Hill Towns of The Luberon, Provence

Sunday, August 25

Today we went for a long drive to explore the hill towns of The Luberon.

Our first stop was at Isle-Sur-La Sorgue, a market town about 30 minutes from St Remy. Today was a market day and it was huge! There were hundreds of stalls selling everything – meat, roast chickens, fruit, veg, olives, handcrafts, bric-a-brac, junk, antiques, books all over the town. We walked around for an hour and a half and still did not see all of it. We bought olives, a roast coquelet ( a very  small chicken) and fruit for lunch, to have later in the day.

Isle-Sur-La Sorgue has a river that flows from a spring, and years ago powered more than 70 water wheels, for milling flour, and paper and textile mills. There is an ingenious system that channels water from the river into various canals around the town.

From Isle Sur la Sorgue we headed off for Roussillon, and on the way stopped for a great view of Gordes.

Roussillon sits on top of Mont Rouge, and until WW2 was the world’s greatest producer of ochre, used for wallpapers and linoleum. It is a very pretty town; all the buildings are of ochre hues, yellow, orange, pink, brown and are very different to the limestone villages we have been seeing elsewhere in Provence. We walked through the old quarry, which is now a nature park. The orange dust covers everything and oak trees are growing prolifically. We found a seat and shared our market foods with Karol and Michael, who had bought cheese, sausage and bread – a beautiful Provencal picnic.

From Roussillon we headed for Menerbes, which we thought sounded familiar – it was where “A Year in Provence” was set. It was very quiet, and we strolled around, loved the views and saw some quaint buildings. A citadel was built in the 1600’s during the religious wars in France, but it was never ”tested”. Today it is owned privately, but we had a bit of a look anyway. How would you like your own citadel with fabulous views across the Provencal landscape?

We then headed back to St Remy. Michael is marvellous, undertaking all the driving. The roads in Provence are really narrow, and at times we have had to pull over almost into a ditch or canal to let other cars pass. Even in the towns and villages, some of the roads are barely wide enough for one car, let alone two. We are in a Renault Megane – not a big car, however it is comfortable.

When we got back to the hotel we were all very tired and napped.

We met up again at 7:30 for dinner. We looked at several restaurants, but ended up at the one with the13 euro menu, but upgraded to the 19euro. It was very good!