Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
vellous, especially to engineers. It's terribly quick and easy to get to and well worth a
speed-visit.”
At this point I fizzled out, emotionally spent, but still hopeful.
My informed recommendations were predictably met by intense disinterest so we
ended up having an orderly frog-march around the hotel garden. Then at 9:00am, after per-
forming a mini-MOT on the car, we set off for the next viewing.
This turned out to be a timely plan because, although our meeting point was fairly
close, the moment we left Nyons we encountered a new lot of hairpin bends which made
speeding impossible. Try as I might to shrug it off, I had a creeping feeling that my metic-
ulous planning might have been somewhat flawed. The truth was that I hadn't factored in
altitude issues and so, yet again, we were travelling relentlessly uphill. Luckily there was
little to worry about here because the hairpins amounted to nothing compared to what we
had recently experienced.
This first property visit of the day was another non-ItsWill selection. Not that I would
have dreamed of mentioning this to Jack but I was dead keen to put a face to the voice of
this new estate agent. Listening to Charles Gordon was like being wrapped up in a thick
layer of velvet and fed dark chocolates. He had the most meltingly delicious speaking
voice. It would have been perfect for film and television voiceover work and I'd already
decided he must look something like Omar Sharif.
We were due to meet outside the
Mairie
at La Motte Chalancon, which proved to be
a charming ancient mediaeval town lying in the base of the la Vallée de l'Oule
.
We arrived
a little earlier than scheduled so Jack decided that we should take in the views from the
precincts of the picturesque car park. This was not quite the tourist attraction I had hoped
for, but it was better than nothing and ideal for giving the dogs a quick leg-stretcher.
As we waited for Charles to arrive we reviewed the points of interest for this property.
For a change it seemed to have everything on our wish list and mercifully few of the things
we didn't want. The blurb promised 90 hectares (222 acres) of woodland and fields, two
ponds and a river that bordered the residence. It even had a golf practice range. The only
downsides were the inevitable swimming pool and a gatekeeper's lodge.
In the midst of our discussion we heard a voice calling our names. Spoken with deep
and richly sonorous tones, it
had
to be Mr. Gordon. I wheeled round, looked down and
there he was. A very small chap who at best could be described as pleasantly unremarkable
were it not for his voice.
“A warm good morning to you both. My name's Gordon, Charles Gordon, but please
call me Charles.”
Jack, immediately flummoxed by this sudden rush of social interaction and first-name
disentanglement, stared at me for direction.
“Ah, Charles,” I blurted, “how very nice to put a voice to the face… er…a voice to the
name. Well, anyway, you know what I mean.
Lovely
to finally meet you.”
