Day 30: Cavaillon to Apt

April 25, 2018

Hitting the high points and looking for something Apt to write.

Prologue: Seven years ago we launched our first cycle journey - across Canada to meet Amelia, our new grandchild in Montreal. Now seven years later she is an elegant young girl (are we are run down old cyclists!). But anyway, today is her birthday. Happy Birthday Amelia!

This was a day that met any and all expectations we may have had. What did we expect of this day deep in Provence? Bright light, earth tones, flowers, herbal scents, mountains, rooflines, olive trees, cherry trees, apple trees, grape vines, tiny roads, tiny villages, castles, old farms, bicycle route signage, bakeries. What did we get? We got it all, plus a pile of books about it that now we have to mail back!

It began when Dodie looked out our window in Cavaillon and said "Oh, look at how the light makes the buildings glow". I took a picture out that window, and this is what the little camera recorded:

Maybe you actually need Van Gogh to interpret the light, but here we at least do see the Luberon mountain, a church, an ochre coloured roofs. Good start.

Next we noted that a bike path actually ran by our front door. And on the bed, excellent maps showing marked out routes all over the place. We had by now formed a much clearer image of the landscape and the bike routes. Any wondering about where things actually were, and any dealings with Google Maps to try to get there were long gone. For the slice we were looking at the layout was simple in concept. We had a long and wide valley before us, extending to the east. The south wall of the valley was the Luberon mountain, the north wall - the Vaucluse. Down that south wall, the villages - Les Taillades, Robion, Maubec, Oppede, Menerbes, Lacoste, Bonnieux, and Apt waited for us. And in the middle of the valley, Roussillon and Gordes lay on a possible route back tomorrow.

The existence of all of this routing information was news (welcome news) to us. And we would soon find that the map and pamphlet makers had backed it up with impeccable on road signage. Not only was every intersection marked, but often the signs mentioned the destination, so there could be no confusion. To be double sure, signs for one direction on the route we followed had a white blaze, while the other direction was orange. These folks are not fooling around!

Two colour signs with town names - good! You can see that the signs are a bit worn. This indicates the routings have been here for a while. As usual, it is all only new to us.

Here is the bike route in front of our hotel, and here is the bakery on the corner. Check, check - our wish list is getting ticked and we have not really left yet.

With a good stock of bakery items in the bag we set off, amid dry stone walls, flowers, trees, etc. and to the first church - in Robion. Let's go up there in a couple of photos, say hello to the priest on the door step, and have a look inside:

Inside the church, that Provencal light again.

We noticed, as we continued beyond Robion, that although grape vines are the most famous bit of agriculture around, and although we see orchards of olive and apple, it is cherries that often dominate. We have rarely seen so many cherry trees all in one place. In season, markets here must be flooded with them. Yet they do not seem to figure in the folk lore. Curious.

Another plant that is super common but not so often mentioned is Iris. Right now, they are in bloom all around:

Iris, mostly blue but in other colours too are almost wild here.

Ok, we will not forget the vines, with their monasteries or chateaux:

It was only about 15 km to Menerbes, but e-assist or not that was 15 km of quite hard effort, with lots of hills that in another year would have been hard push-ups and now were reduced to hard pedal ups. This effort just brought us abreast of Menerbes. Now we could look up to a ridge, and up there was the town. It seemed like it would be impossible to float up to there, but that's why switch backs were invented! Before long at all, we were in the town.

What we found with Menerbes, as with the hill towns to come, is that you do not really get the central square with church and bakeries arrayed around it model. Rather you get the switch backed streets, and you see only whatever there is on the narrow bit before you. The compensation is that you often can look off the ridge to the expanse of field or mountain below or in the distance.

We made our way to a tiny square, that did actually have a church, and also a 17th century building that houses the "Maison de la Truffe et du Vin". This is a place that sells local truffles and wine, and that has a restaurant where you can also sample these things. Truffle is sometimes called the "black diamond", because of its high price. The high price also causes shenanigans, like the sale of cheaper Italian ones, or cheating on the weight. Peter Mayle had some fun writing about this kind of thing. In the Luberon there are three varieties - Melanosporum, Brumale, and Aestivum, each with its own flavour strength and cooking techinique. Unfortunately none of these is harvested in Spring, and there were none for sale. It did seem we could still have a meal made with truffle, but the main plate cost was 60 euros. Oooph. Of course we could drown our sorrows with local wine, and there the most costly bottle was only 34 euros, with many cheaper. Too bad we don't drink!

By the way, nobody even liked truffle here until the Popes of Avignon showed up and started serving them during banquets. Truffles only actually became a big thing here in the 19th century. That's four centuries after the Popes packed up and went back to Rome.

The truffle and wine centre did have something we could buy - books about Provence. We found these intriguing because they described and amplified the things we had been noticing and the conceptions we had before we came. We bought some kids' guides, because those tend to be at our level, and also some reminiscences/ cookbooks.

One thing we did not see was anything by or about Peter Mayle. Maybe they have forgotten, or tried to forget him. Later, on the internet, I tried to find where his famous house had been. But no luck at all, and no name or location of the restaurant that with lavish description he uses to open the first book. Lots of other people must have been able to track him here, because I learned that he fled, all the way to Long Island, only to return after two years, but to the nearby town of Lourmarin, not Menerbes.

(Postscript: I just found out that that restaurant was actually in Lacoste. I learned this from a Youtube interview with the owner. He is now very successful with the summer tourist traffic but is closed in winter because the locals are fed up with him. That makes it ironic that Mayle wrote about going there for New Years.)

(Post-postscript! The book names the restaurant as Chez Raymond, which I have failed to find in Google Maps. Maybe it is now out of business? Does anyone know more about this?)

We want to buy this one, but it's heavy.

A look into the restaurant garden. it would have been nice to eat here, but in practice we dined sitting on a culvert on the road below.

Lacoste, the next town up, gave an even more extreme example of not being able to see the town while you are in it. You have to be at a distance to get the idea of the switch backed streets forming a group.

Lacoste is topped by an 11th century castle made famous by the Marquis de Sade. According to Wikipedia he " stayed there from 1769 to 1772, between the scandals at Arcueil and Marseille, then after the latter and his flight to Italy, he took refuge there until his incarceration in the Château de Vincennes in 1777. Escaping while being transferred to Aix, he took refuge there for the last time from 16 July to 7 September 1778 before being returned to Vincennes.

It was in 1772 that he made his longest stay there, during which he built in the castle a theatre capable of holding 120 spectators. Throughout his internments, he maintained an extraordinary attachment (un attachement extraordinaire) for La Coste.

During the French Revolution, the castle was vandalised and largely destroyed. The construction materials were sold."

So that is why we found only a ruin when we pedaled up to the top. It did offer great views down to the valley, though.

In Lacoste we found the Cafe de Sade. The daily special started at 16 euros. Now that's torture!

Coming down from Lacoste, I noticed some kind of manmade structures on the opposing hillside. "Hmm, I wonder what that could be, way up there?", I mused. "Bonnieux", said Dodie smoothly. "No way, not way up there!", I said in disbelief. But yes, it was Bonnieux. The two towns of Lacoste and Bonnieux just look out on each other from their perspective ridges. And yes, we climbed all the way to Bonnieux.

Bonnieux in the distance, but not looking so high and remote as from further back.

At Bonnieux we again did not really see a town once we were in it, and soon we were descending toward Apt.

Apt lies down more in the middle of the valley, and it has room to spread out. Our hotel, the Aptois (60 euros) has made a study of being utterly basic. There is almost no furniture in the room, so I am typing this on the bed. But there is a bathtub, and after 52 tough kms that is very welcome!

Our hotel is right beside the Apt pedestrian street.

Today's ride: 52 km (32 miles)
Total: 1,917 km (1,190 miles)

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