As soon as the street stalls opened in Laon the next day we were there at a snap, drooling over the local produce: rich red tomatoes trussed on to the straightest vines, artichokes large enough to feed a family of four. In preparation for the salade caprese appetisers we are addicted to I bought a pot of fresh basil and taped it -- tub, soil, celophane and all -- onto the bike rack at the back of the motorhome, where it now has a home. It is thriving. I call the plant Basil. Bec, coached by her father, calls it Fawlty, then cackles like a hyena. Today she suggested it might like a partner (she saw Rosemary in a market) and cackled again. Her father suggested that could happen, in Thyme. Ha and ha.
We drove Basil into the hills to our next overnight stop, one of the oldest wineries in France, there since Charlemagne days, circa 740: Vignoble de Flavigny Alesia. We camped in the garden of what used to be one of the monastic outbuildings of the X111c Abbey in Flavigny, a pretty hill town we can just make out through the trees, high above our heads.
Here we chatted with a South African landscape designer and his family who are employed by the owner to oversee and revamp her winery grounds for the summer trade. Merek and his hired crew have already installed picnic tables under a pretty white shaded cover in the vineyard grounds, etched a white stone labyrinth pathway into the newly trimmed green lawn, and planted dozens of roses in large pots splashing purple colour against the pale adobe walls of the winery. It is all looking tres smart.
In the hills not far from our camper there is a bridge built by Julius Caesar's army so that they could cross a stream. Caesar tramped his Roman battalions right to this spot in order to decisively wipe out the last of the Gauls under their leader, Vercingetorix. After Caesar came the monks, who erected three glorious Abbeys in the hills here, and levied taxes on all the grapes grown within cooee. At harvest the kind monks took only every 11th basket as a wine tax, not quite a tithe. They made their own wines from these, then three times a year held markets on very select days. No other vintners were allowed to market their products on those days. Vineyards grew and expanded until, in the 19th century, a season of phyloxera virtually wiped them out, after which cattle breeding became the major bread winner.
There are still cattle in these hills. And grapes, and we were interested to hear that they are pruning using a rare 'lyre trellising' technique which allows two branches from each vine to be laid out v-shaped loaded with grapes and exposed to the sun to improve quality. A nice drop of Van de Pays it is, too.
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