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Published: July 30th 2011
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We left Grindelwald at 6.45am with changes at Interlaken Ost, Speiz, Bern, and finally Geneva Airport where we got a bus to Grenoble in France. The mobile internet runs out at the border so time sitting has been made good use of doing email and writing up the travel blog.
From Geneva Airport we caught a bus to Grenoble via Annecy and Chambery. Strangely, the Customs men were at the border and checked most passports of passengers but didn’t bother with ours. We had various stops along the way to go through toll gates for the autobahns but otherwise it was a straight through trip arriving a little late in Grenoble. Ray and Judy were there to meet us and it was sure good to see familiar faces again. Lindsay got himself signed up for driving and off we headed for Avignon 200 kms to the the south.
The road south is routed through a very broad valley with many towns particularly in the north. On either side of the valley are lower gentler mountains. There is a lot of forest or high scrub covered hills, some cropping and further south into vineyards and orchards as the soil get
The back Gite
Our bedroom upstairs (outside ones) and living area at bottom. Taken from tiny courtyard more stony. It is much more rugged than I expected, often with high cliffs, rocky streams and rivers, deep gorges, dammed lakes, pinnacles and heavily eroded areas. The further south we travelled the more rugged and rocky the landscape became. The hills are dotted with small old villages and there are many remains of old castles or fortifications. It has nothing of the tidiness of Switzerland and by comparison seems a little unkempt with often drab looking towns with not much in the way of gardens and weeds in streets and public places. I guess it’s a matter of tuning in to a different landscape and culture.
Because Ray seems to either have a cold or is getting something more serious like the flu, Lindsay took over the driving to get to our destination. With Judy’s good navigation we eventually found our way without too much trouble although there was a lot of looking for highway numbers for smaller roads. We arrived at the small hamlet of Le Boisset somewhere in Provence out of Apt at 7pm to be shown around the pool and living areas. It was fine but very windy which we gather is called “the mistral”
The gite kitchen
We had two kitchens but chose to share this one. wind. It certainly wasn’t warm. Our gites are very rustic, built of stone, fairly small, but otherwise fine. We use one for getting together for meals. Like all old rustic houses of this period (200+) they are fairly dark inside with small windows.
Strangely, this little hamlet is made up of a number of houses joined together with a narrow road passing through and the odd little alley way. Some of the houses are in different stages either of dilapidation or have been renovated and rebuilt. Certainly quaint. Surrounding the hamlet is mainly scrubby countryside backing up into scrubby or low forested regional park over the hills behind. In the lower areas are vineyards, some orchards, wheat and lavender fields set in amongst patches of trees rather than clear farmland. These are quite pretty at the moment but not as bright as I expected. It will be an interesting and different place to explore.
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