A week in the Luberon

A week in the Luberon, written from a house in Gordes

The Luberon rewards a week planned around its markets rather than its monuments: each village has its morning, and the rest of the day arranges itself. This is one way to spend seven days from a base in Gordes, with two of them deliberately spent going nowhere.

Saturday

Arrive, and go no further

Changeover is Saturday. However you have travelled, the afternoon is for the pool and the garden, and the evening for walking into Gordes and eating there — the one night of the week when nobody has to drive home. The Spar in the village covers breakfast; the serious shopping can wait.

Sunday

L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue

Twenty-five minutes away, and the best-known market in Provence for a reason: the Sunday brocante turns the whole town over to antique dealers, and the river runs through the middle of it under the old waterwheels. Go early, park on the edge, and plan to have lunch there rather than rushing back.

Monday

Sénanque, and then nothing

The abbey is five minutes down the valley and quietest before ten. In late June and July the lavender in front of it is the photograph everyone brings home from Provence. On the way back, the Village des Bories is a field of dry-stone huts that takes half an hour and explains a great deal about how people lived here. Then the afternoon is free, which is the point of taking a house.

Tuesday

Market day, on foot

Gordes market fills the square on Tuesday morning, and you can walk to it. Buy lunch rather than planning it — melons and cheese and a rotisserie chicken — and carry it back. Later, the Château de Gordes and the Pol Mara museum inside it are ten minutes you will not regret, mostly for the view from the ramparts.

Wednesday

The ochre country

Roussillon is twenty minutes east and an entirely different colour: red, orange and burnt yellow cliffs with a marked trail through them, the Sentier des Ocres. Wear something you do not mind staining. In summer, Coustellet holds a night market on Wednesday evenings — produce, a glass of something, and dinner you did not have to cook.

Thursday

The southern villages

Ménerbes, Lacoste and Bonnieux sit along the other side of the valley, ten to twenty minutes apart, each with a view back across to Gordes. Ménerbes and Roussillon both hold markets on Thursday morning. Bonnieux has the widest vistas in the Luberon and a good deal fewer people in them than Gordes does.

Friday

Water, or a city

Fontaine-de-Vaucluse is where the Sorgue comes out of the rock — a genuine spectacle in spring, and canoeing downstream from there is the best thing in the valley on a hot day. If you would rather have a city before you go home, Avignon is fifty minutes: the Palais des Papes, the bridge, and a proper dinner.

Two days with nothing in them is not an oversight. A week here is better spent swimming at four in the afternoon than driving to a fourth hilltop village — and the villages are all still there next time.

If you only have three days

Gordes and Sénanque on the first morning, Roussillon and the ochre trail on the second, and L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue on the third if one of them is a Sunday or a Thursday. That is the Luberon in miniature, and it misses nothing essential.

What to skip

The lavender fields of Valensole are an hour and a quarter each way, and in July the road is a queue of cars doing the same thing. If you are set on them, leave before seven. Otherwise Sénanque, five minutes away, gives you the same flower and the better building.

Likewise, the Gorges du Verdon is a wonderful day and a very long one — two hours each way. It is a better idea on a fortnight than on a week.