Bonjour Provence

After leaving Spain, we made a fast drive on the French "interstate" to get north as far as the valley of the Ardeche, which is almost in Provence and which we had visited earlier in the upstream regions.  That also put us very close to Orange and Avignon.

We made one small diversion along the Mediterranean coast to drive down to the beach and put body parts in the salt water.  Despite being a nice day (to a Canadian), the huge beach was empty.  There were people on the campground, but apparently the weather wasn't good enough to tempt them any further..

 Speaking of French "interstates"...  These are the "A" auto-routes and, so far as we can tell, they are all toll roads.  Lots of traffic, very good condition, and a speed limit of around 130 km/hr.  We drove on one for about 3 hours and it cost around 20 Euros.  That's about $30 CAD in case you're thinking you already spend too much on roads.  User pay.  I like it.

Once we got off the main roads, old roman ruins and buildings dating from the 11th and 12th centuries are scattered here and there.  One collection was close to our campground on the Ardeche.  The next day, we visited Orange, a town with some interesting Roman ruins.  Then we went a short distance south to see the old walled city of Avignon.  Old.  Lots of rocks.  Big.

 Having had our fill of cities, we moved further east to the town of Apt.  As usual, something that looked small on the map was surprisingly larger.  We found a nice campground, a place to rent bikes the next morning and went hiking for what remained of our day.

 Apt is in the Luberon (a range of hills and a region) in southwestern Provence.  It's dryer here and the forest is more short-needled pines and a kind of scrub Mediterranean oak.  There are none of the many streams and rivers flowing that we've seen elsewhere in France.

We spent a morning biking near Apt and it was nice pedalling by fields of lavender (sadly not blooming yet), ripening cherries, sunflowers, grapes and some other unidentified growing things.

 We've been hearing about floods in Paris.  Our weather has certainly been mixed, and there have been notices in every campground about flooding, but we seem to have escaped "les innundations" that have been happening in other places.  We had one torrential downpour in Dijon, but that was the worst and short-lived.  Otherwise it's been occasional showers and quite a bit of cloud.  Yesterday, we had blue skies while biking, which was most pleasant.

 Our campground the second night, just across the valley, had a restaurant, so we went out to sample the regional cuisine for supper.  For a small place down at the end of a small road out in the country, the place was hopping by 8 pm.  Notable were the pommes de terres au gratin and warm goat cheese on baguette.  Gourmand that I am, I had fries and a brochette au boeuf.  Salade vert avec l'ail.

This morning (Friday), we started driving north.  Our time is running out and we need to see some of Switzerland.

Our route north took us out of the Apt valley, up over the hills and down into more valleys with great views.  Lots of woods, cultivated fields and the occasional small village.  Some sections through rocky gorges with narrow winding roads.

It didn't take long to leave Provence an we gradually entered the precursor to the Alps.  Of course, cloud obscures the big peaks that we assume are there, but one gets the idea of larger, more massive mountains.  Not just hills any more.

Au Revoir, Provence.