Vaucluse Dreamer

It’s all been a bit busy, since we arrived back from Japan and have been settling back into our happy, gentle life in Provence.

Our trip to Japan was everything we had hoped it would be, and if we’re honest, totally exceeded even our wildest dreams. We loved the simplicity of living day-by-day, with just the necessities of life, and making the trip up, as we went along. In some ways. it has taken us a long time to start getting back to normality.

But, we have finally settled into our quiet days of walking, exploring and just enjoying being at home, even finding time to change our car, buying something smaller that is more suited to the sinewy roads that we have to drive, almost every day. Needless to say, that was an experience that brought us back down to earth with a bump, but it had to be done.

We’ve caught up with friends, bringing ourselves up to speed with everything that has happened, since we were last here. And have pottered around the Christmas markets, getting ourselves into gear for the festive season, hardly able to believe that we’re already staring 2026 in the face.

Which is what brought us to the auction.

I do love an auction, and enjoy just sitting in a room, watching the auctioneer in action, fascinated by the prices pieces fetch, and bidding on pieces too ; happy when I am successful and feeling gutted, and in need of consolatory cake, when the bids sail past my upper limit.

We also love paintings. Not works that set us back a small fortune, but pieces that just catch our attention, and our hearts, which we know will look lovely on our walls. We have eclectic taste, but have found a local artist that we are particularly fond of, so watch out for pieces that we may be able to buy.

I have alerts set up for his work, in various places and last week noticed that a small painting by him was listed in a forthcoming sale, at an auctioneers in Turin. When I looked at the listing and saw that it was of a man with a pushbike, standing at a flower stall (in what we think may be Aix), I knew it would make an ideal Christmas present for us both, so thought I would investigate further.

Normally, I would pop to the auction rooms, take a look and arrange to visit on the day of the sale, but Turin is not exactly around the corner. It’s not even in the neighbouring department (or even the same country), so I was going to have to take my first step into the world of bidding for pieces online, and arranging for it to be shipped to us, if I was to be successful.

The auctioneers were incredibly helpful, pointing me to shipping agents that they use on a regular basis, so with the aid of Google Translate, I sent them details of the piece and waited to hear their estimates, which came back, at approximately 100 euros (with an additional commission based on the final price), so we knew what we had to add to the hammer price, to set our limit.

I finished the registration on the website, submitted my identity documents and was rather happy that I had a maximum bid limit of 500 euros. I had no intention of bidding anywhere near this, but as it was my first experience of bidding online in a live-streamed auction, it was good to know that I couldn’t let myself down, and get over-excited.

On Wednesday evening, I sat down with the computer, logged on and started to follow the sale, getting to grips with the process and the subtle differences I have noticed between countries. One thing that I realised, very quickly, was that the starting price was acting as a reserve and was not dropped, if there were no opening bids. If there were no bids at the starting price, then the lot was quickly closed and the next one opened. In fact it was so quick that I realised I would need to place my first bid quickly to ensure the painting was kept active.

The lots passed swiftly and mine came into sight, at the bottom of the screen. It had a starting price of 200 euros, which was within the budget we had set, and as soon as it filled my screen to show it was the next lot, I placed my bid. In fact I was so keen to make sure that the auctioneer didn’t quickly move on, that I placed my bid before she even started describing the piece.

The notification on the screen turned green, showing that I was the current top bidder, and I held my breath, waiting for the auctioneer to signal another bid had been made. But no, and within seconds her hand signalled it had been sold, and a box saying ‘Felicitations’ appeared on my screen.

The little painting was ours for the opening bid, and we were over the moon.

I then noticed Andy was doing something on his phone & he looked up with a grin, saying ‘It would only take us 4 1/2 hours to drive there’

So that was it. In a moment, we forgot the ideas of having it shipped ( as we know the system is good, but we would be horribly anxious that it may be damaged en route), and decided to set the alarm for 5am, to drive to Turin, to pay for it & bring it home with us.

Probably slightly mad, but we still love that we can simply drive to Italy, (in fact anywhere on mainland Europe) if we want to, so planned a route, got an early night, and woke before the alarm, full of childlike excitement for the day ahead.

The route proved to be a stunning one, once we could see the landscape after the sun rose enough to lighten the sky. We stopped for croissants at a boulangerie, in a small town, bright with Christmas lights,

then headed on towards the Ecrins National Park, where we would take a route over the Alps, into Italy via Briancon and the ski-resorts of Clavière and Mongenèvre.

As we passed the vast Lac de Serre-Poncon, the sky started to lighten enough to give us our first glimpse of the high snow-capped mountains, all around us. We hadn’t heard of this lake, until Tuesday evening, when friends were encouraging us to visit it this summer, telling us how beautiful it was, and also that it is a great place to swim. Little did we know that we’d be passing it, just 2 days later.

As the sky brightened with the sunrise, the tips of the mountains began to glow with the colours of the new day. Their sparkling-white summits took on shades of gold, peach and apricot, as the sky shifted through shades of blue. It was a spectacular sight.

Continued towards Briançon, the scenery became even more dramatic, with the villages looking as if they belonged on the lid of a chocolate box, their pretty, Alpine houses, surrounded by snow, with stunning mountains towering above them.

The road started to wind upwards towards the city, with its amazing fortresses that dominated the hillsides above the centre. It’s easy to understand why there were such impressive defences here, as it must have been a critical point of conflict over the centuries, and it would be fascinating to be able to spend some time visiting them.

But a painting in Italy was calling, so we will have to plan a return visit to have a better look at the area, and its defensive towns and forts, built by Vauban in the 17th century. We realised that there is a lot to explore there.

After Briançon, the road began to twist and turn through tight bends, as we approached the ski-resorts, with the snow lying in deep piles, at the side of the carriageway, yet thankfully, the road itself was clear (although we had our snow-chains in the car, just in case we would need them)

Even as we passed through Montgenèvre , there were already people heading out onto the ski-slopes, although I imagine it will be much busier from tomorrow, when people flock to the area for a Christmas break.

Then, almost without noticing, we were in Italy. No border formalities, just a change in the signposts from french to italian, and we found ourselves following signs for Torino, rather than Turin.

What was strange though was the change in weather. As we had driven up from Briançon, we had been in bright sunshine, under cloudless, blue skies, but as we arrived in Montgenèvre, the cloud closed in and as we started to snake our way down the alpine pass, towards Rivoli, we were cloaked in grey, with raindrops dotting the windscreen. It was such a dramatic shift.

Soon though, we were on the motorway, heading through the valley, towards Turin, passing steep-sided hills, topped with ancient monasteries and fortresses, which centuries ago must have played a key role in hosting travelleres, whilst guarding this precious valley too. In fact, if you remove the ribbons of tarmac from the valley floor, I imagine that ancient travellers would still recognise this view, today.

Before too long, we were taking the sliproad towards Turin, and minutes later, parking on the road near the auction rooms. It was just after 10am, so early enough to collect the painting, and then to find somewhere for coffee and a second breakfast.

It was an incredibly smart saleroom, a far cry from the local auctions in Devon, where I would spend hours just enjoying the theatre and ‘banter’ of the day. There were certainly no boxes of bits and bobs, piles of old magazines, or collections of rusty old tools here. It was a calm, elegant and stylish space, the walls filled with beautiful works of art, yet to be claimed from the sale, the night before.

We spotted the piece we had come to collect, and it was even better in real life, than we thought it had been on the computer screen. It’s always a bit of a worry, but we know the artist’s work and haven’t been disappointed with the pieces we’ve found, so far, and this just put a smile on our faces.

Despite my anxieties that something had gone wrong, and I hadn’t in fact won the bidding for the painting, or that I had forgotten to bring a crucial piece of paper that would mean we couldn’t collect it, all went remarkably smoothly.

I was so stressed that a few words of japanese worked their way into my terrible attempts to speak italian, but somehow, through a garbled mix of french, italian, japanese and english, we managed to finalise the paperwork and pay for the painting. A porter was summoned, who carefully lifted the painting down, returning it to us, carefully wrapped and ready for its journey back to Provence (where it had started its life at a gallery in Roquebrun in 1992)

With our purchase carefully stowed in the car, we took the opportunity to walk through some of the back-streets of the city, to stretch our legs after the drive. Eventhough we didn’t get into the city centre, we found ourselves wandering past beautiful churches

And elegant buildings too. It was a shame that we weren’t going to have enough time to really explore the city. That will have to wait, but it has been added to the list for future trips.

We found a cafe and took a seat on the terrace, to enjoy a coffee and pastries, as we mused over the madness of the morning. It really wasn’t what we had planned to do, at all. But it had been such a stunning drive over, we now had the painting in our hands, and would be able to hang it on the wall, as soon as we arrived home. We knew that we had made the right choice.

After coffee, we ambled back to the car and set off, on our way back to Provence, aiming to arrive back, before it got dark.

As we drove back towards the mountains, the weather had closed in, and rain pattered on the windscreen, making me worry that we may find ourselves driving through snow, as we climbed back through the high, mountain pass.

Happily though, that proved not to be the case, and as we drove through Clavière, back into France, the clouds melted away and we found ourselves driving back towards Briançon, on a perfect winter’s day.

If the views had been good in the morning, in the afternoon, they were magnificent. The snowy mountains shimmered in the bright sunshine, with plumes of snow being blown from the highest ridges.

At every bend in the road (there were many), the views and perspective changed, shifting from the mountains, to glimpses of the snow-covered valley floor, hundreds of metres below us.

There were also plenty of roadside sculptures to catch our attention too. From the wonderful artwork, at the Col de Montgenevre, celebrating the first ski-jumping competition that was held there in 1908

To the huge iron statue of a mountaineer, who we learned was Edward Whymper, an english climber who was the first to reach the summit of the Matterhorn in 1865.

We took a short break in Briançon, enjoying a sandwich, in the sunshine and the snow, before heading on again, and finally heading out of the deep valleys, leaving the snow-covered mountains behind.

As we drove alongside the Lac Serre-Ponçon, the mid-afternoon sun danced across the water, a beautiful sight on this vast area of water. Originally a valley, which had been devastated by floods in the 1800s, it was finally cleared, dammed and turned into a reservoir in the 1950s, which now is used to provide electric from a power plant on the lake, as well as supporting 15 other plants along the Durance and Verdon rivers. We really will have to head back, when it’s warmer, to take a better look at the area.

By 4.30, just as the shadows were starting to lengthen into the fading light, we arrived home. Before even taking off our coats, we had unwrapped the painting, and had moved others around to hang it on the wall.

It looks wonderful, and has made me smile, every time I have looked at it.

We love the painting, but we also have a lovely story to go with it now too. But that’s the case with just about everything we have on the wall. Everything has a little story behind it, from certain events they remind us of, to the weird and wonderful places we have found them in, and each piece makes us smile (some have made us smile for nearly 40 years). For us, that’s what is important, and it always will be.

So it’s been quite an adventure. We have survived our first foray into buying online at a live auction. We have discovered a beautiful part of France, and a city that we will undoubtedly revisit (in fact the maps have already been out) and we have even given our little car a good run out too.

And we’ve enjoyed every moment of it!