It was a short drive to our first stop at Les Baux de Provence where, as we were early, we had the pick of the free parking area. We found a nice place for Kiki where we would be able to get out if it got busy.
This small town is built on a rocky outcrop and has a ruined castle perched at the top. We walked up through the sleepy town until we came to the castle where there were magnificent views over the plains to the south. We descended via a different route and made our way back to Kiki for coffee.
Our plan for today is to drive a U shaped route around the foothills of the Luberon mountain range. First we headed eastwards, to the south of the mountains. The scenery was great - a bit like Dartmoor again! We stopped for lunch in Lauris before turning northwards towards Bonnieux. We had planned to stop for the night in the parking area but as we approached the village we came across a road closed sign. The diversion was down a road which had a 2m height restriction - we didn’t want to loose Kiki’s bedroom so we turned around and tried another route. Unfortunately there didn’t seem to be an alternative so we abandoned that idea and our plan to visit Menerbes where Peter Male who wrote “a Year in Provence” lived.
We continued north to Apt were there is another possible stopping place. On entering the town we spotted some fuel at a good price so we filled our tank. The parking place turned out to be quite exposed - it’s windy today - and as it’s still early we decided to carry on.
We arrived at Gourdes and parked in the car park. The parking slopes quite a lot so we’ll need our levelling blocks tonight! We walked along the road to the viewpoint where you can see the dramatic hilltop town cascading down the side of the cliff and took some photos.
We returned to Kiki and managed to get her reasonably level with our wedges before Emma cooked our evening meal. After eating we settled down for the evening.
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