WE'RE HOME: QUISSAC

Drove through Valence, Privas, Alès, and wonderful little Anduze where there was a “Restaurant des Templiers” with a sundial on its tower face. Lots of activity on the main street and everyone is super friendly. Quissac was only 15 minutes away and we looked forward to arriving in our “home away from home”. We are in the Languedoc/Roussillon region (what we would call a province in Canada), west of Provence, south of Massif Central, and east of the Pyrenées.

Our new address is on Rue du Cap de Vièle, a very narrow street in the old section of Quissac. Although we managed to drive in front of our front door, we couldn’t open the doors to the car! So we parked at the end of the street and anxiously explored our new digs. It was a large 3-storey home that served us well. The ground floor (rez de chaussée) had a huge living/dining room with fireplace, a door leading to an inner courtyard, and a small kitchen. The kitchen had a washing machine tucked in the corner which needed a bit of negotiating to reach, but everything was functional. On the 2nd floor (1er étage) there were 2 bedrooms and a large bathroom with a clawfoot bathtub and separate shower. There was also a small covered deck with an awesome view of the neighbours’ gardens, the fields, and the Cevennes mountains in the distance.

On the 3rd floor (2e étage), there were 2 more bedrooms (one which was used for storage), and an office, plus a small bathroom. The staircases were old stone, much used with small dips from years of traffic. The walls were all about 18” thick to keep things very cool in the heat of the summer. The floor tiles were fascinating since we found the same patterns in old churches built in the same era. We understand that the place had many lives before its most recent incarnation, most notably as a stable on the main floor, a silkworm cottage industry on the 2nd, and storage on the 3rd.