Crossing Provence into
Languedoc-Roussillon
Trip miles 2,906
It was a long-planned Sunday journey into France, but we
hadn’t counted on the lateness of the French Mothers’ Day and the unexpected
and comparatively expensive toll roads were busy. No matter, it was a joy to be
back in the South of France, the scenes of our first journeys in Bertha and so
many happy memories.
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| La Promenade des Anglais, Nice |
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| Les Arcs hillside Templar town |
It was a high blue sky morning and the picturesque
Esterel was lush green and dewy in the newly, but finally arrived, late spring.
Our 90 mile drive brought us once more to a favourite stop, Les Arcs, just
within Provence. The hillside Knights Templar town had completed the
renovations we had previously seen in 2010 but had meanwhile suffered a massive
sinkhole which revealed a 17th century road bridge on top of a Roman waterway. Barricaded
off behind the square’s bandstand it was proving an unlikely attraction.
Our winding walk up to the pinnacle of the hillside town once
again revealed a magical and warmed stone built setting, with innumerable
basking cats under an increasingly hot sun.
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| Living inside the walls at Les Arcs |
We meandered down the cobbled streets and then cycled up
and out of town in search of Domaine Valette in whose busy vineyards looking
back to the Templar towers we had the pleasure of meeting the estate’s daughter
who happily showed us the cellars and the new varietals. A little before noon
and we had chosen a delicious Provencal Rose which we later matched against a
touchingly funny wine tasting back at our aire, wine makers named Les Archers.
The highly amused, small and industrious French lady hostellier enjoyed serving
us various degustation whilst ignoring the poe-faced and critical sampling Parisian
chap alongside us.
We left the cave with much bon hommie!
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| Tending to the vines at Domaine Valette |
After an enjoyable couple of days we moved onto Comps, a
Rhone riverside town with a busy aire that is tucked behind the flood defence
walls and reached through the town’s bullring – the first we have driven Bertha
through! Already half full when we arrived, the afternoon’s stormy showers
flooded the sandy floor of the aire and brought more than 20 vans in seeking
shelter. It was a complicated ballet of French grumpiness, German ruthlessness,
Dutch leniency and English good humour as we all tried to leave the next
morning!
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| Bertha in the bullring aire, safely tucked behind the flood defence walls |
