The Luberon villages

We’ve had a great few days exploring some of the little villages of Provence, specifically around the Luberon area. The countryside is dotted with small villages, usually only about 10kms apart, nestled into hillsides and surrounded by vineyards, lavender fields (unfortunately not in flower) and lots of orchards, with some trees in full blossom with an abundance of beautiful white flowers –(just like the orchard trees Vincent Van Gogh painted), and others with just lush green leaves.

Each of the little villages has it’s own charms but Rousillon was one of our favourites, possibly because when we visited it was still early (for us anyway!) and the majority of tourists hadn’t yet arrived. At 10.30am the village still seemed to be half asleep. It was peaceful and quiet and the cafes were only just starting to open up although even at that time of the morning there was still that wonderful mouth watering smell of poulet roasting in the rotisseries enticingly placed outside shops and tempting passers-by.

Rousillon was a maze of little cobblestone streets, laneways leading off in all directions, beautiful old stone houses covered with wisteria vines and with solid intricate wooden front doors with fancy door knockers.  

Each village also has a church with bells that seem to chime whenever they like and for however long they like. If it’s a bigger village there might be at least two churches with bells that chime and of course they always chime out of time.

In most of these villages the best thing to do is just wander the streets and see where the laneways take you – usually winding up, up and up to the top of the town where you get fantastic views out over the surrounding countryside.