Day 64: Roussillon to l'Isle sur la Sorgue

April 22, 2025

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I guess it figured that at Roussillon we were on top of a bit of a mountain, so to leave we would have to descend. But when we came to the first road down, Dodie balked. She still does not have enough confidence in her brakes to just dive over what looks like a precipice.

We dawdled over to the next road, and went for it. At 8.5%, it was fine.

In the earlier part of this tour, thinking ahead to a coming day included a fair amount of foreboding. I might be thinking about freezing, climbing, fighting traffic, riding by a cliff edge, or a deep vee ditch, or all of the above. But these last 20 days, since reaching Mallorca and Provence, it has been pure joy. So it was as I looked ahead to today's ride. I expected joy, and I got joy. I mean, just look:

A slightly troubling note came as we headed West on a road called the Route des 3 Soldats. This was named for three founders of the Resistance in this region. But its main feature today was the relatively large number of locals, in their little white vans, cement trucks, or garbage trucks, off to the day's work somewhere. Peter Mayle wrote of the French worker's maniac driving habits. That is, except for Sunday, he observed. On Sunday they have nowhere to go, and loaf slowly about the roads, getting in the way. But today was Tuesday, so zoom, zoom!

We drew up under the hill town of Gordes, which looks very impressive, perched on a ridge. Having no reason to go up, we would be content to slide by beneath.

The traffic was still vexing us a bit, but here is the beauty of the thing. We simply hung a left and took another way, another road. There are lots of options!

Our "other road", leading to St Pantaleon, was smooth and quiet.

We could look out over fields like this.

The one lack at this point was that half our team was beginning to whine about being hungry, since we were 1 - 1 1/2 hours past breakfast, already!

We stopped at a shop selling candied fruits and nougat, but again found that these things are really expensive. That might be 64 euros for the basket shown below. We settled for a kind of sugar coated fruit gummy, blueberry in my case, and pear for Dodie, not quite one euro each. I read the labels, in which they were careful to quote the (quite high) percentages of blueberries and pears. I saw that my blueberry had been "adulterated" with pear. Hmmm.

This is in contrast to at home, where an artificial version of this, that we used to call fruit gummies have disappeared, in favour of only the (also artificial) sour gummies. Oh well, it's not like this stuff, real, artificial, sweet, or sour can make up much of a proportion of the daily diet!

We next entered into what we have earlier described, as the brilliant feature of cycling in the Luberon. That is the Veloroute du Calavon, the bike way that runs straight and flat up the middle of the valley, halfway between the Luberon and the Vaucluse. This can almost teleport you to wherever you want to be, to start or finish a side ride, or just to float up the middle!

Of course, just because you are floating up the middle does not mean you will miss sights like this:

That's the Luberon, safely in the background.

Seemingly anticipating that I could not run long on one fruit gummy, the Calavon route helpfully ran right through the little enclave of Coustellet. Coustellet a bike shop, maybe two, and importantly a giant Super U. We used this to stock up on up to a couple of days of supplies. I also used my time stashed outside in the sun with the bikes to adjust Dodie's front brake lever. This may have helped a bit, but I will have to get in there and change or adjust her pads as well.

Although Super U has "everything", we also stopped at a little shop we had discovered along the Calavon last time. This features organic local products. We went for the interesting, flavourful, unhealthy Provencal flavoured potato chips!

They had lots more than just potato chips!

As we cycled along, mentally putting in offers on every rustic farmhouse we passed, we noted that the charm of almost all of them rested on the fact that they were built of stone. I compared this to our house, which is made from Spruce and Cedar. I think our house fairly represents the landscape in which it was created, which after all is covered in trees. But our house has little hope of surviving the hundreds of years that we find with stone houses here.

One thing, although there is little chance that we will run out of trees (especially since the Americans do not seem to want to import softwood lumber these days), could stones be getting scarce here? We ask ourselves this, looking at construction from clay blocks, as below. Even with clay blocks, we bet these houses will last more or less forever!

At some point we had to leave the Calavon, to strike out north to l'Isle sur la Sorgue. We had lots of choice on how to go, and it was all fine.

l'Isle sur la Sorgue is a rather famous destination, based we guess on the fact that it is on a small island in the small Sorgue river. In the 19th century, water power from the river supported a variety of mills, and the town is still trading somewhat on that history. At least, it still has several water wheels spinning slowly in the stream:

The river does make an attractive feature, even if it no longer powers paper mills, silk and wool mills, oil mills and flour mills.

As has happened in many places, the former industrial base is here replaced by tourism. The river frontage, and the one main interior street of the island is lined with restaurants. Europeans anyway always sit outside, and here they can sit by the river. The food on their tables looked very appetizing, though I think I noticed a lot of burgers and fries. Burgers and fries here, I hasten to add, is nothing like the meal of the same name back home. The fries, first of all, are fresh and home made. And a burger will contain lots of good ingredients beside the patty, while itself being more of a minced steak than a quickly fried up fast food. I know some of this from last time here, when I unthinkingly ordered a "cheeseburger". Unlike back home, you had better specify how you want this done, else it will come raw, or "a point" as they say here. And you can not make any assumptions about the "cheese" part of the cheeseburger. I mean "cheese" - just think of it - this is France! Last time, my cheeseburger smelled like an old sock. This is because they chose the best, aged cheese in their cellar. I very much remember looking over to two French ladies at the next table, with similar raw and smelly burgers. They seemed perfectly content!

The town continues to play on its past, even when much of that is just a memory. For example, the building below is now a pub, yet they put up a poster detailing the history of this place since the 12th century! The poster says the town wall was here, until demolition in 1831. The area, as we know, then was a hub for various types of mills. The poster also seems to mention that the advent of the popes in Avignon, in the 14th century, stimulated mills here, both it seems to feed the burgeoning work force and also to supply the popes' palace. At least that's how I read it.

Neither the pub nor other buildings seems to possess a lot of genuine antiquity. They can, however, look old and beat up:

There are apparently 15 of these water wheels around the island. We rather liked the Route Barree sign on hand, just in case.

The Collegiate Church of Our Lady of the Angels, with bell tower.

Some small branches of the river cut through the island.

A few mansions built by the giants of local industry remain. This one, Chateau Dumas, currently houses a bank.

One kind of new industry has been in the town since 1966. This is a giant antiques fair, held annually at Easter and at l'Assomption ("La Fête de l'Assomption, commonly known as Assumption Day, holds a significant place in French culture and religious tradition, observed annually on the 15th of August. This national holiday commemorates the Virgin Mary's assumption into heaven, a pivotal event in Catholic theology.)" A poster by the river asserts that this town is third only to London and Paris as an antiques centre.

Something else new and unique. Among all the Mallard on the river, we isolated this one, with unique markings. Merlin has absolutely no idea what to make of it. Can I claim the discovery of a rarity?

Today's ride: 41 km (25 miles)
Total: 1,907 km (1,184 miles)

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