Most people who ask for this valley are picturing one photograph: a stone village on a rock, lavender below it, and nobody else in the frame. Two of those three things are there for the taking. The third is a matter of which week you come. Book a week in the Luberon in the middle of July and you will share the ochre paths at Roussillon with two or three coach parties before ten in the morning, and you will not find roadside parking in Gordes at all after nine.
That is not a complaint about the place. It is the shape of the season, and it is worth knowing before the figure is written rather than after. The valley is 40 miles long, holds about thirty villages of any size, and takes something over a million visitors a year into a corridor you can drive end to end in ninety minutes. April, May, September and October hold the same stone and the same light with a fraction of the cars.
The other thing worth saying plainly: this is an expensive corner of France. A market melon costs what a market melon costs anywhere, but the houses, the restaurant covers and the parking all sit at the top of the national range, and our starting figure reflects the accommodation rather than any extravagance in the week itself.
- What the week is
- One village base for all seven nights, a small hire car from the airport, and a market morning within forty minutes on every day of the week.
- What sets it apart
- 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.
- What the figure covers
- Seven nights in one village house or apartment, self catering; compact hire car for seven days with unlimited miles; airport pickup of the car at Marseille or Avignon; a printed market and driving sheet made for your dates; one two hour walking morning with an independent local guide; a written list of village parking spots that take a car over 14 feet.
- What it leaves to you
- Flights of any kind and any baggage charge; all food, all market shopping and all restaurants; fuel, tolls on the A7 and A51, and every parking fee; the tourist tax the village collects per person per night; car fuel policy deposit and any excess reduction offered at the counter; entry to ochre trails, abbeys, hilltop chateaux and the two paying quarries; anything you add on the spot; tips to the guide; the second driver fee if you want one.
- Who this one is wrong for
- Anyone who does not want to drive: the villages are 4 to 18 miles apart on lanes that narrow to a single car with stone on both sides, and nothing on this itinerary is reachable on foot from one base. Anyone who dislikes crowds in high summer should not take the July or August dates, when the market villages take several thousand visitors in a morning and cars queue on the approach lanes from 8am. The village houses put the bedrooms up one or two flights of stone stairs, and several have no elevator at all.
Stone on end, and what the lanes do to a day
The ridge is a long fold of limestone running east to west, split in the middle by the Combe de Lourmarin, which is the only road crossing for about 20 miles in either direction. North of the split the villages face the Vaucluse plateau; south of it they face the Durance and get noticeably hotter in the afternoon. The high point of the range is 3,690 feet at Mourre Negre, and the villages themselves sit between 700 and 1,300 feet, which is why the drive from one to another is always longer than the map suggests.
Distances are short and times are not. Bonnieux to Gordes is 11 miles and takes 30 minutes. Apt to Lourmarin is 12 miles over the combe and takes 25 in April and 45 on an August Friday. The lanes are two cars wide on the through routes and one car wide with a stone wall on the village approaches, and the parking in most hill villages is in a terraced lot below the walls, from which you climb. In Gordes that climb is about 130 feet of steps.
A note on the car: take the smallest one you can live with. The width matters far more than the power, and every year somebody folds a mirror on the Rue Basse in Menerbes.
People who came for one thing and found another
A fair share of the people who write to this office are describing a week that this valley does not quite provide, and are describing one that somewhere else does. We say so rather than sell around it.
Seven mornings, seven villages, and the months behind them
The markets are the spine of the week and they do not move. They start between 7am and 8am and are packing up by 12.30, so a late start costs you the whole morning. Below is the rota and then what the calendar does around it.
- Monday
- Cavaillon, and Lauris on the south side
- Tuesday
- Gordes, Cucuron, Saint Saturnin les Apt
- Wednesday
- Saint Remy and Sault; the largest of the week
- Thursday
- Roussillon, Menerbes, Cadenet
- Friday
- Bonnieux, Lourmarin, Pertuis
- Saturday and Sunday
- Apt on Saturday, the biggest in the valley; Coustellet and Isle sur la Sorgue on Sunday
What the year does to those mornings
April runs 48 to 68 degrees with rain about one day in four, cherry blossom on the valley floor, and half the restaurants still shut. May and June are 55 to 82 degrees, everything open, and the lavender starting on the plateau above from about June 15. July and August run 68 to 95 degrees with weeks over 100, full villages, and the mistral occasionally arriving to strip the heat out in an afternoon. September holds 60 to 84 degrees, the vendange in the vineyards, and the coach traffic gone by the second week. October drops to 48 to 72 degrees with the ochre at its strongest under low light, and closures begin at the end of the month.
From your message to a written figure
- 1. you write
- tell us the month, the number of people, and whether stairs are a problem; a message is opened before the working day ends
- 2. we price the base
- we hold two or three houses in different villages and price the car against them, since the village decides the driving more than anything else
- 3. you get a figure
- a written breakdown, two to four working days, showing accommodation, car, tax and the guided morning as separate lines
- 4. you decide or you do not
- the figure stands on its own; if it is not the week you meant, we will say what region the week you meant is in
Put the uncomfortable part to us early
If your real question is whether this valley or the Quercy suits the week you have in mind, ask it in those words. We will set the two out side by side, with the driving times, the price difference and the month you are considering, and we will not tell you which one to take.