Mt Saint Victoire

Firstly, these photos aren’t recent. However, they are of the the most famous mountain in Provence,Mt Saint Victoire. And three months later (than we took the photos), we can assure you that the mountain is still there, because Sam sees it every time he enters and leaves the city.

ANYWAY,

Everyone here had told us that climbing Mt Saint Victoire is a must for visitors, a suprisingly pictoresque postcard of french country life. It was just like that scene in Mary Poppins where her and the children and ‘Burt’ all jump into the paintings, and end up in the lovely countryside.
For starters, the first thing you see as you enter the park is a sign warning you not to stray off the path: hunters may accidently shoot you. A bit weird.

Then, as we walked ALONG the paths, we spied suspicious looking people carrying curious bundles. You see, it was mushroom and truffle season. And the french were going wild, detectors out and everything.

Before we came to France, we looked at google earth to see our new neighbourhood, and discovered a great big lake on the mountain, which close up and personal is actually a dam and looks like this:

Just like in the other story of Brer Rabbit, we got lost in the brambles but managed to make a nice discovery, that we were surrounded by mulberries. So we decided to collect enough to make a pie. Shame we don’t have an oven.

We bumped into an old-fashioned (really old fashioned) back packer.

He and his wife, and their donkey, would walk up and across the mountain.

We spent all day on the mountain, but missed the bus coming home. So, we had to wait about an hour for the next one. And we invented an amusing game: taking photos of cars as they drive by the highway road. It’s hard, you should try it sometime.

If your travel plans this year don’t include Aix, but you’re desperate to see this mountain, just check out any one of Cezanne’s paintings.