Day 29 Thursday 26 July 34C Today we visited the Vaucluse region, just north of where we are staying. We headed first for a town called Bonnieceux, in the hill about 70 km away Aix. Very narrow and winding roads, we survived to arrive and indulge in a café.

From there, we headed further north towards the town hilltop town of Gordes (more about that later) and onto an Abbey called Abbay de Senanque which is a Cistercian monastery that has beautiful fields of lavender and is just 4km from the centre of Gordes. We arrived just in time as it's harvest season and they were busy harvesting, arriving a day or so later would have meant that all the lavender would have disappeared, so our timing was very fortunate. The smell of cut lavender in the air was an unforgettable memento of our visit.

After visiting the abbey, we headed back into Gordes and spent some time in the shops and taking pictures between the buildings of the amazing views down to the valley below the hilltop village. We enjoyed our lunch sitting on the steps of the chateau beside the fountain, people watching. Before leaving Gordes, we found some Bories – these are ancient dwellings which are dry stone constructions with domed roofs and there are a few still quite a few scattered around the town. The town of Gordes is lined with dry stones wall and is quite unique.

Leaving Gordes, we decided to visit visited some vineyards in the afternoon. After a false start at a winery that was closed, we headed towards Rousillon (also the name of a grape variety), another hill-top town close by. Excellent directions from the local tourist office sent us towards a local winery called Tara (which we found out was named from 'Gone with the Wind’) the vintner sold us an sparkling wine that met easily our exacting standards. From there, we wandered in an unstructured manner and our 2nd target – Chateau Blanc – where despite the challenges of their English and our French, we managed to taste and then buy two red shiraz’s. Our last visit was to Domaine de Chantegrillet where we met an enchanting woman who showed us the some astounding model villages in the depths of the ‘cave’ created by a local 70-year-old and some excellent red and white wines that we purchased and brought home for dinner.