Love letters to the good life

PHOTOS: Inge Prins

Forget the beach cottage: These days the French countryside is the holiday spot de rigueur of South African gourmands. In the new book Festive France, three of them tell their stories.

In the medieval town of Boussac, meeting place of the Limousin and Auvergne provinces, lobster red yet somehow still sun hungry Brits seem to hang from the rafters of ancient homes like a bunch of chattering weaver birds.

From the top floor of a neglected three-storey red-brick house, once an office block, a bidet comes flying, accompanied by the restorer’s rally: “Vive la restauration!” This triumphant female voice carries a trace of Afrikaans, as do the two cultivated gentlemen living next door in the Château de la Creuzette, the magnificently restored 19th-century home of South African artist Louis Jansen van Vuuren and his partner, Hardy Olivier.

South Africans have been streaming here over the past few years for a refreshing week of cooking or art classes. All too often, though, the week results in a “Je t’aime, ma chérie” and a serious discussion with a bank manager to turn this hot holiday romance with the good life into a permanent love affair.

Fortunately for Anet Pienaar and her husband, Ton Vosloo, their days of hand-wringing during the restoration are a thing of the past, as are taps that gurgle, dust that took two weeks and three vacuum cleaners to disappear, gesture-filled discussions with the father-and-son electricians (and a long-haired handiman named Jesus), and huge accounts scribbled on scraps of paper.

After five years, La Maison des Roses, with its 9 x 9m garden of white, yellow, pink and red roses, is an absolute feast for the eyes – as is the garden of the neighbouring La Creuzette.

To round off this picture, the couple has documented – in a stunning book packaged in a box – the uphills and downhills, the superb food and wine, the market days and air kisses, the intellectual discourses and the long summer afternoons spent in the shade of pergolas. It has not been written for fans of Peter Mayle – these are stories written by friends for friends showing that although you may be able to put the Boer into the Frenchman, you will never be able to put the Gaul into the Boer.

And so, Anet wanders down the road with a basket of her own roses and a copy of the book on her way to sympathise with her sunburnt British neighbour, who, just like a weaver bird, incessantly fiddles with her roof. “God bless you and your roof,” she’ll say, knowing that the future – and the wine – are both equally rosy.

• Festive France – Reflections and Recipes from the French Countryside by Louis Jansen van Vuuren, Hardy Olivier and Anet Pienaar, published by Jonathan Ball in English and Afrikaans, will be available at bookstores from 16 November for R375. This text is an adaptation of Ton Vosloo’s foreword and Anet Pienaar’s essay A Restorer’s Dream.

• Château de la Creuzette: +33 05 44 65 78 27, www.lacreuzette.com, info@lacreuzette.com