Rose from our grassy refuge to make three-tomato, avocado, onion, yellow pepper, and melon salad with balsamic vinaigrette (it's amazing what you can do with a few basic ingredients!) before heading out on the road to Avignon, home of the antipopes - these being self-proclaimed messengers of God who installed themselves in Avignon yet were not recognized by the Catholic Church (and thus, according to ecclesiastical wisdom, mere pretenders.) The ride was relatively slow owing to persistent headwinds on the slow climbs over the low-lying mountains - really, no more than glorified hills when compared to the majestic Pyrénées and innumerable sierras of topographically tortured Spain - that fill most of the areas inland from the southern coast of France. Yet our detour was worth it, as you may be able to guess from the sheer volume of pictures it generated...
...on our way to Avignon, we stop in the small town of Remoulins for tea. What we get instead is a lukewarm concoction of slightly flavoured water served with skim milk - simultaneous proof that small towns are certainly not above ripping you off, and that we are solidly in coffee country now.
Another 20 km to Avignon from Remoulins along highway that is relatively nondescript save for a couple of larger-than-average hills; we cover this quickly, arriving in Avignon for late morning to lock our bikes and peruse the town. It is full of old cathedrals and gardens, and is home to several UNESCO World Heritage Sites including a well-preserved Roman bridge (which sadly charges 15€ for admission!) We content ourselves with walking around some of the parks; there is a wonderful view over the river towards an old fortress...
...and, our touristic duties discharged, we attempt to find food. This proves more difficult than expected, especially in the old town which is predominantly consecrated to stately architecture and quaint cafés; we ask at a hair salon (of all places!), where we are pointed (droite, gauche, droite, gauche, hop!) to the busier lanes. This brings us to a specialty food shop with high-quality wine, preserves, and the like (along with 450€/kg morels - ZOW); nevertheless, we manage to rustle up sandwiches of Coeur-de-Boeuf tomatoes, fresh Provence figs, and five-herb goat cheese on sesame baguette. Yum! We follow this up with gelato, which is served to us by a young expat Australian who moved here a couple of months back to seek a different working environment. As is the case with most people we explain our travels to, his reactions quickly run the gamut from polite disbelief to amazement...
It is now 1500, and we have seen a good portion of Avignon - at least, good enough to justify continuing on our way. We roam about the surrounding countryside on a succession of increasingly smaller lanes, so that we are less and less sure of our navigational skill - until it drops out onto a more major-looking throughfare by the train line, which leads us to a confusing autoroute junction some 10-15 km out of the city...in the right direction, thankfully! We're getting good at this ad-hoc navigation stuff.
From there, we proceed along La Durance, a mostly-untamed river that borders on a nature preserve to the north with a corridor of relative inhabitation along its banks; the path is picturesque, leading us past canals and old mills with fig trees whose lower branches hold many ripe juicy figs. More yum! We finish off the sequence of gastronomic delights later on when, finally stopped for our nightly camp, we test out this local garlic-egg soup recipe that we found online. We've decided to make a commitment to try out local cuisine on the camping stove - which is difficult, since the constraints placed on us by our unusual kitchen arrangement prohibit baking (no oven!), grilling (fire prevention measures still in effect for summer!), deep-frying (we have space for one type of oil, so we carry olive oil...which heats to a lower temperature than lighter oils, and is thus unsuitable for this purpose), super-large-quantity cooking (medium-size pot, one-burner stove, no way to keep perishable food for more than a day...) But we'll still give it a shot; at the very least, we'll have a compendium of such recipes and their adaptability to camping cuisine...
We set up our tent in strong winds, making sure to peg it at every corner to keep it (we hope!) firmly attached to the ground. Next it's off to Aix-en-Provence, after which we'll rejoin the southern coast through Marseille, Toulon, Cannes, Nice, Monaco...and then Italy! So close to another country...