The Final Stretch to the Villa

Waking up, I was disappointed my tiredness had taken over and I’d missed seeing more of Valence, but there was no way I could have handled it. Josh had been up until early that morning with the hosts, and woken up early as well, so with some good old sleep under my belt, I was glad I could actually function that day. Josh had a bit of a frantic drive down to the hotel, and had forgotten something, which the lovely hosts drove down to him so he didn’t have to go back, before leading him into town so he didn’t get lost. Such amazing gestures, and they have really shown us how to go the extra mile, which we are looking forward to doing when we have a couch somewhere (wherever it may be…). After Josh lost his leader at a roundabout, he even turned up at the hotel as we were leaving to make sure he got there okay. Just lovely.

On the road again, with two cars this time as Daniel and Katherine were driving ahead of us, and heading towards Avignon. We weren’t the smartest time-planning travellers for this part of the journey, as it was the weekend off France’s national holiday, and there was also a huge festival in the Avignon region that week. Yes, great timing. We tried to take some shortcuts - which didn’t turn out to really be shortcuts in the end, as they took just as long, if not longer, but we had a far more scenic drive than being stuck within traffic on the highway. The outlying tracks took us through small old villages, with amazing stone houses and narrow streets. We passed fields and fields of sunflowers and lavender, and ended up stopping for lunch in what seemed to be the lavender and nougat capital of Montelimar. After a quick lunch, we stumbled across more markets (we just love that so many cities or towns have them), where they were distilling the lavender into oil using a huge machine on site. The smell drifted through the markets, and after strolling the stores, we came away with some beautiful teas and had to try the lavender brulee…

We then encountered a spectacularly slow traffic jam in Orange, around their own Arc Du Triomphe (which apparently is common knowledge to avoid, for locals anyway), and ended up deviating back to the main route, fed up with having to travel at a snail’s pace again. We arrived well after Daniel, Katherine and Sophie, who had already managed to set up the beds and do the groceries, and so we all sat down to a bbq meal, sampling some of our bought wine which was very tasty, and were also introduced to Daniel and Katherine’s favourite cheese – Epoisse, which became quite the favourite. Soon after, the guitar was out, and we sought out a bongo from the house and turned the night into a fantastically raucous musical fare.