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10 reasons why the British fell in love with Provence

The Valensole Plateau is lavender central - This content is subject to copyright.
The Valensole Plateau is lavender central - This content is subject to copyright.

Provence has long been a playground for British tourists: blame the landscape, blame the climate, blame the food. Blame – as some did – Peter Mayle, whose Year in Provence, published in 1989, encouraged plenty of others to follow in his footsteps.

Mayle, who died on Friday, disavowed responsibility for those new arrivals. As he told The Daily Telegraph in 2006: “We are all tourists in one way or another. Tourists have been coming to Provence for thousands of years and no wonder, because it is a lovely place. Tourists always get a bad reputation, but what would happen if they didn’t come and boost the local economy in the way that they do?”

Well, boosting the local economy is a welcome byproduct of a visit, but we come, in the end, because Provence is beautiful. Here are 10 of the views that might inspired your own visit for a week, a month, or even a year.

In his own words | Peter Mayle on Provence
In his own words | Peter Mayle on Provence

Luberon 

More than anywhere else in Provence, the Luberon region comes to us these days in soft focus, as a voluptuous playground for the cultured – or, at least, the fairly well-off. This agreeable world was well-covered by Peter Mayle. But Mayle’s real talent was also to catch the underlying reality of the Luberon: the village shopkeepers and workmen, the hunters and the farmers. Get your first eyeful of how lovely these Luberon villages are in Gordes. The hazards of history have left it creeping down its hillside with both drama and intimacy.

The Luberon region comes to us these days in soft focus, as a voluptuous playground for the cultured - Credit: GETTY
The Luberon region comes to us these days in soft focus, as a voluptuous playground for the cultured Credit: GETTY

Pays Dignois

The Alpes-de-Haute-Provence is where Provence, scarcely tame before, rises truly rocky and rugged to meet the Alps. The Pays Dignois district is in the centre of this remote, magnificent landscape. And the town of Digne-les-Bains is in the centre of that. But the real glory is in the landscape beyond. To the south, the Valensole Plateau is lavender central, a soul-stirring sight in July. To the north and east, the crags, peaks, ravines and valleys comprise a Geological Reserve.

How to get on with the French | What 30 years living in the country has taught me
How to get on with the French | What 30 years living in the country has taught me

Haut Var 

This is where you discover that Provence is wilder than you suspected. From sunlit vineyards and pine forests round Lorgues and Brignoles, it swings north to a rockier, rougher country of gorges, ravines and sinuous roads which want you dead. Clamped to hill-tops, vertiginous villages – Châteaudouble, Bargemon (where the Beckhams used to holiday), the glorious Tourtour – offer a wriggling sense of refuge, and some pretty decent eating. Beyond, the Verdon Gorges – Europe’s Grand Canyon – present nature on a supernatural scale: 15 miles long, 2,000-feet straight down.

Tourtour - Credit: ZDENĚK MATYÁŠ
Tourtour Credit: ZDENĚK MATYÁŠ

Avignon

Enter Avignon through a gate in the city walls and you’re stepping onto pre-hallowed ground. The city has considered itself capital of the cultural universe since the popes sought refuge there in the 14 century. An overwhelming sense of self-worth remains as, to justify it, does the extraordinary Papal Palace. Rising sheer, powerful and Gothic, the palace would still be running Christendom, given half a chance.

Avignon
Avignon

Arles 

Capital of the Camargue, Arles is the most feverishly Provençal of all Provençal towns. Bullfighting maintains the double-millennial blood-sports tradition in the stupendous Roman arena. The local festive dress is the prettiest a woman can wear, admired even by those resistant to folklore. And the tight-packed streets struggle to contain the throb of a southern life. This can flip from fiesta to fury and back again in the time it takes you to duck.

A word of warning | Things to consider before moving to France
A word of warning | Things to consider before moving to France

Mont Ventoux 

Serious cyclists should know that, to break the world record for pedalling up the most famous mountain in Provence, they’ll have to do it 12 times in 24 hours. Doing it once in a lifetime is, for most, a heck of an achievement. The bald-headed Ventoux – it looks snow-capped but it’s limestone scree up there – dominates most of western Provence like an unforgiving elder. 

The Tour de France tackles Ventoux
The Tour de France tackles Ventoux

Porquerolles 

Off the Provençal coast opposite Hyères, Porquerolles (alongside its smaller sister isles, Port Cros and Levant) is a nugget of rocks and forest apparently chipped from the mainland and hurled 20 minutes out to sea. The concentration of wild creeks, beaches, woodland and herbs recalls the untouched Riviera. The impression is misleading. Porquerolles has been developed and exploited since classical times. Then, in the 1970s, the development was reversed, with most of the island being returned to a wild state it hadn’t known for centuries. 

Porquerolles - Credit: aterrom - Fotolia
Porquerolles Credit: aterrom - Fotolia

Les Baux de Provence 

You need to get here early because you’re not going to be the only visitor, either today or any other day. By late morning, the place will be packed – and rightly so. Les Baux is among the more stunning sites in Provence. The little village, a tight crush of medieval stone, grows apparently organically from a steep and soaring rock outcrop. Some buildings are semi-troglodyte, delving into the rock itself. The main street – two donkeys wide, at best – rises along a ridge to what’s left of the castle at the top.

France's 20 most beautiful villages
France's 20 most beautiful villages

Aix-en-Provence 

“Good King” René, Count of Provence, stuffed it with artists and academics, nobles, courtiers and jurists in the 15th century and their successors are still there, lending Aix an elegance and sense of entitlement manifest on the main Cours Mirabeau. Broad, tree-lined and studded with fountains (also a hugely over-flattering statue of René), the Cours is the most graceful thoroughfare in provincial France.

Aix-en-Provence - Credit: ©rh2010 - stock.adobe.com
Aix-en-Provence Credit: ©rh2010 - stock.adobe.com

Bormes-les-Mimosas 

The stretch of the Provençal coast known as the Corniche-des-Maures runs west from the beaches of La Croix Valmer and makes for a spectacular drive, swinging up to wooded headlands, down to resorts of brightly permanent impermanence. It ends at Bormes, quite the loveliest of many lovely perched villages punctuating this littoral.