Don't think we saw Peter Mayle

Orange (well, yellow, pink and green, really)

A week or so back it was school holidays here - which, of course, meant it was time to head to Provence. We'd thought about Rome, but that seemed altogether too much effort, so we settled for a 2-hour drive south instead ...

Antique Theatre

... and had a thoroughly lovely time of it. We based ourselves in a little town called Orange. I don't know why it's called Orange - we certainly didn't see anything there that was orange. (We did, however, see lots of pastel colours, which look lovely against the blue sky ...) That notwithstanding, the town is famous for all kinds of things. Like - weirdly - William of Orange (he of Dutch extraction and one time King of England) takes his family name from here. More interestingly still, it has a staggering ancient Roman theatre which is widely acknowledged as one of the finest still standing. Even today - 2,000 years after its construction - it makes a thumping statement about Roman power. It's utterly colossal: the stage is close to 70 m wide, 30 m deep and God knows how high. Imagine singing on that! Well, you can. I mean - not you, literally (unless your name is The Three Tenors or something), but people do. In fact, you could pop along in July to see a performance of Verdi's Aida - but only if you're prepared to part with $500 or thereabouts for one of the better seats. But, my Lord it'd be an experience. Ema's done it, by the by ...

Cheap and not-so-cheap seats

The one truly distasteful thing about Orange is that its local body is dominated by the National Front. Some of the administration's more liberal policies have included banning books concerning racism, hip hop or fairy tales from countries other than France. You can see their hearts are in the right place.

Pretending that we were not somehow complicit in this by virtue of visiting the place, we proceeded to enjoy the town very much. Provence is ahead of us - weather wise, if not politically - and so it was blossoms and sun all round. Provence should, I gather, really be visited in the summer when it's a gazillion degrees and everything smells of thyme, rosemary and roasting lamb, but we were happy enough being there in mid-winter. For one thing, it meant we avoided the crowds and didn't queue for anything.

The Pont

One of the other stunning sites in the region is the Pont de Gard. More intimidating Roman-ness. This time, it was the construction of a 50 km long viaduct which brought water from high in the hills down into the town of Nimes. How good was the engineering? The average drop in height across the 50 clicks is 12.5 cm per kilometre or something ridiculous, so your calculations have got to be bang on. The thing is just about flat! The highlight is the bridge, at which point the viaduct sits atop a 3-tiered structure. Look carefully and you'll see the arches vary in width. I can't remember why that is, now.

She'd be a cold one

In between visiting sites of antiquity (each of which, I have to say, was very inexpensive and incredibly well-organised and resourced), we drank a little of the local produce. Occasionally we ate some of it, too. Some of that liquid produce comes from a tiny town called Chateauneuf-du-Pape. If you were thinking maybe you'd pop along to the Chateau for a degustation, you're about 300 years too late (see the self-explanatory photo). If, on the other hand, you were up for a bike ride around the region, that would be a top idea, in my view. None of the hills are more than about 500 m high; the road network dates back to the Romans so there are oodles of small, car-less tracks; and the scenery is very, very beautiful. Oddly, unless you're the sad sort who reads books like this one, you might not know that in Provence they really like to stress their vines right out, so one of the remarkable things about driving through the place is the sight of the vineyards: rocks for miles.

That's what I call a pruning

It wasn't all wine and Romans though. We went to Avignon, too, which is fascinating in a different kind of way. Attraction # 1 there is Le Palais des Papes. An extended trip through here is just the thing when next you find yourself unable to understand how we got from the teachings of the Nazarene to the Reformation. Someone, somewhere, took a wrong turn.

Anyway, Wikipedia will tell you everything you need to know about the Popes' Palace (it's a fascinating story). Actually, what it won't tell you is that directly outside the Palace there is a very large, bronze statue of an elephant standing on its trunk. I kid you not - and it's about 8 m tall. It's like a really big break-dancing Dumbo or something. (There's a photo of it here, somewhere, in amongst the others.) Clearly, the secular authority in Avignon is not National Front, and is possessed of a sense of humour. I've no idea what the ecclesiastical authority makes of it, however.

In between times we visited nougat factories; saw nuclear reactors alongside the river; strolled up and down a thousand tiny, cobbled streets; ate in restaurants built in caves in the stone; got lost driving around one-way systems; and ate far too many crepes for breakfast. And Em fell palpably in love with a King Charles spaniel which lived in our hotel. Then, just to keep us on our toes, the Pepemobile developed an electrical fault that meant the indicators flashed all the way home ...

What Em and I had to put up with Provence ...