One of the most pleasurable memories about camping amongst the sunflowers in Southern France is the lunches you can concoct from local French provisions that are really cheap. All you need is a baguette or two, some of those juicy French tomatoes with perhaps a little salad, and some local French cheese. Of course it is de rigueur that these tasty morsels must be washed down with some local French wine which if bought from a local store is almost free. Afterwards, just relax under the balmy afternoon sun or take a walk amongst the rolling fields of sunflowers and wonder what life must have been like for a French Impressionist painter.

I remember one of these typical lunches we had next to an onion field. We ate, drank and watched as the French farmers collected all the onions they needed and loaded them into a large truck pulled by a noisy tractor that belched blue smoke and clattered away like an old steam engine. We watched their toils for an hour or more and even exchanged some friendly “Ca va” with them. Eventually they had collected all they required and trundled off lowly with their harvest leaving behind the now brown field.

After they had gone we wandered across some of the harvested fields and could not miss all the onions that had been left. Presumably these had fallen from the plants or the truck, but there were loads of them. Obviously they were now abandoned, but not to us. We spent much of the afternoon wandering through the fields in the glaring sun collecting armfuls of rejected French onions. We loaded them into the car and left with enough to keep us in onions for a year which is why we love going on a family holiday in france.