The Luberon Experience

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This tour covered the area of Provence around the Luberon Mountains which are named for the wolves which used to live there. Firrst we had to catch the train north to Avignon. We were down to an early breakfast and got to the train station in good time. The train arrived punctually and we just had to be sure to get off at Avignon and not end up in Paris.





The pick up point had been changed from the train station to the tourist office as there are large and disruptive road works in Avignon where they are building a tramway round the circumference of the inner city within the walls. There were eight of us in the group, four from Australia, a Japanese couple from London and us. Our first stop was the village of Fontaine de Vaucluse, named for a large and very pure spring at the head of a narrow valley cut into the limestone. We had an hour there so we walked up to the spring which was a deep pool surrounded by high cliffs. The water level is low at this time of year but there was still a considerable flow into the river Sorgue. Much of the area is a nature reserve. We then looked at the paper mill which is powered by a large water wheel as it was originally in the 15^th century. They make artisanal paper from linen and cotton. We then wandered around the village which is very pretty especially by the river.







We then drove through the countryside and stopped at a point where you could see the village of Gord which is perched on a steep hillside and considered to be one of the most beautiful villages of France. Apparently the film based on the book “A Year in Provence” was filmed there and a number of celebrities and artists have houses there. We did not go in but continued on to the village of Roussillon. This is built on an unusual outcropping of iron rich rock in what is mainly limestone country. All the houses are plastered in shades ranging from yellow to deep pinkish red, and it is a rule that buildings must have this type of finish.





From there we set off along the wonderful Ochre Trail where you could see high cliffs of multicoloured rock, they say there are 17 shades of ochre. The forest was also interesting as a number of plants such as heather and scots p;ine grow here because of the acidic soils, as well as the common vegetation of Provence. They no longer extract ochre from the area though a small amount is turned into artists’ pigments.





We visited the village of Bonnieux stopping on the way by the old Roman bridge of Pont Julien on the ancient Roman road called the Via Domitia which was one of their big trading routes across Gaul, and then went to the vineyard of Domaine de la Citadelle where there is an extraordinary collection of corkscrews. We had a tasting of their wines which were much nicer than the ones at the earlier wine tasting and finally returned to Avignon where we did not have to wait long for a train as the one we thought we had missed was running late. We were much more confident of getting off at Arles this time.

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