Allez Allez Allez

On Thursday we decided to go on a driving tour of villages in the Luberon region of Provence.
When I rode up Mt Ventoux in 2003 it was just after the mountain top had been used for a stage on theTour de France. The road was painted everywhere with exhortations – Allez Allez Allez Lance, Jan, Vino, Viranque…and all the names we know so well. The road near the summit had been resurfaced since then, and all the paint was gone. But when we stopped on the side of the road for a photo of the hills we did see a painted sign on the surface: Allez Allez Allez Cyril. None of us could think of a Cyril in the Pro Tour, so he may well be a name to look out for in future.
Ventoux itself (in French the name means Windy Mountain) is a magic place. As watchers of le Tour will know, the upper slopes are bald, and just scree slopes of almost pure white limestone. There is a large communications tower at the summit, and a café where the four of us stopped for a coffee. As we drank there was a steady stream of weary cyclists coming in from both sides making their personal pilgrimage to the top. The view across to the French Alps is absolutely stunning.
We passed through some lovely hilltop villages on our drive, and the cliffs of the Luberon Gorge were magnificent. Of course we had to drive up to Menerbes, the town discovered by Picasso and other artists 70 years ago, and made famous and expensive by Peter Mayles 20 years ago.
Menerbes really is two-faced. The main street is now very swish. All the buildings have been renovated, with the epicerie looking more like an upmarket deli than a small-town grocer. There was a lovely small café which we sat outside and had each had a refreshing ice-cream. Rather incongruously there is a very fashionable dress shop, but also tellingly two very swank immobiliers, or real-estate agents. The main street had been surfaced with large neat rectangular pavers. But when Ted and I walked down into the winding roads off the main street there were the small irregular houses typical of hill towns, a good number of them clearly “renovator’s opportunities”. The roads were still surfaced with thousands of rounded stones the size of your hand set vertically and across the slope, so that horses and people could gain traction on the roads a hundred years ago.
As we sat eating our ice-creams there was a steady stream of tourists walking by. Many of them would have been Peter Mayles fans. There was one young couple, who may have been Japanese, walking past. He, striding along in front and looking at everything with the eye of a believer, and she, dressed like a real fashion plate, walking along behind looking at the ground, and clearly wishing she was somewhere else.
Chris