Provence Trip June/July 2023 - Part 1 The Luberon and a Puncture

Continuing our Provencal holiday last summer. I am trying my best to go through hundreds of photos and just pick out a few from each place of interest, but that's not easy, as in many places up in the mountains I took hundreds of photos with my phone as we were driving along!

The first place we went to was Gordes, in the Luberon. We've been before, but the town is so pretty so I wanted my brother to see it.

The river beside the campsite. I was pleased to see everything looking nice and green, as we have only visited Provence previously in the autumn, when it was very dried out and brown.

This is an old photo of Gordes, as we couldn't get a parking spot at this viewpoint in June.

Somewhere we hadn't visited before in Gordes was the Bories Village. These were a group of 30 dry stone huts, which were restored over a period of ten years. Taken from this website: "The word "Borie", of Provençal origin, comes from the Latin "boaria" - oxen stable -, signifying a type of shed. The hut has always been an institution in Provence. First popping up in fields to house the peasants' tools, it became, as time passed, the little country house, done up, often in quite a rudimentary manner, to spend Sundays and holidays. The borie also permetted [sic] shepherds to shelter their flocks. To build them, our ancestors gathered the stones from the calcareous surroundings. They were just lying there for the taking."

There are many Roman ruins across southern France but also a number of intact bridges, still standing and some, like this one, still in use.

Still in the Luberon, we visited one of several former ochre mines, this one entitled the Colorado Provencal. I wore my trainers as I remembered having very orange feet the last time we went to one of these dusty places in sandals!

After leaving the Luberon the plan was to visit the lavender fields up on the Valensole plateau. We had seen some lavender fields in the Luberon, but they weren't in places where you could stop or get a good view. However, just as we were driving up the hill to the plateau, this happened. 😢

Well, luckily the tyre blew just as we were going past a layby, so that was handy. However, was there a phone signal? Of course not! Eventually Keith had to walk a fair way down the hill to get a signal, and after finally getting through to the insurers, a breakdown truck was sent out. The mechanic wasn't able to find a moho tyre available at that moment, so after the fun side - getting Mary up some planks onto the ramp and seeing her lifted up onto the back of his truck (I feared for her here, looking top heavy but she was well secured) - we were taken back to the repair garage where they tried to source new tyres. Originally they had said it may take several days, but eventually two were found (we needed to change both front tyres) which could be delivered the following morning! Phew!

We were told that we could 'camp' in Mary for the night here, parked beside the garage. Malcolm was another matter though - he could hardly pitch his tent on the tarmac! So we found him a nice little hotel in the town which was a few minutes walk away, and which was covered by the insurance.

Whilst hanging around with all this going on, I spotted this Mantis on the wall beside the garage. However it wasn't just an ordinary one like we see at home - it was a Conehead Mantis (Empusa pennata), which we have been really hoping to come across one day! It's a bit of a shame that try as I might I could not get his head in focus with my phone camera, but I didn't want to go and get my other camera as I knew he (or she) would disappear. Have a look at the Wikipedia page, as there are some amazing macros of them. If you think the 'ordinary' Praying Mantis is alien, then you should look at this one!

The little town where we found ourselves was Vinon-sur-Verdon, which was certainly not a bad place to find oneself stuck for the night. This is the Verdon river, which was divided into two beside the bridge here, one side being shallow and gravelly for families to sunbathe and young children to play in the water, and this other side with a slalom run for kayaks and older kids having fun in the deeper water.

So we made the most of being parked up in the middle of a little town by going out for dinner!

Part 2 to come soon!