Le Floret and Azay-le-Ridau

Hello from a lovely warm and sunny France.  I am thoroughly enjoying my time here and have loved driving through the countryside, taking back roads and going through lovely villages.

It's always exciting to be travelling to the next destination and after Avignon, that was a little village called Le Floret.  The drive was very pleasant and we stopped a number of times to take photos of things that interested us.  I had thought I would miss seeing any lavender in bloom in France but were lucky enough to see this field almost in bloom.  

Shortly before we stopped for the lavender photo, we had to pass this group of cyclists.  The looked very serious and intent as we drove buy.  It's always a bit scary passing cyclists, I'm always worried we'll accidentally bump them.

I'm still taking photos of shutters and these pretty blue ones caught my eye as did this 2CV car.

 We saw this interesting rock formation on the edge of a village called Alba la Romaine.

 During the day we drove through more mountainous country seeing the odd castle ruin and then down into lush dairy country.  Here are some of the photos we took.

The village of Le Floret was a delight and positioned next to a river just over the road from our hotel.  We went to sleep listening to the river, a novel experience for me.  Usually it's possums jumping and thudding on our roof.  Here are some photos of the village and the river.

Hotel bedroom window view.

A view of the village from the top of the hill where an old church is sited.

 After leaving Le Floret we dropped in to see the village of Volvic, the reason being Genevieve told us that Volvic bottled water was the nicest bottled water she had tried in France.  To get to the source of the water would take a 3 hour hike so we decided to go on to the next village Champeix for coffee.

Writing down the names of the villages we had visited so I wouldn't forget.

 By this time we realised we still had a long way to travel to our next destination and had to push on without too many breaks.  The area we drove through was very rural with villages about every 5 or 6 km apart sometimes only 1 km apart, at the most 10.  With low speed limits much of the way, our journey took what seemed forever.  We finally arrived at Azay-le-Ridau, grateful to stretch our legs.

 

The next day was a rest day (from driving that is) and we took the opportunity to visit Chateau Villandry nearby.  Only a small portion of the interior was open to the public with the rooms having beautiful displays of fresh cut flowers.  The main attraction for me was the gardens, they were breathtakingly beautiful in a very organised and formal way.  We spent nearly 2 hours in the gardens alone.  Here are some of the photos we took of the interiors and the gardens.  Once again, photos can't do justice to the beauty of the gardens.

 There were vases of fresh flowers in every room.  Just gorgeous.

It's my plan to use this photo for a still life painting in the future.

Now for some garden photos.

Vegetable gardens.  These were lettuces withing the borders of other plants.

Through the trellis.  I'm having a bit of artistic fun with my photos here and there.

Check the size of this poppy.

We had the best time wandering around marvelling at the structure of the chateau and admiring the gardens.  Nine gardeners are employed to take care of them.

I am writing this post from Brittany which is what my next post will be all about.

Until then, take care and thank you for taking the time to read my blog.

Anne  xx

Avignon

Hello everyone and thank you for your lovely comments on our travels.  We are having such a lovely time and very much appreciate the wonderful opportunity to explore and experience this part of the world.

We left Avignon about 5 in the afternoon as we had spent most of the day in Aix.  We got caught in peak hour traffic but as Avignon is not too far from Aix our journey was relatively quick.  We stayed in a hotel inside the old city wall which was in walking distance to shops and restaurants.

We spent the morning of the next day wandering around the old part of the city including the old papal palace.  We had a look at the old bridge which I thought was rather lovely although part of it has been washed away due to past floods.  Here are some photos taken on our wanderings.

Some old arches in a lovely park and next to a big church.

As we've walked around the streets we've had fun looking in shop windows.  We saw a little dog wearing a baseball cap, he was sitting inside the door of a dog accessory shop and presume he belonged to the shop owner.  We saw very colourful mens shirts, unfortunately I couldn't convince hubby to buy any.  We even saw very interesting toilet paper, I kid you not.  Here are the photos we took.

Sudoku on loo paper!!!

We had to attend to laundry in the afternoon and were very happy to discover cafes next to the laundromat.  We were able to spend the time sitting outside under trees and sipping on a drink or two.  We also had fun people watching, observing the fashions and even some romantically inclined people.

The next day we had planned to visit some of the surrounding areas of Avignon including St. Remy, however we discovered it they were having an annual festival and it was absolutely crowded.  So we drove to the Lesbaux de Provence area which had the most marvellous rock formations.  We had a fantastic time walking around and having a bit of a climb. The scenery was spectacular, my photos don't do the area justice. Here are some photos or the rocks, pine trees and wildflowers in bloom.

  On the way to our next destination we stopped at a roadside fruit and vegetable stall and bought strawberries, apricots and cherries.  I've never seen such perfect strawberries, they were the best I've ever tasted.  The cherries were good too.

We decided to have a look at Gordes, another old hillside fortress town.   As we approached we could see it was quite similar to St. Paul de Vence and though we would just drive around.  However we got lucky and found a parking spot very close to the centre, the first 50 minutes of parking were free.  That being the case we decided we could have a quick look around and were very glad we did. We had enough time for a coffee and wandered into a café thinking it was rather deserted.  To our delight we discovered chairs and tables outside on a balcony with the most spectacular views.  We scored a table right on the edge with the best view.  Here are some photos from our time spent there.

 

The view from the cafe balcony.

Looking down from the balcony.

This little boy must have been exhausted.  He look so cute I couldn't resist taking a photo.

 On the way back to Avignon I saw these roses growing by the side of the road in some kind of wild hedge.  It was just delightful and I had to stop for a photo.

 So this ended our stay in the Avignon area.  The next couple of days we spent driving quite a few hours in the car and my next post will be about those experiences.

Bye for now,

Anne  xx