Wijngaarden Bandol in gevaar?

[carl]

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BANDOL IN DANGER

by Kermit Lynch

Graeme Blackmore’s piece on Tempier this month has an intriguing point of view. I have just returned to my place near Tempier, and—talk about another point of view—Tempier’s vineyards and many others in the Bandol appellation are in danger.

France’s fast train, the TGV, wants a new line, new tracks, to speed people from Marseille to Nice. Their brilliant idea is to build the tracks through the vineyards! Wouldn’t that be great? To encourage even more tourism, they want to destroy a national treasure. I am told that the travel time between Marseille and Nice would be cut by only twenty minutes.

Any of you who have visited the Riviera lately know what more tourists and more housing can do—they can destroy the very beauty that attracted tourists in the first place.

Lucien Peyraud tried to fight the construction of an autoroute through the vines back in the late sixties, and lost the battle. Here we go again.