Nothing beats a vélo in the Vaucluse

Michelet may have called Northern France ‘la vraie France’ and the wild and rocky outpost of Provence the ‘rude pays’, but for me, France is in Provence, in the dusty and strange contours of its angular landscape, in the rhythms of the day dictated by the heat. This is a feeling as much as a place; a subterranean and unformulated attraction for the land of Cézanne, Sade and latterly, Peter Mayle. 

You can imagine my unformulated joy then, when my sister and I found ourselves most unusually without small children, husbands, or dogs in the lush surroundings of La Coquillade Provence in the Parc du Luberon. Once a hamlet tended to by the monks of the neighbouring Sénanque Abbey in the eleventh century, La Coquillade sits high on a ridge amidst a patchwork of vineyards from which vantage you may see the villages of Lacoste, Ménerbes and Roussillon. Bought by hearing aid tycoon Andreas Rihs in 2008 and lovingly invested with 70 million euros, La Coquillade is an ode to Rihs’ passions, the three Vs: vin, vélo and the Vaucluse, the region where he intended to see out his days had he not died suddenly in 2018.