We had an early start this morning to meet up with our planned Hot Air Balloon flight… 5 AM is very dark here. We had to drive to Forcalquier which is about 55 kilometres from Goult. When we left there was some light rain… and the thought did occur to me that the flight may well be cancelled. I figured some more practice driving on the wrong side of the road couldn’t hurt. In the dark it was a hard drive as there were some quite winding sections of road and some narrow sections as well. When we arrived in Forcalquier, it was confirmed that no flying would be done… but the operators bought us coffee and shared some croissants. Interestingly, one of the pilots was from Switzerland and had been flying balloons globally for over 20 years including a couple of stints in Melbourne.
So with that plan being a ‘fail’ we thought we could wind our way back to Goult via a few of the other villages. The first stop was Sault, but it was largely inactive… as not much seems to happen in the villages prior to 10 AM… a pretty village… nonetheless …
From Sault, we headed to Gordes … another hillside village which was having its market day. The rain held off for log enough for us to wonder around the markets. My initial view of the markets was shaped by a couple of stalls selling scarves for 45 Euros… as opposed to $10AUD when I was in India… but it did improve when we got to the food stalls. There was a healthy array of cheeses, meats, breads and sweets like macrons and nougat.
Like many of the villages here … Gordes is built into the hillside … quite high up and dates back many centuries. We were discussing how many movie sets these villages would have inspired.
From Gordes we wound our way back to Goult for a leisurely lunch as the rain closed in again. A quiet afternoon at the house was in order after our early start… and maybe a wee grandpa nap!
Until tomorrow
Rob
Rob's "Beats Working" Blog 