Travels in the Van 2023: Week 12

Tuesday 2nd May: Lourmarin

We've settled into this warm and sunny campsite and the cafe culture in town. I have an uncomfortable night and but it down to the pastis apèritif, wine and rich food of the previous two evenings or an overload of pollen from yesterday's ride. I opt for a proper rest day and wave Richard off on a gravel ridge ride he's been wanting to do. I take my time over gentle yoga and pottering. I have a nap, then feeling better, sit and write a bit and by 5 o'clock we're both ready for a gentle pootle around the lanes surrounding Lourmarin. Albert Camus made this place is home, sponsored the local football club and was a regular visitor to one of the local bars. Until his untimely death, he was referred to in the bar as Monsieur Terrace, to retain his anonymity as literary minded tourist came to find him. Its a perfect evening to explore this fascinating place, the more you look the more you find. 
We rode through in 2019 and got caught in a torrential rainstorm, and arrived dripping into this rather chichi town to a lukewarm welcome by the only cafe/bar that was open. I got told off for using their paper napkins to dry off. This time the welcome is warmer, although there's a classic stereotypical deadpan proprietor that Richard tries to capture coming out of the doorway with a full tray. I love the way tables are situated facing the opposite side of the road in both directions making it perfect for people watching and the world going by.

Wednesday 3rd May 

Next morning, right as rain, I feel up to a swim in the lovely campsite pool. I've been wondering how come there are so many families with school-age children on the campsites we've been to. Particularly Dutch and German. Are there much more relaxed rules about taking children out of school? I ask the dutch woman we've met and turns out they have a two-week half term, which explains it. Much of this place reminds me of happy childhood memories; the smell of summer, cut grass and countryside, and the time I spent every weekend in my early teens on a caravan park on the banks of the Cleddau estuary in Pembrokeshire, mucking about in woods and fields, having the freedom to runabout with kids my own age. Another bike ride takes us on a route we've ridden before, although I always have a mental block until we get to somewhere as memorable as Cucuron with its impressive rectangular pond with sentinel `plane trees and huge carp just under the surface. 

We've already stayed here a day longer than intended, and when Richard, sounding like an Odyssey Lotus-Eater suggest we stay even longer, I remind him that there are new places to visit on our journey north towards home.

Thursday 4th May: the wild

Having amended our itinerary, we pack up and ride into town for one last visit, have lunch outside our favorite restaurant and head for the hills once more. The rides have become shorter and easier since Ventoux. This one is up on a ridge - Le Forest des Cedars, above Bonnieux, Ménerbes and Lacoste. It's a popular nature reserve, and a walking route. I'm intrigued by the name of one of the paths - 'l'homme mort' and the name itself produces a frisson as we ditch the bikes in the undergrowth, walk through a narrow overgrown path to a viewpoint we've noticed on Strava, the GPS tracker app we use. There's a huge slab overhang and cave to take shelter in, behind a drystone wall. We intend to wild camp in the van tonight up here, but not in a cave! It's a shame that the daytime car-park doesn't allow overnight stops, but just along the road down there are a couple of areas that are marked on park4night, an app you can use to search for stops, facilities and parking for campervans. We find the perfect place, a view of Mont Sainte-Victoire to the left and Ventoux to the right in the distance. The sunset is gentle and it feels like sleeping under the stars, warm enough to have the front pop-up window unzipped for a view.

Friday 5th May: four villages

Waking up on top of a mountain is glorious we have breakfast in the sunshine, then wind our way down the valley  watching Bonnieux from above. We join the market stall owners for an early coffee before parking at Lumiéres for a 4 Villages ride. Gordes with its panoramic views and Lavender & Honey ice-cream, Rousillon: home of red orange and yellow soil and Ochre mines, through Bonnieux again, where a glass of panaché revives tired legs, and Mènerbes, where we didn't stop, conscious of the need to get going on the first leg of the journey north. We're just  stopping over in a campsite for a shower and a good night sleep before driving on North to the historic city of Vichy. Farewell to Luberon and Provence and all their delights.

Saturday 6th May: Vichy

We'd been talking about Vichy, wondering how it was chosen to be the centre of the French State under Marshal Pétain, after the fall of the French Republic to Nazi Germany in 1940. Could it have been the number of grand hotels, the famous mineral Spa baths and the breathtaking architecture. A favourite haunt of Emperor Napoleon 3rd it still retains is elegance. We park on Rue de France by the riverside park and by now, since it was apparent just driving in, our heads are turned by the eclectic architecture all around. We do our own cycle tour stopping to gawp at the splendour and bathe in the ambience. We sit in the park sipping coffee listening to Zadok the priest and Bryn Terfel  back in London at the Coronation, history being made, from a place where oddly recent history is not spoken about. 

There's an  impressive tourist trail, but the emphasis is very much on the splendour as opposed to France's darkest hour. There are echoes here of the Spanish attitude to the Civil War, a discomfort about confronting recent trauma. There are some very interesting articles that later, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/may/11/france.weekend7 when we're back on the road we read out to each other as we taking the driving in turns. For now we take the advice of a woman who we met when we parked, and cycle down the river where we have a delicious salad in an old boat house, now a restaurant on the banks of the river Allier.

Sunday 7th May: Pouilly & Sancerre

Each time we have a glass of wine we like - usually the house wine - if it's good (which it usually is) Richards looks it up on a wine app to see the rating - we know next to nothing about wine apart from drinking it. The campsite we stay the next two nights in is on the banks of the loire , the trees full of mistletoe and the village of Pouilly which looks rather run down apart from the Caves de Domaines, which are every few 100 meters. Our ride takes us on the bike path along the Loire to Sancerre, we knew it was going to rain and take refuge in a tiny bookshop that serves coffee staffed by a girl from Paris, who studied in New York and now helps out when the owner needs her. We pass the time, until the rain passes, the three of us, seeing if we can name the writers in the photographs lining  the room The writers are international the books in the shop all French. It's a lovely interlude. The sun comes out we wave goodbye and see if we can cycle all the backstreets of this famous Wine Village. We sit for a coffee and glass of wine in the square make friends with a dog and play hide and seek with a toddler. The colours are every pale shade one could imagine and some of the alleys can't have changed in centuries.

We cycle back. A bit further on along the river past the campsite,  on the way to a 'cave' we've had a recommendation for, there's a small quirky riverside cafe, part junkshop, part museum. we stop for a late lunch and get talking to a couple who give us more winery recommendations. We leave the area the following day pleased to have restricted purchases to a box of white and three bottles of something more special.

Monday 8th May: Versailles

It's well known that most tourist attractions, museums etc. are closed on Mondays in France. The Palace of Versailles is, but the gardens and parkland that extend for miles surrounding it are open and free. The attraction for us is that there are plenty of cycle paths to explore. We park a few miles away in the town of Versailles and enjoy the sights of the boulevard on the approach to the huge gold-topped estate, again comparing the vastness and scale of France (and Spain for that matter) compared to home. We also enjoy seeing scenes reminiscent of  Seurat's 'Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte', except this is Monday and a boating lake. It's been good to break the long drive back to Calais and the tunnel by stopping off and stretching our legs en route. This evening finds us in the well-positioned Aire du baie de Sommes, the only campervan in the designated area the entire night, we eat up the last of the fresh food, sleep well and get up early for the hour's drive to the tunnel.

Tuesday 9th of May: back in Blighty

It's just past 9am when we arrive back on British soil. One last stop before home, what could be more British than Sissinghurst and the National Trust. It didn't disappoint. I'm glad I called past the vegetable garden as well as the more famous gardens, otherwise I wouldn't have thought, once home,  to check the asparagus that I planted in the autumn and was sure had been finished off by the frost. There are new spears poking through the soil. 

The last hours on the M25 and M4 feel like the longest, but the sun's still out when we arrive home. The garden's full of bluebells (and dandelions), the Wisteria we planted a year and a bit ago is in full bloom. The Cat comes in for supper and we sit down to one of Sam's delicious, simple, golden risottos with a glass of white wine to toast the homecoming.

I've felt a gravitational pull build gradually over the last week. The place and the people calling us back. It's been an adventure but I'm glad to be back home.