The Luberon
Monday evening, 24/6/13

We're in our little campground, just 1.5 Km outside L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue and it's Monday evening, after a perfect day (although a little windy).

Since our last post from Rocamadour, nearly a week ago [apologies for our tardiness] we've been and seen and done a lot.

The trip south from Rocamadour started out in pretty heavy rain.  At one point we stopped for coffee in a little roadside inn and saw truly horrifying TV footage of serious floods in the Lourdes area.  They were very confronting, with helicopter rescues, huge trees hurtling down raging rivers and smashing into bridges.  Of course, we were only getting a tiny part of the story as all the commentary was in French.  We deduced, with a little help from their maps, that the serious floods were in the far SW, but with a serious flood risk also in the NE.  Fortunately, we were well clear of the problem areas.

We spent a little time exploring more of the Lot River valley downstream of Cahors, then made for a campground just outside St. Cirq Lapopie.  There we spent a day enjoying the medieval town and being amazed at a towpath that had been cut into the side of the cliff.  They needed to haul loaded barges upstream, and where the cliff came right down to the water's edge, they carved a path, perhaps 2m wide and of varying height [high enough to walk along, but you need to watch out if you're on a bike].  Here's a bit of it.

They tell us that the barges were hauled by women, unpaid so virtually slaves, because they were cheaper than horses or oxen etc. 

We stayed two nights almost under the walls of Carcassonne, giving us plenty of time to walk all over this amazingly scenic, yet touristy city.

Then, on Sunday, we drove here, via Montpellier and Aigues Mortes, and in other words, the Mediterranean!!

 L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue is an absolute gem, one of our favourite places.  We've had a great day walking around it and will stay on and use it as a base for day trips out to other nearby attractions.  Unlike most of our recent visits, L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue is still alive as a town in its own right, and is not just kept alive by visiting tourists.  It is quite a bit bigger than we remembered it from 2000 and really bustles, even on a Monday!  Certainly there are plenty of tourists and other holiday makers, but they [we?] are not the only people out and about and drinking coffee and spending money.  Here we are, doing a bit of that ourselves...

With its incredibly clean, green water, this is such a photogenic place, as most places so far have been, that we've been taking an extraordinary number of photos, a far call from the days of film cameras and the care we took, deliberating on whether or not to snap what we saw.  It will be a major task, sorting through when the trip is over.

As you can easily tell, we're thoroughly enjoying ourselves.  Hope you are too!

Judy and Rob