Advertisement
Published: July 30th 2011
Edit Blog Post
St Martin du Castillon
Looking across at St Martin from the gite at Les Boisset We set off this morning in the car to do a ‘recy’ of the surrounding area. Firstly we checked out this little hamlet of Le Boisset then set off up to the village of St Martin de Castillon which can be seen from the apartment. It sits up on a hill top only a few kilometres away. What a fascinating place. Or it was to us anyway as we haven’t seen a village quite like this before. There are many similar ones around Provence and much like the pictures you see of the hill top villages in Italy and France. The buildings are stone and mostly joined to each other. The roads are very narrow. Throughout are narrow alleyways for walking joining the streets. The levels go up through picturesque arches and steps adjoined by narrow houses with flower boxes, small shuttered windows and recessed doors. On top of the hill is the church which is by far the biggest building and not too far away is the cemetery. Strangely, we couldn’t find graves more than 150yrs old and yet the village seems from a much earlier time. It is all very pretty.
We bought some a lovely fresh baguette
The Spring
The crystal clear water of the spring at Fontaine de Valcluse and headed back to the house for lunch by the pool out of most of the wind. Ray has become a sick puppy so it was to bed for him for the rest of the day. We others headed for Le Fontaine de Vaucluse about 30 kms on the other side of Apt up a smaller regional road. Oh dear, what a mistake. It appeared half of France had the same idea for their Sunday. We arrived to the road with cars parked both sides of the road about a kilometre out of town. The car parks were full too. What had they come here for? To see some lovely clear water coming out of the rock strata forming a very crystal clear river. The weed in the river made the water an incredible green colour. The source was a hole at the bottom of a cliff very similar to the Riwaka Resurgence in Nelson except Nelson’s is much nicer. The attraction at this location isn’t so much the source, but the places along the cliffs that have clear fresh water coming from them. All along the side of the river are restaurants, stalls selling local produce, art, crafts, icecream, clothing etc. Further back are the houses and shops of the town. It is only a small place stretched along a narrow area. It’s quite weird that it’s so popular. It was certainly jam packed with people. Despite this, an interesting visit none the less. Any thoughts of going to Gordes afterwards disappeared because we thought the same scenario would greet us – hoards of people. Better to wait until a week day and then take a look.
From the information we’ve found, there is plenty to go and explore around Provence. It will certainly make for a different and interesting holiday.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.059s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 10; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0364s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb