Welcome to Walk Inn Provence's Blog !
My first guiding expedition this year was a new experience for me: a biking and barging trip. A couple from Wyoming, Sally and Joel and 16 of their friends, rented the barge seen below, along with its crew and chef, to navigate upstream along the Rhône Valley, from the Mediterranean Sea to my beautiful hometown of Avignon. The photo below was taken just minutes before a torrential storm, accompanied by close lightning strikes. As a guide I felt nervous (let's face it: I was a bit frightened), but my guests seemed to love every second of it...
And here's where I fit in: every day the group explored the countryside by bike, anywhere from 30 -50km, with me as their (trusty?) guide. Fit, and from about 55 to 70 years old, this wasn't the type of group to embark on a traditional boat cruise. They needed a bit more action, and were excited to put on their cycling gear and pedal along tiny back roads and farming tracks.
Below are just a few of Walk Inn's fleet of brand new hybrid bicycles, always a pleasant surprise to my guests when they first lay their eyes on them:
Provençally Yours,
Equipped with panniers, we carried our gourmet picnic lunches with us for our rides, picking the most picturesque locations for our lunchtime pause. Below is a shot taken among the reputed vines of Chateauneuf du Pape, the leaves beginning to spread, the bunches of grapes still reduced to tiny specks...
May is one of the best months to visit Provence. The April rains set the scene for an abundance of May wildflowers, including the vast fields of poppies in the picture below.
Below are two of many of Chris' power-naps, a man capable of stretching out after a hearty Provençal picnic and falling asleep within seconds. Chris is in the right place though: Provence is the perfect setting for a midday sieste, an activity I always love to practice with my groups along the trails...
Dave, on the other hand, wasn't the best candidate for the afternoon snooze. An avid and competitive cyclist, I took Dave on an extra ride while the rest of the group was having lunch in the perched village of Les Baux. Twenty-five years older than I am, I could barely hang on to his back wheel (I would have liked to do so literally), and he left me in the dust nearing the top of the pass. To add insult to injury, we were then blasted by one of those rare-and-sudden-and ever-so-powerful Provençal storms, while the rest of the group remained nice and cozy in their café in Les Baux.
Below Dave is admiring a centuries-old limestone quarry near the village of Les Baux:
On one particular day we had to switch the cycling itinerary: the rains had made the current of the Rhône too strong to navigate upstream, and so we were "stuck" in the Roman city of Arles an extra day. With a little bit of guiding improvisation we found some beautiful little roads and tracks, including the track below, set beside one of the many canals surrounding the Rhône Valley. Many of these tracks were used for centuries as tow-paths, by teams of horses that would pull boats upstream.
Minutes after exiting the tow path and settling down for lunch, a flock of 600 sheep passed by. One of my guests thanked me -- in jest of course -- for having staged such a wonderful spectacle for them.
A freewheeling descent back to the plains, among the famed olive groves of Les Baux de Provence.
Here we are -- all 19 of us -- atop the Roman Coliseum in Arles. I hope the group had as much fun as I did during the week, despite the difficult weather, and that they've kept with them the beautiful images of a Provence that I'm lucky enough to wander through all year long...
Provençally Yours, Stuart
