an eternity. The village of Veynes is like every other only smaller, offering products from the farm – lavender honey, confitures, apples, and plats made by devoted Provençial wives with hardy hands – avec petit pois. We’re tucked up the gravel road in the valley between the Pic d’Oules and Pic du Bure – a stony slide that from here looks like sand glowing in summer’s last light. Our proprietors have made-shift a road in the middle of one of a dozen meadows. Here they take orders of how many croissants we’ll be needing tomorrow morning. Around here the campers don’t sit on the ground, either. We’re brought a table and two chairs, necessary items on damp mornings, and when the wind picks up at dusk and a switch of cold air slaps us alert, we take our towels off the line, apply socks, and pull the duvet from the bottom of Alfi’s trunk.

Seville