Travelling to Provence

We were up early to pack up and get onto the road.

Considering it was our first effort at packing up the Millward- Crocker team did pretty well at striking camp.

We stopped at one of the numerous service areas on the motorway for breakfast. Geoff and I had a egg and bacon muffin which was the best I have ever had.

We skirted Lyons and could see it was an enormous city on the Rhone River. We then continued in the Rhone valley sourhward, with the Alps in the distance on the left and the Masif Central on the right.

As we travelled up the autoroute through the Rhône Valley, We noticed a massive rocky crag of a cliff just north of Orange with the remains of an ancient medieval fortress castle which once stood guard over the river valley. The Fortress Castle of Mornas is a ruin, but maintains the feeling of the old times of France’s feudal past. Once a massive defense fortress with heavy thick stone walls, a chateau for living quarters and chapels, the Mornas Fortress was one of the largest in France, a city within itself. This obvious defensive position was a fortification and lookout since the Romans occupied Gaul as evidenced by many Roman era site in the area like (see Roman Theatre Antique Orange). Under control of the Archbishop of Arles as the dark ages gave way to medieval times the castle was owned by the Earl of Toulouse who built the current stone castle in the 12th Century. When the Popes made Avignon their capital in the 1200’s Pope Gregory XI has the castle reinforced, but during the religious wars of 16th Century the castle was captured by Calvinists and all the inhabitants massacred with the soldiers thrown over the cliff onto spikes below. When it was later retaken by the Catholics, they did the same thing.

We arrived in Beaumes de Venise and it again is extremely hot. We set up camp and were a lot quicker this time. We then walked into the little town and had a look around.

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The mountain in the background is the highest summit of the Tour de France.

Quite unusual countryside. Lots of rocks and cliffs. The word "beaumes" comes from the Provençal word bauma meaning "cave" or "grotto". The surrounding hills have many of these caves that were inhabited during the Iron Age.

We partook of some very expensive icecreams and then returned to the campsite.

We had pizza for tea and some very alcoholic Belgian beer. It must have been very strong because I couldn't stop laughing because my pizza was not rigid enough and it wouldn't go into my mouth and that seemed to be extremely funny.