Day 29: Avignon to Cavaillon

April 24, 2018

Avignon's old town has some distinct sections. There is papal palace stuff by the river, from when the Popes of Avignon were here. This is naturally tourist central. Then there is the pedestrian section in the centre of town, seemingly not so known to the tourists. And finally there is Avignon inside the walls but not in the other two sections. Our project this time around focused on the pedestrian section, and we did not go to the Popes area at all. For that you need to check out our excellent last year's blog. Click here.

See the famous bridge, the papal area, and part of the pedestrian area (in orange). The wall continues mostly all around the town.

Our plan was to walk through the orange streets to Les Halles, which is the indoor covered market. The main outdoor market here is on Saturday only.

We had figured that the orange streets would yield some really nice medieval city type shots, but no. We pointed the camera and sort of nothing happened. We are not really sure why this part of Avignon did not turn out to be really photogenic. See:

The covered market (Les Halles) was much like the one in Paris. That is, the stalls have everything - more than everything - but there is not the excitement that an outdoor market brings. That did not stop us, of course, from seeing and getting some great stuff. We found meat and cheese stuffed aubergines, some beautiful baguettes, another of those St Marcellin cheeses, a pain au raisins, and even a coffee of sort of reasonable size. And we saw the requisite long counters of fresh fish from the Mediterranean, piles of flavoured salts, olives, olive oil, and tapenade of course, and so forth.

Always lots of interesting fish at markets

Flavoured salts. The camargue region south of here is famous for salt flats.

Tapenade is just one of the olive products.

Of course there are always beautiful french pastries.

Wandering back through the streets we noticed that some were surfaced with marble. We had only last seen that in Italy. At one place the marble was being installed or replaced, and we could see that each piece was 6 inches thick. We watched what we took to be the expert showing a younger man how to pound the blocks in with a large rubber mallet. It's not easy to get them all flat. We know, we've tried it with concrete pavers.

It takes skill to cut and install paving tiles.

Before setting off for the day's ride, which would be to the nearby town of Cavaillon, we stopped at the Tourist Information. We hoped to get maps and advice to help with cycling to the villages we had in mind for the next two days. And yes, this region has tons of cycling specific maps and route suggestions. We got some good stuff and advice here in Avignon. Later, in Cavaillon we were given even more stuff. We now have just a ton of information about where one can ride, and there are GPS tracks available too, for example at www.provence-a-velo.fr. In fact we have so much information on the bed, so many maps with cycle routes, booklets with cycle routes, and web site listings, its hard to keep it straight. But we have sifted out enough of the essentials for our limited sortie this time.

Here is our simple plan: Ride to Cavaillon and stick there tonight. Tomorrow follow a downloaded track to Menerbes, Lacoste, Bonnieux, and the town of Apt. Stick in Apt. Then from Apt take our extra super new discovery, the "Veloroute du Calavon" through Les Baumettes back to Cavaillon. Spend the night again in Cavaillon, and then go to Arles, hit the Saturday market, and carry onward.

This loop picks up some of the key towns, but it misses the ochre deposits of Roussillon, the Abbaye de Senanque near Gordes, and the famous L'isle sur la Sorgue, to name just a few. We are desperately thinking how we could pick up on some of these. But really, this place needs weeks not days.

The loop that we do have shoots just north of the mountainous Luberon national park, and it is south of the mountains of Vaucluse. That in turn is south of the infamous Mont Ventoux. Well that's a relief!

Our loop runs hard up against the Luberon hills, just to the south.

The Veloroute du Calavon is a relatively flat rail trail. It is covered on one of the pages of the booklet "Le Luberon a Velo". There are about 50 pages - 50 routes! Below you see what the page looks like. Sorry, it is unlikely to be readable. But you can get the idea - Cavaillon is on the left. We will go east on the turquoise route, past the hill towns, and return on the trail in dark green.

One of at least 50 routes in the Luberon area. An that excludes mountain bike trails.

Veloroute du Calavon is subtitled "La Mediterranee a Velo" because it is part of Eurovelo 8 under development. EV 8 is 5888 km long and runs through 11 countries, running from Athens to Cadiz. Our main route already includes a bit of it but watch for us to hop on some more or all, some year soon!

Eurovelo 8. We plan to be on a short bit of this tomorrow.

On finally leaving Avignon, we traversed some normal, not unattractive bits before finally passing the city wall. We know the people living in this part of the perimeter are aware that there is a massive tourist attraction downtown, but they probably seldom go there (if they can help it).

When you see this, you are out of Avignon

On the other hand, we noticed ads for OK Corral, the Wild West theme park east of Marseille. If you are from Europe, why care about knights and castles when you can watch a shootout in the dust!

There is a lot to see at OK Corral! (so forget Carcasonne)

Coming back to our own tourist reality, we rolled into the small town of Caumont. Here we felt like we were really in Provence, what with the beige tile roofed buildings, flowers, and warmth. We stopped on a bench and ate some of our treasures from the market:

We continued towards Cavaillon, carrying on our normal activity of appreciating the surrounding agriculture. This time we passed an olive orchard, a fig orchard, and apples trained straight up - to a height of about 10 feet, with netting above that clearly could be lowered around them. Interesting.

When we had left Avignon, we finally passed through a zone of big box stores and car dealerships. At that stage the famous medieval city was similar to any other in Europe or North America. One slight difference was in the exact identities of the stores. The was Galleries Lafayette, the Pataterie, the Boucherie, Super U and Auchon a Geant Casino, a Pathe cinema, etc. These are now as familiar to us as Costco, Safeway, and Best Buy are back home.

Coming in to Cavaillon the layers were reversed, starting with the car dealerships. But there was also a ring of apartment buildings, rather ugly, that we had not seen in Avignon. Finally, of course, we did arrive in the old town. We got a room (65 euros) at the cheap but slightly elegant and very friendly Hotel Toppin. Here is the view from our third floor (walk up) window. That's part of the Luberon over on the right, eh.

Bonus Feature: Kid Cyclists

Grampies are always interested to see kids out on the trails here, and we are very impressed by the skills of even the littlest ones. But back home, hopefully with a little inspiration from us, the kids are out cycling too. Here are some photos just recently sent by daughter Joni and daughter in law Sabrina.

Cycling kids. Clockwise, Evee on her new bike with genuine rim brakes, Joe, and Naijah with new tee shirt! Amelia missed the photo shoot because she had shot on ahead!

Today's ride: 31 km (19 miles)
Total: 1,865 km (1,158 miles)

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