Provence

16th March, Avignon, Nimes and Fontaine-de-Vaucluse.

We woke to find the morning bright and sunny. We had planned for a rainy day with Jacqui needing to do some more Keele work. Change of plan. We both decided to go back into Avignon and head off to Le Halles, the popular market hall specialising in local Provence produce. There was an extensive range of meats, cheese, bread, and home-made food products but nothing excited us enough to buy. So we took our last look around the old town through the back streets and back to our van. Today we decided to go back on ourselves, to Nimes. I wanted to see the best preserved Roman amphitheater in the world and the Maison Carree which is the only fully preserved temple also from the Roman times. This allowed Jacqui to put in a few more hours of work. I returned back after seeing the two monuments, baroque gardens and the recommended "old town walk". I felt a little guilty as I had all the fun that day. We then headed back to Provence and skyped Millie who had just returned from her Chase Water school trip. She had a great time and told us in great detail about the events of her week. We eventually arrived at our destination "Fontaine-de-Vaucluse" and parked between a few motorhomes that arrived early to protect us from the winds. We had supper, then went to bed.

 

Sunday 17th March. Fontaine-de-Vaucluse.

 

Jacqui had got up early and walked into the village and had a pleasant surprise. The village was in an absolutely beautiful setting, lovely village square, mountain plateau backdrop, and a kayak slalom race was being set up.  She hurried back with the news so that we could both take a better look together. We also found that this village contained the source of the river Sorgue which was a fast flowing glacial blue river due to the winter rain and snow fall. We watched the kayak racing for a while then set of to the source of the river. At the end of a deep green gorge, at the foot of a tremendous cliff sculpted by erosion, the most beautiful river appeared. With a total average outflow of 630 million cubic meters per year, the spring is the greatest in France and one of the most important in the world, for its water outflow volume. It results from an emergence of a huge underground water system with water collected from Mount Ventoux, its plateau and other local mountains and the rush of water is spectacular and what is seems, from nowhere. On our way back down we passed the water mill and its museum showing how it is still used to make hand-made paper. We really enjoyed browsing the working museum, especially as it was warm inside and so cold out.

When we returned we noticed a couple who we had bumped into twice before on our travels and exchanged stories of what we had done and our planned routes for the coming months. As the weather was bad then we drove onto the next village, Isle de Sourge to find wifi where we could both do a few hours on the Internet. Once completed we returned back to Fontaine-de-Vaucluse for another night. This time the wind had died down so it was a quiet night.

Monday 18th March. Luberon region of France (Provence).

Expecting rain today we had planned for Jacqui to complete some more marking. It's getting more difficult as the work for her is coming in thick and fast. But first I went into the village and picked up some maps of the area. After five hours of work we decided to call it a day and set off using the maps we had picked up to see more of the region of Vaucluse and Luberon. Provence is a very pretty area. We saw many fruit trees about to blossom and as we drove through the villages of Cavaillon, Merindol, then Lauris and Loumarin the scenery changed and we were driving through limestone crags until we reached Bonnieux, perched high on a cliff edge. 

   

From there we dropped down, crossing the plain of Luberon to Rossillion which was built around an amazing terracotta coloured cliff. We then continued to Gordes, which is listed as one of the most beautiful towns in France and stayed the night. 

Thursday 19th March, Gordes to Santa Goix de Lac.

It was a bright morning and after breakfast we took our bikes off and headed uphill to the centre of Gordes. As you can see above the views of the plains of Luberon were fantastic. There was a market in the small square where we bought some lavender honey, pain de raisins and sampled some local sausage. We picked up our daily local bread, wandered all around the town then cycled back to the van for coffee and lunch as it was now nearly 1 pm. We then set off on our bikes again to an ancient stone village "Village des Bories", the most recent was built in the 18th century and they were inhabited until the late 19th century.

After this short excursion we put our bikes back on the van and set off for another scenic drive across to the Haute Provence area. Once again snow capped mountains came into view in the background although the predominant scenery was rolling countryside covered with lavender fields. We promised ourselves we would return to this area in the Summer to see the fields in full bloom. We took the long route to Apt, Forcalquies, Manosque, Valensole and Riez ending up at a huge a very picturesque manmade lake at Santa Croix.