Last night we made a decision to take Basil to see a town called Gordes in an area known at the Luberon. It was only an hour away and had an aire for us to park overnight.
As we approached Gordes, about 4km out of the town, we saw a large car park full of motorhomes, which struck as odd since the town had an aire. We proceeded to the aire and quickly found why the car park 4km away was full. The aire was €15 a night with no facilities and in addition the whole area was on a slope.
So we debated what to do and initially decided to decamp to the popular car park, but as we drove there we decided we didn’t fancy a 4km uphill walk into Gordes. As luck would have it, not far out of Gordes, we saw another motorhome parked on the roadside and decided we would join him. Having carefully parked up we found a sign saying parking was limited to 5 minutes! This was, we discovered, because it was adjacent to the best view point of Gordes, a picturesque hilltop village.
Out we got and took a snap and then I furiously searched our guidebook for an alternative in the area and found a village called Bonnieux, which not only was recommended in the Rough Guide, it also had a free, newly constructed aire.
Bonnieux was only 12 miles away so we were soon parked up in a spacious, free and level aire. As I have mentioned in many previous blogs, a considerable proportion of villages in Southern Europe, due to the endless wars endured for hundreds of years, are built on hilltops to assist in defence. The downside for the aging tourist (me) is that exploring these villages requires fairly strenuous climbing. Bonnieux was no exception.
Bonnieux is another pretty village with a partial defensive wall dating from the 10th Century and many of the buildings look as if they could date from a similar era. There’s a main road, just wide enough for cars, which winds its way slowly through the village to a church at the highest point. Much more interesting were the various steep alleyways which ultimately led to the same spot and a spectacular view over the surrounding countryside, includes Gordes in the distance.
Throughout of exploration of Bonnieux we had been looking for a boulangerie or anywhere we could get a sandwich. Everywhere seemed to be shut. But on our way back to Basil we saw a shop serving ice cream, but also savoury and sweet crepes. This solved the lunch problem. The savoury crepes were called galettes and following a quick conversation with Mr. Google I have found out that savoury crepes are called galettes because they are made with buckwheat flour rather than the all purpose white flour used for sweet crepes. Whatever they were made from they were delicious.
