Tuesday 12th July: Overcast and Rain all day until we arrived in Avignon Cool 15°C to 21°C
Malaucene: Train 9.40am to 4pm. Car 5pm to 6.30pm.
Rain Rain Rain as we leave Briancon
Breakfast in a bus shelter
Today we left the Alps in rain - our first day of real rain in 4 weeks. A good time to leave. Highlight was seeing the bald topped Mont Ventoux for the first time. We're headed to Malaucene, at the foothills of Mont Ventoux.
We awake to cloudy skies. At 8am, we're down to the City Carrefours to buy breakfast and lunch for the day sitting in trains, then walk the 1.3k to the Briancon railway station. The train leaves at 9.40am and after checking the electronic board that all is good, there's time for breakfast. But it's now raining, so we dash across the road to the bus shelter and have muesli, milk, yoghurt with a hot Jetboiled cup of tea, before running back to the warmth of the station. The train leaves right on time. It's a pretty but misty trip down the Durance valley towards Embrun, where Ian and I had walked in 2012 to get to Briancon on the GR5. It takes 3 hrs 40mins to get to Valence Ville, stopping at 15 stations on the way, and it's rained the whole way.
There's an hour between trains, before we get the TGV to Avignon, so time for lunch huddled in the warmth of the station. At 2.14, the train leaves for Avignon. It stops only twice, and at 3.30pm, we arrive in Avignon, and need to change to the shuttle train that takes only 6 minutes to get to the Avignon TGV station where we have booked an Avis rent-a-car through rental cars.com - a subsidiary of booking.com. Damien speaks English as he's worked at Roma Street Brisbane for several months, and it's easy to fill in the paper work with his help. Half an hour later, Grahsm's driving out in an almost new Toyota Auris, a hybrid car. Graham has volunteered to drive as both he and I acquired International Driver's Licences before we left Oz, but I'm happy to be a backseat driver.
Train in the rain to Avignon
We've earmarked a large Carrefours just 1k from the TGV station but it's not easy to find, and 15 minutes and 15 roundabouts later, we're there. It's ginormous. Ian and Graham get the beer and wine, Jenny and I get the salads, cheeses and pork filet - we know the apartment we're going to in Malaucene has a stove, and France has particularly good pork fillet - but you can't get it from a little store in a mountain village.
At 5.30pm with a boot full of groceries and back packs, we're on the ring road and heading north towards Orange, then turn off to Carpentras before seeing the signs to Malaucene. Soon, we come face to face with the bald heights of Mont Ventoux - a stunning sight, rising out of the lowlands of Provence. Malaucene is buzzing with cyclists and the smell of bolognese and pizza - cyclists food!
Bald head of Mont Ventoux
t's easy to find our Apartment at 10, Avenue de Verdun - it's smack bang in the centre of the village where all the action is. The sign on the door indicates we need to telephone for the receptionist and lucky Jenny has a phone. The apartment is small but perfectly suitable - 3 bedrooms, one bathroom and a kitchen/dining/lounge area about 3m x 3m. We quickly unpack the car, cook our pork filet, throw together a salad and have dinner with a cold beer and rose that the boys have bought from down the road. There's a village car park 30 metres away and we're lucky to find a spot, given the number of tourists in town. Time for an early night after a long day travelling.