France - part 10

Roussillon, the old ochre quarries. It was hard to get true colour in the photos - but it was certainly beautiful.

We hope that there will be a "next time" in Provence where we can visit a similar but less developed area called the Colorado of Provence. We got talking to a French couple at the end of our walk through the Roussillon quarries. Like us, they thought the time estimated for the longer walk was very much an over-estimate, and recommended Rustrel to us as a less developed and longer outing.

Roussillon  is where I bought my beautiful coloured pigments as shown in THIS post.

France - part 9

Roussillon town:

War memorial

There was a small graveyard just behind the car park for the walk through the old ochre quarries.

A Half-cylinder polar sundial

France - part 8

Our first major outing from Eygalieres was via the abbey at Senanque to Roussillon. The abbey car park was absolutely packed, so we drove back up the hill and parked in a little lay-by overlooking it, and then walked down and took a few photos but didn't actually go in.
They practice crop rotation, so some of the fields were planted with phacelia as a green manure - but their primary harvest is lavender.

The next couple of photos were taken along the road to Roussillon, and at the approach to the town.

This next one was lovely - and yet all it was was the metal frame around a place to leave bins and rubbish.

And a glimpse of the ochre;

France - part 7

Our first trip away from Eygalières was a shopping trip for food. We went to the nearby town of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Before doing the shopping we took in a visit to the Antiques de Glanum, on the hillside beyond the town. It's located on the Via Domitia, the Roman road that linked Italy with Spain, running through southern France.
Glanum started out as a Celtic fortified settlement (featuring a sacred well) dating back to appxox the 4th ntury BC for the earliest parts. It prospered again under the Romans in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The town part of the site was paid access only and we didn't go in.

What we did visit were two of  the Roman contsructions on the other side of the road;  France's oldest triumphal arch, built towards the end of Augustus Caesar's reign (so before 14 AD), which depicts the Roman victory over Gaul, and the Mausoleum of the Julii, dating to 40 BC.

The Mausoleum, which was probably a memorial rather than a burial place, is 18 metres (60 feet) high,

France - part 6

More photos around Eygalières...

Looking up to the old village on the hill, from the campsite gate