A river always comes in handy for a human settlement – that’s why so many towns across the world have one. Still, it’s rare to find a place that has found as many purposes for its natural waterway as the Provençal town of L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. First of all came the discovery that the river Sorgue was…
Having returned from our recent trip to Avignon, I went through old Easy Hiker posts to check what we had posted from our previous visits of the town – and found, much to my surprise, that the answer was: nothing. Nothing at all! Was that even possible? We must have visited Avignon at least four…
In any sequence that is set in time – sequences of any length and type, from songs in a Broadway musical and dishes in a tasting menu to blog posts about a specific destination – two items are of particular importance: the first (to set the tone) and the last (to sum up). So, for…
Not all villages in Provence were built high up on a hill around a castle or an ancient cathedral, although sometimes it may seem that way. This has more to do with the logic of international tourism than the actual settlement patterns of the local folks. Most villages and small towns in southern France, after…
Today and for the next couple of weeks, we are asking you to accompany us into one corner of France that has managed to preserve both its natural beauty and much of its original character: this is the land where the lush Rhone valley of the Drome departement – nominally part of the central region…
Last week, we discovered that the “Cézanne Walk” in the artist’s home town of Aix-en-Provence is not the perfect route to finding out more about his paintings. We shall be making up for that today, venturing a little out of town for a “pilgrimage of artistic discovery” to a place which is, more than anything…
For many years, Aix-en-Provence had cornered the market for Picturesque Market Towns In Southern France. Easy-to-reach (just over an hour by train from Marseille) and pretty-to-look-at, it ticks all the important boxes for visitors. If you came from Northern Europe or North America and wanted to see a Typical Town In Provence, old men playing…
Here is a strange thing: some neighbouring cities, although physically very close to each other, have a totally different look and feel. Take Nîmes and Arles, two close neighbours in the south of France. They share, inevitably, some characteristics, but it is the differences that stick out. Arles is the quintessential small town in Provence:…
When I was a boy, my home town’s local TV station carried a French adventure series that was set in the wild marshlands of the Camargue. There were a lot of wild horses, water buffaloes and cool guys riding white steeds bareback through the spray, but other than that, I have no recollection of what…
For a man of his generation and relatively modest means, the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh certainly got around a lot in Europe, spending time in Amsterdam and The Hague, Brussels, London and Paris. It is the south of France, however, which had the deepest impact on the artist’s soul and on his works. The…