Wednesday 11th July 2018

Tuesday was spent moving camp. Fiona (Sara’s sister) had recommended northern Provence to see the lavender fields, and the beautiful villages. Our new campsite was high in the hills near the small village of Comps, called La Source Du Jabron, and is situated in the region of Drôme Provençale. This campsite was a lot busier than the last and had a lot more children and a lot more going on. Most of the site was devoted to tents and we did feel a little conspicuous in our caravan with the satellite dish on top!

The lavender field were beautiful to look at and addictive to photograph, I just had to keep stopping the car to take just one more shot! Every now and again a tractor full of this flower came by and the smell was unbelievable.  This is a memory that will stay with me forever!

Then you must get just one more picture, this time with a typical Provencal house in the background . The campsite had provided us with a map and tour of the local area which also took us to some of the “perched villages” (villages perches).

One of the towns on our route was Grignan, and what a wonderful place that turned out to be.  It looked like the set of a Renaissance movie.

This was definitely one of those magical picture postcard places, and again we were lucky with the weather, the blue skies really set all the colours off to their best advantage and we were blessed that we got to see this town without the hordes of tourists who will be making their way down in early August.

The French seem to “do” their small towns and villages very well.  By that I mean that they don’t  have any of the generic signs above shops, no double yellow lines, no out of place advertising etc. The only thing that let the ambiance down were the few satellite dishes that were on view!

The fountain in the middle of the square could have been straight out of a Victor Hugo novel, the cafe behind was a great place to sit and people watch.

We sat on the steps of this fountain and had a cake that we had bought from the local patisserie, and looked at the menu of the Michelin starred restaurant opposite, with starters at €40 we thought we would give it a miss!

As we strolled back to the car we came across a very serious game of boules being played under the shade of the trees, this is the first time I have ever seen a tape measure being used!

Time for a leisurely drive back to the campsite along the quiet back lanes, and who knows, maybe a chance to take another photo of the fields of lavender!!!