A Little Bit of EverythingSep 22, 2011
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Grape Harvesting Machine
Oppede-le-Vieux
| This was our last hurrah on the cycling part of our trip and it delivered a little bit of everything! We started out the day by riding into Gordes to wander a bit when before we headed out for the day. As I said in yesterday's blog, Gordes is on the top of a hill, so it's a downhill ride to get anywhere. And down we went - almost 10 km of downhill! What a delightful change! We wandered back through some of the vineyards that we'd ridden through a couple of days ago, and were able to watch a field being harvested. We had seen fields with human grape pickers around Chateauneuf du Pape, but today it was a machine that sort of wrapped around the vines and somehow got the grapes off without damaging the vines. I'll post a picture! We then were treated to a delightful UPHILL ride into the town of Menerbes another of the many hill top villages of the Luberon. This is where Peter Maynes lives - or at least nearby. He is the author of the book, A Year in Provence. After a bit of wandering, we headed for our next village, Oppede-le-Vieux. This village was at the top of the steepest climb that we have had yet and I will confess that I had to walk the last bit of it! Oppede is a village which was built in the 12th century and thrived in the 15th and 16th centuries. It's decline began with the French Revolution and it was deserted in 1910. During World War II, several artists settled in the village and rebuilding began. We had a wonderful lunch at a little bar that did not look like it could produce much of anything. But it was packed the entire time that we were there. The village has a long way to go before it's thriving, but there were many artists around painting the beautiful scenery and it appears that there is some development happening. We headed for our final destination - L'Isle sur la Sorgue - a town on the river that we saw the day before yesterday that begins at the underground spring. The river is still as clear as it was at Fontaine du Vaucluse and runs right through the town. A quick visit to the town ended with us wanting to get to the end of the biking, so we headed a bit out of town to find our hotel. Only two wrong turns and about 3 km of extra travel and here we are at Mas de Cure Bourse, an old farmhouse out a ways in the country. Fortunately, they have a lovely restaurant where we served a delicious meal of watermelon soup, scallop and shrimp brochette, and guinea fowl with potatoes and mushrooms. So our day was a little bit of up and down, some flat, some wind, and a lot of sunshine and gorgeous countryside. France is a delightful place to bicycle. The traffic is extremely respectful of cyclists, even in busy towns and on busy roads. There were a few moments when we were a bit nervous, like when the grape picking machine pulled a little bit close to me and then braked, but other than that, we were very comfortable cycling everywhere. We rarely hesitated to leave our bikes when we went exploring, although we did lock them. And there were so many other people cycling that we never felt out of place carrying our helmets or wearing our biking clothes. So tomorrow we head for Paris for the final chapter of our Adventures in France. Chuck and I are both very ready to be off of the bikes for a while. We logged just over 325 kilometers in six days, with thousands of feet of elevation gain and loss. We've seen some amazing, ancient places and had the opportunity to really smell the grapes, so to speak. We would do a trip like this again in a heartbeat! Thanks for joining us and stay tuned for four days in the big city! |
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