Provence, Purple, Lavender...trip planning!

Traveled June 2012

The decision to travel to the sunny, warm, French countryside was made at the bookshop whilst my travel partner and I were flicking through French travel guide books. Conflicted with the array of options and choices - Lyon? Normandy Coastline? Mont St Michel? The Champagne region? Loire Valley? Once we saw photo spreads of Lavender fields, we both decided that there was no other choice, we had to head to Provence!

Beautiful Lavender fields

Months and many after-work long nights were spent researching the best options to tour Provence. Bus trips? Private Tour? Self-drive? Trains? There is an abundance of information and resources in books, web pages, travel forums, blogs dedicated to ‘Provence’ that it was all a bit overwhelming! I actually spent weeks researching all the private tour operators, since it is meant to be a ‘holiday’ and I didn’t want to plan out each day and stress myself out with driving…on the other side of the road! However, the price-point for a private tour just proved a bit too expensive for us (approx EU350-450 per day), so we went with the self-drive option to cut costs down. In hindsight, I can say the self-drive option worked out very well – it definitely added an element of adventure to the holiday - moments of cursing the GPS; accidentally setting the speed limit to 50km/h on the German hybrid Mercedes C-Class hired car; driving 6 different ways from Avignon to our B&B; taking the backroads of Provence and almost driving through private driveways. After conquering the hills and windy roads of the Alpilles region (why is the GPS showing trees? omg we are driving up the little alps!) I can now say with confidence I am able to drive on the other side of the road. Win!


Next on the research list was the accommodation options. I’ve been a keen holiday planner, I love it. To my surprise, I didn’t realise that you were meant to start researching accommodation options and booking items 6 months in advance, especially if one is planning a summer trip to Provence! 6 months! I actually thought a 3 month head start was plenty of time. Once I discovered that fact, I went into accommodation search frenzy mode, which is saying something since I am known by my friends to spend hours researching hotel options even for a mere 2 day city stay.

The forums and blogs suggest Provence is best experienced through B&B stays, and I would have to agree. And unlike hotels which are listed on a wide range of websites, the B&Bs are listed on a different system, and I actually found the better or more highly rated B&Bs just had their own webpage, which you had to contact them directly. There’s a myriad of price points again for a B&B stay in Provence, you can go for the very minimalist basic option or stay in a grand old castle that commands significant Euros. I would recommend working out the location of where you would like to base yourself for the few days/weeks for your stay there, before committing yourself to an accommodation search. For our stay, I wanted to be close to Avignon, mainly because we were only going to be in the region for 4 days and would be arriving via the high-speed trains from Paris. I managed to find this lovely B&B in Le Thor called Le Clos des Sorgues which is owned and operated by a husband & wife, Véronique et Thierry Verholleman. I found this place after trawling through the options on TripAdvisor and would highly recommend a stay here. The price point was very reasonable and they had the perfect accomodation option for our party of five.

Le Clos des Sorgues B&B

The Master Bedroom

Look at that blue sky! 

Le Thor is about a 20-30 minute drive from Avignon (depending on how lost you get…I didn’t know what people were talking about when they said the roundabouts are not like the ones here!) and the house has a rustic yet new feel to it. The rooms were all newly renovated and decorated in French provencial style and after experiencing the shoe-boxes in London & Paris, there was so much space!! The breakfast was a delightful treat of a variety of pastries and breads, homemade jams, fresh eggs. You know you are on a holiday when you are treated to a lovely breakfast. It was hard to get ourselves moving each day after such a wonderful treat! This B&B has fresh fruits for you to pick as well as a pool to cool down at after a long day driving around the country roads of Provence. The most amazing part of our stay were the hosts –Véronique et Thierry spoke very good English, were enthusiastic about looking after guests and gave us recommendations each day for things to see, and restaurants to try. Even though I had read pages in guidebooks and had a rough idea of which towns we were going to hit, it was still reassuring to have the hosts point out the not-to-be-missed towns and sights.

The beautiful garden grounds at Le Clos des Sorgues

An abundance of cherries to pick from the gardens of the B&B

Driving around in luxury of course!

Next Post: Four Days in Provence - the lavender quest!