What I pack for two weeks by the pool

If you’re reading this on Sunday morning, I should be in a plane somewhere over France right now, half asleep, bag wedged under the seat in front of me. Two weeks by the pool ahead: a week in Provence between Couvent des Minimes and Villa La Coste, then a week in Île de Ré, in a villa. Both hotels have pools. So does the house.

So of course I have to be prepared with proper poolside accessories and here’s what I take in my bag.

It’s not really a beach bag. It’s a kind of big back that I picked up years ago on a stay at a Soho farmhouse, zipped, sturdy, big enough that it now doubles as my plane bag too.

Some hotels do give you a nice bag like that, for instance Capelongue in Provence or Vermelho in Comporta. There’s something lovely about a hotel that hands you a basket instead of a branded carrier bag. It tells you how they think of you. (Vermelho review coming in September, with another Portuguese one alongside it.)

A cover-up, and for me that means two things. A long white linen shirt-dress, which I’ll wear from breakfast to lunch and barely notice I have on. And pareos, as many as I can fit, because a pareo might be the most useful object on holiday. It’s a wrap, a seat cover, a towel when you don’t want to carry a proper one down to the beach, a picnic blanket if you find a good patch of shade. Mine has been a makeshift skirt for Mademoiselle once, when she ruined her outfit by dropping ice cream all over her clothes; There are a dozen ways to tie one (waist, neck, over the shoulder) and I’ve probably used all of them by accident rather than design.

I used to pack two or three books, usually long sagas, and feel the weight of them the whole trip. Now it’s just the Kindle. The trick, I’ve learned, is to start the book before you leave, a chapter or two at home, enough that you’re already pulled in by the time you’re horizontal by the water. Then the rest takes care of itself: finish one, start the next, or remember something you read about in the papers and have it downloaded before you’ve even put the sunscreen on.

As for what’s on it, I have made my peace with not being the reader I was at 20. Back then it was all literature and excellent writing and taking it very seriously. These days I want something I can fall into by page three, nothing sombre, nothing too dramatic, there is quite enough of that in the world at the moment. What I love most is the roman-feuilleton, those 19th century French novels written in instalments for the newspapers, and Alexandre Dumas above all. If you have never read Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, start there. It is enormous and you genuinely cannot put it down. (I was exactly the same about Arsène Lupin as a girl, and I’ll still happily take an Agatha Christie in the same spirit.) I like a series too, because once you find one that works you don’t have to decide anything for a while.

The one I would actually press on you: Je voulais vivre, which I read in June in Paxos. It’s Milady from Les Trois Mousquetaires, told as her own story, and it has all the plot and pace you want by a pool, but the writing is genuinely lovely as well. A book about a woman, and really, really good. Right now I’m on L’Affaire Alaska Sanders by Joël Dicker (the one who wrote La Vérité sur l’Affaire Harry Quebert).

And of course, no decent French woman would spend a summer without reading Elle, the women’s magazine that we grew up with. Even in this digital age, it still remains a staple of my summers in France.

These days I’d rather be under an umbrella and don’t care about tanning anymore. I was a teenager in the 80’s and it was all about getting really tanned and I don’t tan easily so I always felt left behind. But now, I don’t care at all, and in any case, given my cancer history, it’s best to be safe.

So I stay under the umbrella and when there isn’t one, or the sun moves, or we’ve wandered to a beach with none, a cap at least lets me keep reading without squinting through the whole chapter.

In terms of suncream, I do like La Roche-Posay, and I have a little spray I keep for refreshing myself mid-afternoon, on top of the cream I always put on right after the morning shower.

Sunglasses, my phone, earplugs for when I actually want to disappear into a book rather than my phone (we all check Instagram by the pool, let’s not pretend) and I’m a happy girl.

When I was a child, French summers meant goûter around four o’clock on the beach, with the french “BN”. They are a two biscuits stuck together with a thick layer of chocolate, and my whole ritual was prising them apart just to lick the chocolate off first. I still buy them the moment I’m in France, and I still do exactly that, minus the sand this time. It’s really one of my summer madeleine de Proust.

Flip-flops for the pool, water shoes if we’re somewhere with stony beaches (Greece taught me that one the hard way). Goggles, because I actually swim, proper lengths back and forth, not just a dip to cool off. A card game, which has become its own small ritual with Mademoiselle over the years, and we always seem to end up playing it around the same time of day. And a notebook and pen for that. particular kind of thinking that only happens once your brain has properly switched off by the water. Ideas surface, or you finally get around to reflecting on the last few months, and I like having somewhere to put that down before it disappears.

That’s really it. The rest is just sunshine, sleeping and time. And that’s what I’m about to do for two weeks!

I’d be really interested in what you take in your pool or beach bag, tell me in the comments.

When I’m back, I want to put together a proper look at the Provence hotels I’ve stayed in over the years, Couvent des Minimes and Villa La Coste included. And in September I’ll finally show you the whole thing I’ve been quietly building all year, which my kind paid supporters have already had a preview of…. Yes I’m trying the whole teasing thing here!

For now, though, I’m going to let the bag do its job. See you for La Rentrée!