Both requests arrive worded the same way. Stone villages on hillsides, a market that starts at eight and packs up at one, a rented house with a table outside, nothing booked after Tuesday. The two regions do genuinely deliver that. They sit on limestone, they were both farmed for centuries by people with very little money, and they both ended up with villages built tight and upright because flat ground was worth more as a field.
What the request usually leaves out is a budget and a month. Those two blanks are why the Luberon or the Quercy stops being one question and becomes two. The Luberon runs from Cavaillon to Manosque, about 40 miles end to end, with a dozen well known villages inside that span. The Quercy sits about 190 miles west, along the Lot and the Célé, and its villages are strung out over roughly 70 miles of valley with real gaps between them.
The second thing left out is what the week is supposed to feel like when it is not working. Sun and a market make both regions look identical in photographs. A wet Tuesday does not.
The two halves, set on the same axes
luberon
The Luberon runs about a third more per person than the Quercy at our floor figure, $2,680 against the Quercy's lower start; the drive from the nearest large airport is 45 to 60 minutes here against roughly 90 minutes for most Quercy bases; the market rota is seven fixed mornings in a 25 mile radius rather than a scatter of Saturday towns; and the ridge tops here run 2,300 to 3,690 feet, where the Quercy sits on a limestone plateau under 1,500 feet with the walking down in the gorges rather than up.
from $2,680 per person
quercy
The Quercy sits about 300 miles northwest of the Luberon, roughly five and a half hours of driving between the two; our Quercy week starts at $2,210 per person against a Luberon week that runs about a third higher; the plateau is limestone causse at 900 to 1,300 feet with river gorges cut 400 feet below it, not a south-facing range above open farmland; the cave sites here take timed entry and the summer slots are gone by March, while the Quercy's own high season is short and August thins out fast once the walnut harvest approaches.
from $2,210 per person
Two figures set beside each other are two facts about two different trips of different lengths, run by different companies, in different seasons. Neither figure is offered as the better value and this office will not say that one is. What each covers is listed on its own page.
What the money is actually buying
The Luberon week is priced from $2,940 per person for seven nights, two sharing. The Quercy week is priced from $2,180 per person on the same basis. Both figures cover lodging, a rental car in the compact class, one guided walk and one market morning with a cook. Neither covers flights, fuel, tolls or meals beyond the two included.
The difference between those numbers is not spread evenly across the week. In the Luberon, lodging is about 62 percent of the total, because the stone houses in Bonnieux, Ménerbes and Lacoste have been in the vacation rental market since the 1980s and are priced against buyers from Paris and abroad. A four bedroom house inside a Luberon village in June runs $2,600 to $4,400 per week. The same size house in a Quercy village runs $900 to $1,900, and lodging is about 41 percent of that package.
Everything else is close. Fuel, tolls, groceries, a restaurant dinner: those land within about 15 percent of each other. So the two totals mostly measure how much a roof costs in each place, not how much week you get.
Crowds, distances and what a wet afternoon looks like
from $2,940, two sharingprice per person, seven nights
from $2,180, two sharing
about 62 percentshare of the package that is lodging
about 41 percent
Gordes and Roussillon see queues for parking from about 9:30 am, and the Sunday market at Isle sur la Sorgue fills its lots by 8:00visitors in July and August
busy on Saturdays in Cahors and at Saint Cirq Lapopie, quiet by mid afternoon and quiet all week elsewhere
4 to 12 miles, roughly 15 to 30 minutes on small roadsdistance between the main villages
12 to 28 miles, roughly 30 to 55 minutes, with river valleys that do not connect directly
120 to 180 miles totaldriving over a typical week
250 to 340 miles total
about 6 wet days in a typical June, with covered markets, several village museums and a well known ochre works within 20 minutes of most basesrain, and what is open
about 8 wet days in a typical June, with prehistoric caves, an underground river and covered market halls, most within 30 minutes
around 55 miles from Marseille airport, 40 from Avignon stationgetting there
around 75 miles from Toulouse airport, 12 from Cahors station
paved throughout, narrow through village centers, several one way climbsthe road itself
paved throughout, some single lane sections with passing places above the Célé
Where this question is really a different question
A share of the people who write in are not choosing between these two at all. They are describing something else and using village names to do it.
Putting both figures on one sheet
We are not going to tell you which of these two weeks is yours, and we are not going to hint at it either. The figures above are the ones people find missing when they try to work it out alone, and they point in different directions depending on whether the lodging line or the driving line matters more to you. Write to the desk with your dates and the number of people, and we will put both weeks in writing against those exact dates, with the lodging portion broken out on each, so you can read them side by side and decide with your own arithmetic in front of you. If the dates fall in a month we have not quoted here, we will say what changes.