Field Notes| Chapter IV
What Makes a Place Rouri
Autumn in Provence, in clothes we already owned
We arrived in Crillon le Brave at the end of October, when the vines have gone copper and the tourists have gone home. The village sits on a hill with Mont Ventoux behind it, and it is made almost entirely of stone that was already old three hundred years ago. Nobody built anything here to impress anyone. They built it to last, out of what was nearby, and then they kept living in it.
That is the first thing that made it rouri.
We talk a lot about what the word means and we are not always good at explaining it. But standing in that village it was obvious. Rouri is not the same as beautiful, and it is certainly not the same as expensive. A place is rouri when it has been loved for a long time by people who did not feel the need to replace it. When the floors are worn in the places people walk. When the dining room is somebody’s old kitchen and nobody pretended otherwise.
A new hotel can be extraordinary. It cannot be Rouri. It hasn’t had time.
What we’d tell you, if you went
Go in late October or early November. The light is low and gold all day, the markets are still running, and you will have the village almost to yourself.
Eat slowly and late. Walk to Bédoin in the morning for bread. Drive to the ochre cliffs at Roussillon if you have a day, but don’t fill the week — the point of a place like this is that you stay in it.
Take one good jumper, two dresses you already love, and far less than you think.
And go back. We mean this seriously. The pleasure of a place like this is not discovering it, it is returning until the woman at the bakery recognises you. A town you have visited once is a photograph. A town you have visited five times is yours.
