Walking in Provence

The aim of my week in Provence was to walk from village to village with the occasional transfer by taxi.  On the first day I walked 19km from St Remy to Les Baux and back again. It was a hot day, but the walking was quite managable.  The views from the range were lovely and Les Baux is an amazing village with a castle perched high on the rocky hill.  I know there are all sorts of strategic reasons for building castles on top of a hill, but it is annoying to keep having to walk up steep narrow paths!!!  I had lunch in the village, then visited a site whose name escapes me at the moment, but is a quarry that has been dug out of the mountain side to form large spaces onto which images are projected along with a soundtrack.  The exhibition changes each year, and is currently displaying the work on van Gogh.  It was stunning!

The next day the plan was to walk from St Remy to Eygalieres, which sounded simple enough.  Only 18 km and the route seemed straight forward enough. However it was even hotter than the day before, and the path, which started out as a perfectly respectable mountain trail, soon turned into a rediculously rocky and narrow path that some moron thought would be most fun it it passed over a series of rocky ridges.  It was far too hot, my feet got shredded, and I decided that once I eventually made it back to the hotel, that was me done with the walking!  Wandering the streets of cute villages is much more sensible in this weather!After all I was mostly paying for the hotels and taxi transfers, not to have my feet shredded on those horrid rocks.  (for the record the walking was tougher than Ireland AND Nepal…).  All the villages were divine.  Not sure which is my favourite, but Gordes and Les Baux were certainly spectacular, while Fontaine des Valcause was quiet and refreshing.

So that was me done in France!  On Monday I was off to Italy… or so I thought!