It is now week four and our bikes are still firmly strapped to the back of Eileen. When we packed up to leave Avignon in the pouring rain, we noticed that the bag, which is covering our bikes was full of water, so we opened the bottom of the bag and watched a small waterfall flow onto the mud below. It will stop raining soon……
It took us a while circling and then finally leaving Avignon, with absolutely no supermarkets or petrol stations open anywhere; it’s the first of many French public holidays in May…… We took the D900 due east to take in the views of the Luberon, an area we had much enjoyed last year when visiting Gordes and Roussillon. This time we chose to go as far as Cousellet and then turn to the south side of the Coulon Valley.
As the sun came out we spotted a boulangerie in Cousellet with a queue of customers outside, so we pulled up and bought a baguette, a fruit tart and a box of delicious fresh strawberries for later. We then took the road up to Oppède le Vieux, an ancient, terraced village on a picturesque rocky outcrop. It was mostly abandoned for many years but now artists and writers are moving in and restoring some of the properties around the original village square. Vehicles have to be parked on the outskirts; then a pathway takes you through a lovely terraced garden full of lavender bushes, rosemary bushes, oak trees and wisteria vines. We continued up the steep climb along narrow village paths to the very top, which is crowned with a ruined chateau and a church which is also being restored.
The road between Oppede and Ménerbes was lovely, with views across the valley to Gordes and Roussillon and the approach to the walled village of Ménerbes perched above you is quite breath taking. As it was lunchtime, we decided to pull up on the other side of Ménerbes and enjoy the view while we munched on our daily baguette. We had thought about visiting the, apparently renowned, corkscrew museum; it has displays of more than 1,200 corkscrews some of which are over 400 years old; but being a public holiday, it was closed. So we pushed on to the village of Lacoste
A large parking spot at the base of the village of Lacoste was too tempting to pass by, so we locked up Eileen and plodded up more narrow streets, in another pretty Provence village, to the chateau at the top. This 42 room chateau was also left to decay, but it had originally been occupied by the de Sade family, including the Marquis de Sade. It is now an interesting muddle of ruin and renovation with Pierre Cardin having purchased it a few years ago and it is currently being partially restored. There are some interesting art works in the park beside it and it seems that a lot of the village comprises the Lacoste School of Arts, a lovely place for such a thing.
The next village on Wednesday’s itinerary was Bonnieux and suddenly we found tourists; in fact we had to queue for an ice cream! We strolled a couple of streets, but Rodney’s left foot opted not to go to the top of this village, so we enjoyed the views across to the other Luberon villages and the Vaucluse Plateau and then, back in Eileen, we pushed on again through Apt, Céreste and chose Camping Rivière at St Maime for the night halt.
On Thursday morning we woke up to a blue sky at last, what a relief. We drove down to Manosque and then we drove through Manosque, around Manosque, back through Manosque, got stuck in the pre-lunch traffic jam in Manosque and finally, with no sign of any above-ground parking area, we gave up. The plan had been to find the Tourist Office and book a tour of the L’Occitane Factory. We checked the website and it seemed the Tourist Office would now be closed for lunch anyway and some of the reviews of the tour were not too good, so we decided just to drive out to the factory and see for ourselves. There was no chance of a tour, but the museum, which was actually open, we both found to be really interesting. We exited through the gift shop and I had to buy myself something in the store, especially with 10% of everything and some free samples too. Rodney handed over his wallet and went outside to buy himself a coffee with his loose change; the barista helpfully told him to go to church and pray. When I queued at the till to pay for my small purchases, a young Japanese girl in front of me was handing over a wad of notes to pay for her €837 bill. I’ll admit to being a bit shocked and Rodney was glad that his prayers were not necessary as my bill didn’t reach three figures! So all in all it was a productive visit and I’m glad we went there.
Our picnic lunch was a really late affair, right next to an old ruined bridge on the Durance River and then we followed the road south to Aix-en-Provence. Here we managed to hit our second traffic jam of the day, driving through Aix en Provence at 5pm in search of L’ Arc-en-Ciel campsite, but we got there and found a very nicely laid out campsite with a bus to the city centre stopping right outside. So that’s tomorrow’s plan for the day sorted.
