Today we headed for L’isle Sur La Sorgue in Provence with a couple of stop’s in the towns of Grasse about half an hour away, then Castellane about 1 hour further, and then Forcalquier another 1.5 hours further on before heading on to the Hotel Cantosorgue in L’isle Sur La Sorgue another 1.15 hours away. This meant for a long days driving and a bit to see on the way.
The town of Grasse is renowned for it’s perfumes. It has many perfumeries and also a museum and working factories that you can visit. We visited both of these. They are well worth spending a lot more time at than we, unfortunately could afford. Sheree said that she wished we had visited this town instead of spending a day at St Tropez. The museum is large and very interesting and informative and the factory has a large shop that sells some wonderfully aromatic perfumes. After the visit we had a quick lunch in the street on this very hot day and drove on. We also could not leave without both buying some smellies.
The town of Castellane was a bit of a surprise, it offers canoeing and hiking and is obviously a favorite spot for campers. It was evident by the winding roads high in the hills you need to negotiate. With steep drops to the cannons and water below how this would appeal to out door enthusiasts. It was a lovely place with some more quaint shops and streets. We stopes at a shop that hand made chocolates and availed our selves of more that one of these delicious morsels. While we were there a wedding party drove by with the bride and groom sitting high up on the tops of the back seats of a convertible car all tooting frantically.
We went down to the river a soaked our feet as it was 30 degrees, before carrying on.
The trip from here to Forcalquier was exciting as we came upon a deviation in the road due we think to road works. This took us high into the mountains along some of the skinniest roads we have ever been on and had to contend with oncoming traffic. It was just like some videos we had seen on you tube, of buses and cars passing on high, skinny mountain roads and the tyres teetering on the edges and lose stones falling over the edges. We had to drive with our side-mirrors tucked in to avoid loosing them. This added quite a bit of time to our journey and were very happy to finally arrive at Forcalquier as Steven had cramped hands & clutch foot & Sheree had a tense arm from holding tight to the seat belt. This town was all but shut by now but we did stop here for a yummy pizza & frites ( fries) for tea. This was very nice with live music as we ate. By this time it was after 9:30pm, so hit the road again and did not arrive at our destination until 11:15pm after yet another shorter deviation to contend with in the dark. Glad to hit the sack tonight.