Having left Avignon we headed east to the Luberon region. We found a cycle route that runs the entire stretch of the Luberon hill range (around 50km) it then makes a return route along the southern side of the range. This we did and it took 4 days. During the trip we found the village of Roussalon which was the centre for Ocre mining for colourants for the whole of France. During its day they even exported to America. The arrival of synthetic paint led to its downfall. Now you can walk around the old quarry and get very red feet.
After the Luberon we headed to Arles and spent the day looking around the town. In the afternoon we decided to head to the Camargue.

Arts Festival Avignon

Finally, as the photos prove, we have made it to Avignon. A strange feeling knowing that after all our efforts we can now catch a direct train back to Ashford. We have now completed over 2500km and most of our mountain adventures are behind us. We are at a cross roads on our trip and can leave on a clockwise or anticlockwise loop of Provence or just head straight for Barcelona.
While we make our minds up we are enjoying the sun. There is a three week long arts festival in Avignon. It is in full swing with loads to see. Some you pay for some is free, all is in French. Unsurprisingly we are happy wandering the streets watching the free acts and being touted for productions in a language we little understand.
We are truly in the med now. The crickets are deafening throughout the day and well into the night. The fresh grass of our camping plot has been replaced by a patch of dusty ground with ominous holes out of which come some very strange creatures.

It was going to happen eventually, after all these days in a warm climate living on the ground eating in different places eat mealtime. Anyway Ill spare you the details but suffice to say Tim has been “out of action” for three days and never far from the toilet. On Thursday we finnally left Millau and headed up the Tarn george. What an experience. Larrgely undiscovered by English tourists the george road slowly winds its way up some amazing limestone sceanery. The river Tarn does liewise and offers a wonderfuldays canoeing at the bottom. A number of small but narrow or low road tunnels keep those pesky French houses on wheels away leaving the place free for proper campers.

Patrice decided that we neede another go at Canoeing so we hired one for the day. Much better than the Dordogne and the best place to visit in France so far.

On Friday we headed out of the gorge at the top to the town of Florac. Rubbish town. We continued up the Tarn a dirrerent part of the gorge. This time it was more granite rocks. We stopped at a small village at 900m. Todat we headed out of the gorge northwards and up. The weather is showery with a persistant thunder storm going on somewhere.

We reached 1541m at the top of the pass after both being absolutely covered in flies seeking the salt in our sweat. Not a pleasant expirience and one which has made us reconsider high mountain passes again.

We are now in Ville Front, an OK town with nothing much going on, still, it has an Internet bar.

The Millau bridge

Another close up shot

The Millau bridge

My nephew Thomas was very impressed by the Millau viaduct as his family discovered it en route to the south of France. He told me all about it so we decided to pay it a visit. We were not disappointed. It is HUGE.

Fireworks 14th July, Bastille Day, Millau

As any school person knows the 14th of July is Basille day. We deliberately made sure we were in a large town to help celebrate. We went and sat by the rivers edge as the lady in the tourist information centre had told us. We waited. We waited nearly two hours. We wondered if the great British collective oooooo, ahhhhhh, joke was translatable. The fireworks started. They were spectacular. Any oooooos or aaaaaahs would have been drowned out by the noise of this free display. At the end the french clapped for a while and all quietly went home. They are quite a reserved lot.

It is day 47. We have cycled over 2100km so far. Following our Dordogne adventure we travelled south and explored the valley of the river Cele where we found some cave art over 25000 years old. We continued further south to the small town of Villefranche De Rouergue and today continued south east to the small village of Sauveterre de Rouergue. Buildtin the prosperous 1280 it has a pretty market square where stall holders are preparing for an evening of sales, food and dancing. We await. We find we are doing around 45 km a day now as the terrain is very undulating. Today we climbed 720m. Now fitter we take this in our stride.

100_1966

Having spent 39 days in the saddle we decided to go for a change. We found a canoe hire company who were happy to transport the bikes for us down steam. We donned our life jackets, swapped our panniers for a waterproof barrel and spend a leasurely 2 days paddling and drifting south. True to their word the bikes were at the second camp site and we continued our journey.

Avery big sandwich

We caused quite a stir when we visted this village. It was well off the beaten track and within seconds Patrice was been chatted to by a deaf 80 year old frenchman who wanted to know what we were doing. Innocently we asked the cafe owner who only ever served farmers in their 60s, if we could have a sandwich, much fussing by several people and a visit to the local village cheese store produced this gigantic effort. We had one each. We had found the middle of no where.