It’s Vaucluse for the views
Tempted by magnificent gorges, broad valleys, historic hill villages and troglodyte caves? This fabulous part of France hits the spot…
Glassy and silent, the Aigue Brun slips unnoticed through Lourmarin before trickling south to join the Durance. We thought it incredible that this dribbling stream had carved the deep canyon of the combe de Lourmarin through which we were cycling. The combe divides the massif of the Grand and Petit Luberon and we were climbing towards the historic hill village of Bonnieux on the smaller Luberon.
Neolithic man once enjoyed this site and the Via Domita – an important Roman thoroughfare connecting Italy with France – passed through it. The Knights Templar were seen flashing their swords here.
Then the popes arrived, bringing centuries of wealth that was put paid to by the French Revolution that restored the village to poverty. Bonnieux, when we visited it, was a peaceful place, though the crumbling ramparts hint at a hostile past.
The village is veined with tapering lanes of cobbled steps that twist between dovegrey stone walls and open onto sunny courtyards of honey-coloured houses. We heaved our bikes up a lengthy time-worn staircase to the twelfth century church at the top of the village, where our exertions were rewarded by the panorama across the plains of Cavaillon to Mont Ventoux.
For the best views, though, we had to sweat a little more. Behind Bonnieux a crumbly road creeps steeply towards the crest of the Petit Luberon and the Forêt des
Cèdres. Cedar trees are not indigenous here; seeds brought from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco were scattered over the Petit Luberon in 1861 and a mixed forest of cedar, pine and oak now crawls along the mountain’s spine.
There is parking here for walkers and the woods are laced with limestone paths. We rode through the fragrant forest and beyond, along the brow of the Petit Luberon amid a spectrum of wildflowers and with hazy blue views north and south stretching across the Vaucluse.
With the wind in our hair, we whipped down the mountain to rejoin the Aigue Brun on its uphill journey across the flank of the Grand Luberon. We passed cherry orchards frilled mauve with wild irises and several intriguing bories, which are round, dry stone shelters built in the fields by shepherds and farmers from medieval times until the nineteenth century.
The Aigue Brun has sculpted another gorge on the Luberon, its cliffs pockmarked with caves that were once the refuge of Neanderthals. Troglodytic dwellings are still inhabited in the rock face, which is a renowned climbing venue.
A shady lane plunges to the river, where we turned onto a stony uphill track towards Fort de Buoux. This clifftop site was inhabited from prehistory until the seventeenth century, when it was destroyed by Louis XIV.
“It is petite and perfect with roses tumbling around the doorways of its straw-coloured houses and we toiled up the steep, spidery streets to the château”
Unfortunately, we didn’t have suitable cliff-climbing footwear so couldn’t visit the fort, but the track passes a magnificent overhanging rock that was a prehistoric shelter. Over one hundred sarcophagi were discovered here; some still remain behind a jumble of boulders. An inspection of these stone coffins – each individually gouged and sized to fit a specific occupant – made the hairs on my arms stand up.
We climbed steadily out of the gorge, wheeling high above a wide river valley ribbed green with early lavender and onto the Grand Luberon, from where we could see the bald crown of Mont Ventoux.
This dead volcano was shorn of its thatch of trees to supply centuries of shipbuilding demands. Whilst the lower slopes have been reforested, its summit wears only a white cap of limestone, giving the impression of year-round snow cover.
We were camping in Lourmarin, one of the 159 ‘Plus Beaux Villages de France’ (loveliest and most characterful villages). Lourmarin certainly is beautiful and is overlooked by a sixteenth century château; its cobblestone streets with their blueshuttered houses are punctuated by pretty squares to stop and admire, café terraces and tinkling fountains.
Albert Camus, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, lived and is buried here, as is another French writer, Henri Bosco. Having once studied both authors, I visited their simple graves in the cemetery. The village clearly attracts writers: Peter Mayle, author of A Year in Provence, also lived here near the end of his life.
We set off one day from Lourmarin on a glorious, undulating bike journey across a landscape latticed with vineyards and olive groves and scattered with pretty, pale stone bastides (manor houses) on gentle slopes scarlet with poppies.
Rattling through several cobbled hill villages, we then freewheeled to the pan-flat flood plain of the Durance.
We crossed the river and climbed through almond orchards onto the Chaîne des Côtes, a massif mantled with aromatic pinewoods that are pierced with chaotic limestone outcrops. The road through Lambesc was closed for the weekly market, so we had to weave among the fruit and veg stalls to reach the other side, where we visited a wine château – Château Bas – in the grounds of which are the remains of a Roman temple. Chunks of temple had evidently been borrowed to build the château, but some of the structure, including a Corinthian column, still stands neglected in the back garden.
On a hilltop near Château Bas is another ruin. An earthquake in 1909 destroyed the village of Vernègues, killing two people.
The villagers abandoned their damaged houses and rebuilt a community further down the hill.
We tethered our carbon-fibre steeds to a fence post at the foot of the ruins and, revitalised by sweet crêpes from the nearby restaurant, scrambled up a rocky track to the old village. It’s a lonely, windswept place with huge views, where we felt the fresh flow of the mistral blowing from the northwest. Tree roots were creeping inside the walls of the toppled stone houses, slowly completing the destruction begun by the earthquake.
A looping lane swept us downhill from Vernègues past stripy vineyards, over the Durance and uphill again into the whistling mouth of the strengthening mistral. On our way back we visited La Tour-d’Aigues, a town topped by the yellow-ochre remains of a Renaissance château.
Never able to resist a hill village, we spiralled up to medieval Ansouis (also among the ‘plus beaux villages’). It is petite and perfect with roses tumbling around the doorways of its straw-coloured houses and we toiled up the steep, spidery streets to the Château d’Ansouis where we rested on a thoughtfully placed servants’ bench by the château’s back door, enjoying the vista.
The magnetism of Mont Ventoux was irresistible and we conquered the ‘Giant of Provence’ from Villes-sur-Auzon at the mountain’s toe, staying on a grassy municipal campsite. Villes-sur-Auzon is a leafy, medieval village of ochre houses and many fountains, a sleepy neighbourhood that is woken each afternoon by the clanking of pétanque balls in the main square. It rests at the mouth of the magnificent Gorges de la Nesque, the second largest gorge in Provence after the Gorges du Verdon.
Our bike ride up the gorge will always be remembered – and not just for the frisson of excitement experienced on encountering a wild boar. The canyon is majestic – 14 miles long and 400m (1,312ft) deep – though much of the river that created this giant crack in the earth has disappeared underground. The road rises steadily, clutching the rock face on a serpentine journey above the woody chasm, which gradually deepens and widens. Low rock tunnels and a bendy journey deter through traffic, so the road was ours. A few centimetres of stone wall is all that protects travellers from the drop, allowing a dramatic free-falling window onto the limestone layers of time.
From the head of the gorge we entered a broad valley, swooping through lavender fields to medieval Monieux, where we had drinks on a café terrace shaded from the hot Provençal sun. Leaving the village, we met three white Pyrenean mountain dogs with a flock of goats and sheep. These dogs are employed to guard the flock from wolves and lynx and signs on footpaths warn you not to run from the dogs, who might mistake you for a predator. They are fluffy, but ferocious.
Our next stop was in Sault, a lively town balanced on the edge of a sylvan plateau. When we arrived, the town was crawling with cyclists and lycra was the dress code at our café lunch stop.
A beautiful balcony road travels along the edge of the plateau from Sault and through the sandy-coloured village of Aurel, before climbing onto a lavender upland where cicadas sing among the bushy plants and larks trill the air. A gripping descent off the edge of the plateau led onto the stunning climb of the Col Saint-Hubert, with unbroken views across the Gorges de la Nesque to the ‘Giant of Provence’, before worming around wooded ravines downhill to the fertile valley of Villes-sur-Auzon.
Mont Ventoux dominates the Provençal landscape, but there is more exciting terrain to explore around its base. From Bédoin, buzzing with pavement cafés, a quiet route curls around the foot of the mountain in the stippled shade of umbrella pines, and climbs onto the Col de la Madeleine, revealing the blue distance towards the Mediterranean.
Snaking off the col and along an avenue of ancient plane trees in Malaucène, we continued our journey on deserted roads across a lovely, lumpy landscape crimson with poppies, over the Col de la Chaîne. This we descended gingerly on loose gravel into a valley lime-striped with young vines and encircled by mountains. We paid a fleeting visit to the dainty hill village of Suzette (no crêpes here), before a curving lane rushed us downhill to the Dentelles de Montmirail.
The Dentelles, a saw-toothed limestone massif with a high point of 734m (2,408ft), were peopled with climbers and walkers.
We took a twisting track through these jagged, ash-grey mountains, where lemonyellow broom blazed like sunshine across the lower slopes, scenting the air with vanilla, to Beaumes-de-Venise. This village morphs into the rock at the foot of the Dentelles and has several prehistoric caves, but it is better known for the caves that store the wines of Côtes du Rhône. Wine tasting is a popular pastime here.
A glass or two of wine might have fortified us on the steep zigzags up to La Roque-Alric, a tiny village perched on a rocky promontory overlooking the toothy Dentelles. We travelled along a rolling road from La Roque-Alric beside a patchwork of vineyards acid-green against a mountainous backdrop, then pedalled sharply uphill to the Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux.
The huge, honey-stone abbey, founded in 1978, is open to visitors. The Benedictine monks here farm olives and grapes, and make their own bread. The melody of their Gregorian chant escaping from the church was exquisite.
In 1979, a handful of nuns and their mother superior decided to found a female Benedictine abbey. Unfortunately, the best spot, at the top of the hill, had already been taken by the men. So, the ladies built their abbey – the Abbaye Notre-Dame de l’Annonciation – within spitting distance of the monks in a radiant valley, sheltered from the mistral and luxuriant with the ubiquitous Provençal vineyards, olive groves and cherry orchards.
They picked a heavenly plot.
Our route back to Villes-sur-Auzon was mostly upwards, over the creamy-stone hill village of Crillon-le-Brave, named after one of Henry IV’s bravest soldiers, Louis de Crillon. The village has sixteenth century ramparts and gates. A medieval château keeps an eye on the ‘Giant of Provence’ and his dwarf neighbours, the Dentelles.
It had been a long, hard day on the bikes, so when we chanced upon a lone cherry tree without an orchard – an orphan really – we set upon it with utter delight. Oh, those were the sweetest cherries I’ve ever tasted; perfectly ripe and warmed by the day’s sun. The man with a rifle who rapidly appeared – smoking the air behind him with orangebrown dust – may have been the tree’s ‘father’. We didn’t wait to find out, but shot up the hill back to the campsite – and that was more or less the end of our vagrancy in the Vaucluse.