{"id":1773,"date":"2013-05-02T20:16:01","date_gmt":"2013-05-02T19:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/?p=1773"},"modified":"2026-05-25T06:59:57","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T05:59:57","slug":"across-the-luberon-and-smelly-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/2013\/05\/02\/across-the-luberon-and-smelly-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"Across The Luberon and Smelly Stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is now week four and our bikes are still firmly strapped to the back of Eileen.\u00a0 When we packed up to leave Avignon in the pouring rain, we noticed that the bag, which is covering our bikes<\/span> was full of water, so we opened the bottom of the bag and watched a small waterfall flow onto the mud below.\u00a0 It will stop raining soon\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

It took us a while circling and then finally leaving Avignon, with absolutely no supermarkets or petrol stations open anywhere; it\u2019s the first of many French public holidays in May\u2026\u2026 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.\u00a0 This time we chose to go as far as Cousellet and then turn to the south side of the Coulon Valley.<\/p>\n

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 Opp\u00e8de le Vieux, an ancient, terraced village on a picturesque rocky outcrop.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Opp\u00e8de
Opp\u00e8de le Vieux<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

The road between Oppede and M\u00e9nerbes was lovely, with views across the valley to Gordes and Roussillon and the approach to the walled village of M\u00e9nerbes perched above you is quite breath taking.\u00a0 As it was lunchtime, we decided to pull up on the other side of M\u00e9nerbes and enjoy the view while we munched on our daily baguette.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So we pushed on to the village of Lacoste<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"M\u00e9nerbes
M\u00e9nerbes made famous by Peter Mayle in his book ‘A Year In Provence’<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Lacoste\"
Lacoste<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The
The Marquis de Sade and the Chateau de Lacoste<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

The next village on Wednesday\u2019s itinerary was Bonnieux and suddenly we found tourists; in fact we had to queue for an ice cream!\u00a0 We strolled a couple of streets, but Rodney\u2019s 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, C\u00e9reste and chose Camping Rivi\u00e8re at St Maime for the night halt.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"A
A view of Bonnieux from Lacoste<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

On Thursday morning we woke up to a blue sky at last, what a relief.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The plan had been to find the Tourist Office and book a tour of the L\u2019Occitane Factory.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 There was no chance of a tour, but the museum, which was actually open, we both found to be really interesting.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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 \u20ac837 bill.\u00a0 I\u2019ll admit to being a bit shocked and Rodney was glad that his prayers were not necessary as my bill didn\u2019t reach three figures!\u00a0 \u00a0So all in all it was a productive visit and I\u2019m glad we went there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"L\u2019Occitane
A bag lady at L\u2019Occitane Factory near Manosque<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Here we managed to hit our second traffic jam of the day, driving through Aix en Provence at 5pm in search of L\u2019 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.\u00a0 So that\u2019s tomorrow\u2019s plan for the day sorted.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The
The old ruined bridge on the Durance River<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is now week four and our bikes are still firmly strapped to the back of Eileen.\u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1773"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8410,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773\/revisions\/8410"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petersphotogallery.com\/rodneyandlaura\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}