Sue Style, Food, Wine and Travel Writer

LE MAS PARASOL (FT Weekend)

Last weekend we skipped down to a favourite spot, Le Mas Parasol, near Uzès, for a wonderful cousins' reunion. If you're looking for a hideaway in the south of France, this could be the place...

The Mas Parasol is a Maison d’Hôtes (B & B) in Garrigues, a small village whose name is evocative of the scented, sun-baked, shrubby undergrowth that is so much a feature of the Languedoc-Roussillon area. Set in a beautifully restored Cévennes-style stone farmhouse, the Mas has 6 rooms – and plenty of parasols beside the gorgeous pool.

Each room is decorated differently, the walls are dragged, stippled and washed in Fauvist colours. Fabrics are Designers Guild, furniture is antique – the wardrobes in one room once saw service as beach bathing huts, now reformed and painted pastel pink. Sound insulation is not great, so the patter of tiny feet and the ruminations of fellow guests can be a problem – if you let them.

For even greater peace and quiet, and a once-in-a-lifetime experience, you can adjourn across the garden to the gypsy wagon, which makes the seventh bedroom: dating back to the ‘30’s, it has been entirely re-vamped with its own air conditioning, teak-lined shower and loo, bedroom/love-nest and little salon decorated in gloriously kitschy red plush.

Breakfasts are superb, served either in the sun-filled breakfast room or beside the pool. Geoffroy Vieljeux, the host at Mas Parasol, will do dinner to order. We feasted on a delectable menu of roast pepper soup, slow-cooked lamb with a tatin of potatoes under a salt crust, and fresh fruit, with wines from the nearby Chabrier vineyard in Bourdic.

Geoffroy runs a programme of events, in case lounging beside the pool begins to pall. Choose between visits to Uzés and Avignon, cookery lessons at the Mas with visiting local chefs, opera in the amphiteatre in Orange (Traviata and Otello this year) or sessions on how to make the superb Provencal quilts known as 'boutis'.

Mas Parasol, rue Damon, 30190 Garrigues
Tel. +33 4 66 81 90 47, Fax +33 4 66 81 93 30
www.masparasol.fr

Stop press autumn 2004: Le Mas Parasol closed its doors in summer 2004 and Geoffroy Vieljeux has moved on to pastures new at the nearby Villa Saint Victor, Place du Chateau, 30700 Saint Victor des Oules, Tel. +33 4 66 81 90 47, e-mail: info@villasaintvictor.com, www.villasaintvictor.com
A review will follow in 2005!

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Sue Style
Winchelsea, East Sussex and Alsace, France
contact: sue@suestyle.com