Lourmarin, Bonnieux and Lavender
30 June 2019
The blisteringly hot weather at the end of June (40+ degrees C) saw Jan and I travelling for a week’s holiday to the south of France, where good friends Jim and Linda had a family home in Lourmarin, one of France’s most picturesque villages. With its grand Château, the small village has seen a transformation over the thirty plus years that Jim had owned and developed his property. Now a very chic artistic community has emerged there, helped in no small way by books and films such as Peter Mayle’s, A Year in Provence (1992).
The hot weather and bright sunshine, although welcome, seemed to make the seven-hour drive that bit more arduous through tunnels and toll roads and having to plough through the centre of Genova after the recent disastrous bridge collapse.
LEFT: Picturesque Lourmarin RIGHT: Bonnieux
One of the attractions of this area at this time of the year are the fields of lavender and all the products made from its colour and perfume. As we drove from Lourmarin through the hills of the Luberon, we discovered another beautiful town Bonnieux, spread out on a hillside and to our delight, vast fields of lavender.
As luck would have it, good friends Mattia and Michelle had the same desire to visit the lavender fields and had driven from Lucca, passing through Lourmarin on their way to visit friends in the Ardeche region further into central France. Bonnieux has a bread/boulangerie museum that highlights some of the gastronomic delights of bread, croissants and other pastries that we bought for breakfast. Wine of course is plentiful and particularly good in this region are the notable elegant rosé wines made from a blend of Grenache, Mourvedre, Syrah and Cinsault grapes.
Jan in the glorious lavender fields near Bonnieux
Other local places we visited were the antique market of L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, up-market Gordes and the Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, the ancient source of the River Sorgue where the medieval Italian poet Petrarch was once a resident and where a museum now stands.
LEFT: Fontaine-de-Vaucluse RIGHT: Colourful Roussillon
At the end of our week, after visting Arles, we finally stopped at Roussillon, famous for the large ochre deposits found in the clay that surrounds the village. The ‘Ochre Path’ takes you through old quarries that produced coloured pigments ranging from yellow to orange to red and were once valuable for the textile industry. On a hot day, Roussillon was a very pleasant spot for a light lunch before our return drive back to Lucca the next day. On our journey back, we stopped for the afternoon at the beautiful seaside town of Cassis, where a quick purchase of some swimwear allowed for a very welcome dip into Mediterranean!
Au revoir Provence!