Lourmarin in December It’s December and people everywhere are getting ready for Christmas. After weeks of blue skies and gentle warm days, it’s raining where I live in California and temperatures have plummeted. The puddles are splattered with the last remnants of autumn and the mornings are frosty with low …

Enamoured with Provence, Caroline Longstaffe is one of our regular contributors. Her blog, Shutters and Sunflowers, is about passion, living the journey and not waiting to get to the destination. A traveller at heart, Caroline says she was most probably born under a wandering star. Born in England, she lives …

By Caroline Longstaffe: Lourmarin Shopping It’s a small world’, maybe an overused cliché…… Yet things often happen to me, fine gossamer strands weaving connections to my life in California and very often Provence. These invisible threads do indeed shrink my world, just like this story about the charming owner of …

Lourmarin on Fridays Early on Friday morning, when the clock chimes eight, the sound of clanking metal posts gently peppers the air. White vans fill the car park outside my door, and market stalls spring up in Lourmarin’s Place Henri Barthélémy, spilling out along the streets. Friday is market day …

By Caroline Longstaffe: Shopping in Lourmarin As we’ve spent increasing amounts of time in Lourmarin we’ve come to know more of the people in the village, all of whom have been warm and welcoming.  Like us, many of them are not originally from the area but similarly captivated by its’ enchantment have …

By Caroline Longstaffe: When Philippe Franc, the owner of La Maison FRANC first came to live in Pertuis, near Lourmarin, his neighbor welcomed him with a gift, a lavender wand or Coeur de Lavande. It was a defining moment and the first step in a story which led to the opening …

It’s raining today in Provence and after nearly a month of clear, blue skies and gentle, warm autumnal days, temperatures have plummeted signalling the beginnings of winter. Nowhere, even Lourmarin, is idyllic in the rain, or is it? Perhaps enticed by the recently hung lights across the streets of the village …

Contributor blog post by Caroline Longstaffe: Many people dream of owning a winery; a romantic illusion of strolling through carefully tended vines sharing your vintages within the shadows of a sprawling château, which for me would have to be in Provence. Of course, dreams like this seldom come true, such …

When you leave a place for several months, however much you love it, even somewhere as special as Lourmarin, you wonder. Wondering if it is as magical as the images you have so firmly imprinted in your mind. Wondering whether you’ll feel the same when you return. And then you do …

Contributor blog post by Caroline Longstaffe: Back in March I wrote about the excitement of returning somewhere special, to Lourmarin, quoting from Daphne du Maurier’s ‘Rebecca’ “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” I also mentioned that I had an appointment with a real estate agent…. A great deal has happened since then, but …