Friday 13th September

We left Camping St Jean just before midday and drove into the Luberon. The Luberon was made famous to English folk by Peter Mayle’s accounts of moving to the area and doing up an old farmhouse; it was later a television series starring John Thaw (The Sweeney and Morse). We could tell, because suddenly the price of a coffee or a beer rocketed!

Our first port of call is Saignon (it has taken a couple of days of practice to stop calling it Saigon)

‘Even in a land of heart-stoppingly pretty villages, little Saignon still manages to raise an eyebrow’ the Lonely Planet guide gushes, but it is not wrong! It is perched on a rock that dominates the landscape of the Grand Luberon. From here we can see the famous/infamous Mont Ventoux, the white limestone at its summit looking like snow in the brilliant sunshine. Brilliant sunshine but it is very windy still. The Mistral is doing its stuff big time (Mistral = cold air falling from the mountains and then channelled and accelerated by the gap between the Alps and the Pyrenees).

In search of a bit of shelter we pull in to Camping Luberon, only a mile or so away from Saignon, and it is a good thing we do. We have grabbed the last two pitches on the campsite! It is the first time we have been asked if we have a reservation as well. We are shocked to find that the site we had planned for tomorrow is fully booked and Lesley had to do a bit of ringing around to find a campsite that was not full. Is it because it is the weekend, or Germans on tour or is this more of the Peter Mayle effect on the Luberon?