Les Baux-de-Provence, France

From there we went on to another hilltop town, Les Baux-de-Provence. Located in the Alpilles mountains, atop a rocky outcrop that is crowned with a ruined castle. From the village name the word bauxite was coined for aluminium ore when first discovered there in 1821.

Considered one of the most beautiful villages in France it has only twenty-two residents in the upper commune and 436 in the whole commune. It has over 1.5 million visitors a year though.

We were able to photograph the town from afar, getting a good view of how well placed it was as the medieval stronghold for the region. With origins traced back to 6000 BC, this is a town seeped in history. We had time to walk the cobbled streets, admiring the narrow lanes of the fortified buildings. We came across an art display by Vincent Givogre, a visual artist whose work features monumental wood sculptures. The three pieces on display are truely amazing with how the shapes have been formed using the wood grain to emphasise the muscular structure of the body and with spaces left empty. Of course there is some deep meaning for these pieces which I am not deep enough to decipher. They are engaging and eye catching and a complete surprise for the location.

As we wandered the laneways we noticed the black clouds rolling in so made our way back to our meeting point in hopes of avoiding the rain. Sadly that was not to be as while it was storming up the top where we were, it wasn’t even rainy down where Thierry waited with the van. He had no idea we were all getting soaked and was quite surprised at the state of us when he arrived at the scheduled time. Although the storm was brief it was strong with hail also falling. What was surprising was how quickly it passed and we even managed to get blue skies again as we headed towards our last stop for the day.Read more