Inside the Rich Ochre of Roussillon
Something happened for the first time when I was twenty that changed my life.
I had a very good friend growing up in Alaska who remained my friend even after I changed to the big city school in what we considered the metropolis of Fairbanks while she stayed at North Pole for the ninth grade.
During our college years, we planned a back-packing trip through Europe with her boyfriend and the guy she’d introduced to me. When she broke up with her boyfriend, suddenly, all plans were off and she would go back to the University of Alaska Fairbanks in the fall. I didn’t have that luxury. Tickets bought, plans set, dorm room and fall tuition at Cornell College in Iowa cancelled. I was going to Europe whether she did or not.
And so, for the first time, I contemplated traveling alone.
At first, I imagined it angrily. How dare she desert me in this way! How could I possibly travel in Europe completely by myself!
It was strange how quickly those thoughts vanished and in their place an excitement grew. Traveling alone, I would be able to go where I wanted to go, see what I wanted to see, observe quietly and unhindered. I would be able to spend days at a time fully immersed in French. I might even become fluent at last.
And then, she changed her mind. She was going to Europe after all.
Again, I was disappointed, because now I was looking forward to finding out what it was like to travel alone. How easy it is to see things only from your own perspective. And that goes both ways.
We arrived in Amsterdam on September 15, 1988 and began our rail exploration of most of Europe for two months. The two guys also flew over, but they travelled on their own with plans for all of us to meet in the parvis in front of Notre Dame de Paris at 1 pm on October 2. It gave us time to find out if we’d like to travel together. We were all there at the appointed time and my friend decided that she wanted to find out what it was like to travel with the boys. It was the moment for me to make a decision. I wanted to work on my French and find out what it was like to travel alone.
I started out from Paris and took the train to Nice along the southern coast of France. At the Youth Hostel in Nice, some fellow travelers mentioned that there was a beautiful place not far north. The train didn’t stop there, so you had to walk to it. I was intrigued.
I took the train to the closest stop: L’Île-sur-la-Sorgue, and walked the eight kilometers, roughly five miles, to Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. It’s not such a long distance to walk, but there was something intoxicating about getting from one city to another on foot. Perhaps it was because I grew up in Alaska where such a thing didn’t happen.
As I neared the town famous for its gorge, the craggy hills came into view and I thought that it was the most beautiful place in the world. I found a Youth Hostel full of German travelers and proceeded to fall in love with Fontaine-de-Vaucluse.
Thirty years went by, like a snap of a finger, since that young woman stepped into that craggy place. I want to go there again on foot. I wonder if it will still be as beautiful to me now that I’ve seen more of the world.
Each evening in the hotel in Avignon, I sketched out a walking trip that included the towns of Roussillon and Gordes. I found a number of places I could start walking from that are reachable by bus or train. I considered walking to the Abbaye Notre-Dame de Sénanque, which is famous for its lavender fields, however it is the wrong time of year and they are doing renovations.
For two euros sixty, I can take bus line 15 from Avignon and get off at the Pont Julien stop. There are regular departures. The one that looks appealing leaves at 8:55 am and stops at a rond-point on the way to Pont Julien at 9:45 am. It is about a three-mile walk from there to Roussillon.
I wake before dawn in the walled city of Avignon, check out of the very comfortable, friendly and clean Hôtel de l’Horloge, and walk down the straight street of entry, stopping at a café for le petit déjeuner before exiting the walls of the city across from Gare d’Avignon and walk to the bus station to its left.
The Gare Routière is dark. The screens in the bus waiting area indicate a number for Ligne 15, so I stand next to that number. There is no bus yet, however, other numbers have buses and people waiting to board them. Not many. Just a handful of people quietly wait, some sitting on benches on the concrete walkways in front of the bus pull-ins.
Unfortunately, I’m not feeling well this morning. While traveling, I’m usually healthy, mind over matter very likely, however, it’s inevitable that sometimes something will break through. There was something very off about the experience at the health food restaurant in Villeneuve-lez-Avignon and I suspect it threw off my immune system. So much for health food. It’s a reminder to stay with the traditional French cuisine, which appears to be healthy for me.
A bus pulls into the slot in front of the number for Ligne 15. The driver opens the door, gets out, and closes it again. So, I wait. After a few minutes, the driver returns, gets inside, and closes the door. Do I go up? I check the time. There’s still five minutes before the scheduled departure. I wait for someone else to arrive to get on the bus so that I can see what to do. The cost is two euro sixty and I have it in exact change at the ready like a good French person. Somewhere, the ticket agent on the train from Paris to Avignon is smiling right now.
It’s almost time to depart, so I decide to approach. The driver opens the door. I ask if it’s okay to get on the bus, or something like that, in French. He says of course it is and asks where I’m going. “Je vais aller à Pont Julien.” He says that will be two euro sixty and I place the coins in the box next to the driver. “Pourriez-vous me dîtes quand on y arriver?” I practiced the phrase again and again in my mind before boarding the bus and I try to say it with my best accent. My reward is the answer that he will announce the stop.
I step along the narrow aisle to choose a place to sit. It is so clean and nice in here! The seats are huge, soft, and dark blue. And there is no one else but me until a young man darts in just before we roll out of Avignon.
It’s such a smooth and beautiful ride in a comfortable seat looking out giant windows for so little cost that I wonder why more people don’t take the bus. I’ll have to consider riding the bus more often in future travels in France.
The bus follows the wall around Avignon, lined with trees on the other side of the sidewalk that appears to follow the entire wall, giving me an even better idea of the scope of the beautifully etched stone ramparts. Maybe next time I could walk around the walls of Avignon.
And then suddenly, the bus makes a wide sweep to the right and we glide away from the fairytale walls and barrel down N7 toward D900. Quickly, instead of the city, there are the trees and vineyards of the country.
The driver is true to his word and pulls into the Pont Julien stop, a little hut in the middle of nowhere, opens the door, and looks back toward me in the rearview mirror. “Pont Julien. On y arrive.”
I step out, thank the bus driver, and soon the bus is pulling away and I am in the quiet remoteness of the French countryside.
The important thing is to make sure I’m heading the right direction to Roussillon. I spend a few minutes at the rond-point checking the signs to make sure and then follow the narrow country road through vineyards, Domaine du Coulet Rouge, ancient school buildings, and gardens. There is an old man who drops something in his driveway and without thinking about what I’m going to say or do, I walk over and help him pick up the branches that fell from his wheelbarrow so that he can continue. It’s a quick interaction. He thanks me and I walk on.
Soon, a dark green pine forest begins to appear along the sides of the road intermingled among deep russet rocks. The combination with the blue sky is breathtaking.
A little over an hour after stepping off the bus, there is a white sign ringed in red announcing: ROUSSILLON and underneath it another sign indicating that it is classed among “Les Plus Beaux Villages de France” which means it’s officially listed as one of the most beautiful towns in the country.
It is very early to check into a hotel, however, there is a place just to the right of the sign that I’d scouted out from Avignon and I decide to go there to see if they have any rooms for the night. Les Sables d’Ocre, which translates to the poetic name: The Sands of Ochre.
Not only do they have rooms, the gentleman at the front desk, who appears to be the owner as well, is extremely kind. It’s their last weekend open for the season, so he is pleased of offer me a room at a discounted rate including breakfast for 84 Euros, and I can check in right away because the room is already prepared. He gives me a map of the area along with restaurant recommendations. At first, he speaks French as he normally would, but after he finds out I’m from Alaska, he decides to speak slowly and I start having trouble understanding him. I’ll keep this in mind when speaking English with someone who is not a native speaker. It doesn’t necessarily help to slow down.
He walks me to the room and tells me the password for the WIFI, “And now you know my birthday,” he says with an aging sweatered man’s old wit as he turns away.
The room has two little beds, like it is meant for two children, and is clean and comfortable with a little outdoor patio. I wash up and rest a few minutes before venturing into Roussillon.
As soon as I leave the hotel compound, I find more red ochre rock outcroppings, yellow and white-ringed at the top, among the pines. It’s a short, refreshing walk up to the ruddy-hued town of Roussillon.
The twisting sienna streets curl around the hilltop with breathtaking beauty reminiscent of dusty Santa Fe, yet richer in color. There are art studios, galleries, and works of art everywhere, even on the outside of building walls on the streets.
There is a lovely café overlooking the Luberon Valley, so I find a little table outside Café l’Ocrier. The waiter lets me know that I need to go inside to order food, outside is only for drinks, so I follow him to a little table with a view of the rich ochre rocks along the side of the hill and the drop off to the valley.
I order, receive my meal, and then the place becomes crowded and a family from Germany ends up blocking the waiter’s access to me. Undaunted, a theme word for the French who are quick problem solvers, the waiter calls out to me, “Ouvrez la fenêtre!” Without hesitating, I open the window, immediately rejoicing that I acted before thinking about why he said even though I don’t know why he asks me to open the window. It crosses my mind that it is hot in the crowded room and some fresh air would be good when suddenly there he is at the other side of the window asking me to pass my finished plates out to him! A few minutes later, he returns and passes my dessert and coffee through the window. No stress, no worry, problem solved.
I am unable to leave until the family from Germany does, but I don’t mind. When I return to the streets of Roussillon, I walk toward Le Sentier des Ocres, or the footpath of the ochres.
Along the way, I am enchanted by the pigment stores with tiny little jam-sized jars in every imaginable color. I walk into La Compagnie des Ocres, mesmerized: bleu outremer, rose outremer, bleu céruléum, rouge laque clair, vert forêt, violet laque, jaune d’or, bleu lavande, sienne calcinée. The colors are so vibrant that it almost hurts my eyes to look at them. Three different kinds of black: noir de Rome, noir de vigne, noir minéral. And the ochres from the area: ocre jaune de Vaucluse is such a rich color and it is everywhere here, and ochre rouge du Vaucluse.
The town is famous for ochre mining and its pigment industry which has provided colors for textiles and paints for more than a century. There is an old ochre factory from 1870 to 1901, now a museum with demonstrations, called Usine Mathieu. I’d like to visit it someday.
Once I pull myself away from the magnetism of the colorful jars, I return to the footpath. There’s a small entrance fee and then everything is the color of ochre jaune and ochre rouge, even the ground, and there are rock outcroppings all around. It is magnificent! Like being somehow inside color.
I wander the footpaths for a while without a real sense of time other than the track of the sun and return to the town to walk its beautiful streets. A few galleries are still open and I go inside.
One artist has pieces on display out in the street with a sign inviting viewers to touch the work: Touchez SVP! A group of young adults pass and a young man in a white shirt makes a joke. He’d consider getting it for his wife, but he’d choose where he put the sign and maybe something would happen. Everyone laughs, including me, because for the first time I understood a joke in French!
After wandering the streets and soaking in the beauty until I am tired, I sit among the outdoor tables of Café l’Ocrier one more time for a late afternoon coffee before returning to the soothing hotel. After relaxing, writing, and working for a few hours, I step out on the patio in the darkness and see that Les Sables d’Ocre has colored balls of light outside at night.
I almost didn’t walk to Roussillon, so its beauty and enchantment stun me. I had no idea. No Internet searching or France travel information prepared me for this place. It’s a very well-kept French secret, which may perhaps explain why it remains so charming. The great places so easily become overrun by the world and lose the very things that drew people in the first place.
Should I tell others about Roussillon? Should I tell you? Is it a risk worth taking?
Next Two Months in France: Up the Steep Calades to Gordes
This is #11 in a series of stories: Two Months in France. Follow the links below to read the other parts of the series starting with the first:
1. Santa Fe Depot Departure
2. Return to the Great Lady
3. Shakespeare and Company Bookstore
4. Paris Stroll
5. Paris – des heures exquises
6. Train to Thonon-les-Bains
7. Château de Ripaille
8. Getting up with the Birds: Lac Léman to Lyon to Lille
9. Navigating to Avignon
10. In the Walled City of Avignon