Private chauffeur inTourrettes-sur-Loup

Tourrettes-sur-Loup holds a rocky spur at four hundred metres, between the Loup hillside and the plain that descends towards the sea. The village was built as a wall: its perimeter houses, contiguous, form a rampart without fortification. One enters only by two passages, and one circulates only on foot.

It is the town of violets. The flower has been cultivated there on terraces since the nineteenth century, celebrated in March, and recounted at the Bastide aux Violettes. The village also shelters a rare density of artisans' workshops — weavers, glassmakers, ceramicists, engravers — installed in the vaulted cellars of the Grand'Rue.

To the north open the Loup gorges, the Pont-du-Loup and the climb to Gourdon: the most beautiful route of the Nice hinterland, and one of the few the coast has not absorbed. Tourrettes remains an inhabited village, of four thousand souls, whose international clientele occupies the villas scattered along the byways.

Maison Vehira is domiciled in Vence, fifteen minutes from the village. Little on the map and much on the road: the M2210 is narrow, continuous in its bends, and difficult to pass upon. Its chauffeurs practise it every day, which allows them to announce timings that others could not hold.

It serves here the villa owners settled for the season, the guests of the rooms and houses of the village, and the visitors come from the palaces of the coast for a luncheon or a day in the gorges. It also assures the early morning departures towards the airport, which the coastal operators rarely accept at this distance.

Its motorcars are Mercedes E-Class, S-Class or V-Class, all of dark hue. For difficult accesses — private lanes, narrow gates, hairpin bends — the Maison carries out a reconnaissance before the first pick-up.

The Maison sets down at the Place de la Libération, at the entrance of the village, from where one reaches the Grand'Rue and the workshops on foot. It drives to the Bastide aux Violettes, to the chemin des Vergers for the panoramic loop, and to the Pont-du-Loup for the crystallised flower confectionery — a classic stop of days in the gorges.

It also serves, without permitting itself to name it, the table of the village distinguished by the red guide, as well as the guest houses of the route de Vence. The villas of the heights are served upon prior instruction, signposting there being non-existent.