Day 21: Around Uzes. Brantes and Vaison la Romaine.

Today we drove through many more of those beautiful clichéd Southern France narrow winding country lanes; small villages of stone and fields of vines and olives, interspersed with sprays of blood red poppies.
The countryside  became more mountainous as we continued.  We stopped in Bognals at a Courrefour, and stocked up on some supplies for lunch and the rest of our Uzès stay.  The supermarket was amazing with so much fresh food: a fromagerie in store, piles of fresh fish on ice in the aisles, bread of all imaginable shapes and types.  Puts Woollies and Coles truly to shame.

As the distance to Brantes grew less and less on the GPS, an extremely tall mountain with what looked like a monument on its peak and snow on its faces, grew closer and closer.  The mountain was extremely tall, and I both hoped that Brantes was at the top of this mountain, as well as hoped that it wasn’t.

In the end the road we travelled veered away from the snowy peak, and continued across mountains and along beautiful valleys to eventually arrive at Brantes.
Brantes was dug precariously into the side of the mountain with narrow stone paved streets weaving between the houses up and down the hillside, with beautiful terraced cafes and small restaurants with views cross the distant valleys and mountains.

It was really warm walking through the streets, with not a cloud in the sky.  I’m not quite sure why we didn’t stop in at one of the cafes for a cool drink, it would have been really nice, but instead we visited the church. 

A man and his camel share a special bond

A relax in a lovely cafè with a view may have saved us some drama on the way home too. After 2 weeks of driving I it finally happened.  I ended up driving on the wrong side of the road.  It took about 4 distractions at the same time to do it, you know, just like in those airplane crash investigation shows.
I was so sure I was on the right side of the road at the time that it took me a couple seconds to realise I was on the wrong side and not the car coming towards us flashing his lights. Gah.
Now on the correct side of the road, we stopped along the way back on a bend under a shady tree high on the side of the mountain to enjoy our little picnic.
We spent the afternoon in Vaison la Romaine.  This was yet another beautiful medieval town with Roman ancestry, perched high on a hill.  The new town spreads across the gentle hills across the river, while the old medieval town sits on the high hill side, and the two are joined by an old roman bridge.  At the very top of the hill are the ruins of the old chalet, Le Chateau Comtal, which was built back in the 1190’s.

We stopped at a little glacè shop on the way back down from the old village and had a beautiful, if overly sweet ice cream at Crêperie La Pomme on their Terrasse Panoramique, with views down across the river and across the new town.
Back home was via the motorways to save a little time, but after passing through the tollgate I veered left instead of right, which meant 15 kilometres in the wrong direction.  30 damn kilometres on the tollway I didn’t need or want to do.  >:|  Poo! We could have gone to Orange and seen another Roman arena instead!

There are just a few more pics at the end of this link.