Our day began with the goal of heading out to the Gorge Verdon. A UNESCO site, it will be the furtherest we venture from our heart of Provence Bonnieaux. Two minutes down the road, okay, that is exaggerating, maybe 10 minutes, we got distracted by a winery.
Château de Mille was founded in the 13th century and is the oldest winery in the Luberon, it was also the summer home of Popes. Now when Kylie and I flew into France, we were flying with hand luggage only and there are some funky liquid restrictions, so when we bought 2 bottles of wine, the idea of bringing them home was not on our minds. However most wines in France are corked, not bottle topped, also our room has no fridge. So we had some wine logistics to sort out in the very near future.
With two bottles of wine under our arms, we headed off once again in the general direction of Gorge Verdon. We were travelling through recently harvested lavender fields (harvest started a few weeks ago), however they did leave us some nice lavender rows for the influencers to do all of their selfies etc. Kylie and I had been to the boulangerie before we left Bonnieaux, so we hunted for local prosciutto and cheese on our way through the various towns we were going through. So instead of trying to be selfie taking influencers, we parked in the shade and made baguettes with olive tapenade, goats cheese and prosciutto, and took a token photo with lavender.
Onwards to Gorge Verdon…… I’m not sure what address we put into Google, but it sent us up through the gorge. We were aiming for a beach that we could go swimming in. I was driving at this stage, remembering that we are on the right side of the road, so my lane is the closest to the edge. Somewhere along this drive, I’ve noticed that my main role is to no longer look beyond where the line 5m in front of me is. I was having some quiet conversations with myself about calming the f down…… a fair way into this drive we pull into a TINY turn out and Kylie suggest that we recheck the map…. Yep, we don’t want to go through the Gorge…… ARGH. Picture below is pirated, as any place we could have stopped to take photo’s was full…. And after doing the most terrifying 3 point turn of my life, I wasn’t turning around!!! This website calls it one of France’s most dangerous roads, they could have told me that SOONER!
We got down to the lake and had a swim. Now given where we were I was expecting the water to be glacially cold… it was not! Thus I swam!
Kylie had a few “things” that she wanted to see while we were here. It was Lavender (tick), the other was sunflowers. We’ve been passing commercial crops of sunflowers all over the place. The issue is, are you on the highway doing 130km per hour? No stopping there! Are you on a winding road, but have a haemorrhoid up your butt (read other car?) and cannot stop? Any way, we found out place and got the shot!
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