On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Steve from Mendocino
Driving through the hills I saw this hilltop town. I don’t know whether I actually visited it or not, and I certainly have no notion of its name or location. I have this picture, though.
This picture illustrates why a friend described Provence as being the fruit and vegetable basket of France.
One more sight that exists for me only in my photos.
Same location, but including the setting.
Provencal architectural detail.
Late season visit to a hotel with swimming pool. My parents paid the tab. I certainly couldn’t.
Carcassonne is an admittedly striking location, but, even in 1970, it was impossibly clogged with tourists and the cheesy establishments that cater to them. I grabbed this and the next shot at the only two tourist free opportunities available. On this one, I had light contamination of the film, visible in the lower left corner. I did my best to camouflage it in Photoshop, but it’s still there.
Carcassonne again. I was shooting into the sun, the light was way to contrasty for Kodachrome, and the area between the two walls was very ugly. I chose to hide all of that with trick shit.
Lapassionara
These are lovely and bring back great memories. Thanks.
Barbara
Your first picture might be Les Baux. Agree re Carcassonne.
Peter
I think the hill town is Gordes and the monastery with lavender field is Senanque.
stinger
What wonderful photos! Oh, to stand in the middle of a FIELD of lavender. Love the spot of red in the architectural detail shot.
Dorothy A. Winsor
What a beautiful part of the world.
Factoid: The Romans settled retired soldiers here which is why there are so many Roman ruins. They called it The Province, which is where the name comes from.
Erin in Flagstaff
@Peter: so that is lavender? That confirms this is a location of a jigsaw puzzle I once completed. The lavender was blooming in the jigsaw puzzle image, but when I saw Steve from Mendocino’s photo, I remembered my feelings of wanting to see it in person.
Oh the travel plans I’m planning when travel is possible again!
SkyBluePink
Wonderful pics! Particularly love the hilltop town!
Wolf
@Peter:
I agree that the first one is Gordes. Just compared it to a similar one I took a few years ago.
susanna
Lovely photos, lavender monastery close up shots are my favorite.
Thank you!
JanieM
The pictures are so very evocative — and I’m also appreciating the sequencing. I got absorbed in the hilltop town for a while, then was jolted into another world by the transition from brown-ish to all those green fields in the second shot.
Fields of lavender — there were some outside a town I visited in Quebec a few summers ago. We tried to do the farm tour, but they were closed that day. A second visit is in order, I think. Any year now.
Nettoyeur
@Peter: Could well be.
Rand Careaga
@Nettoyeur: Definitely Gordes. Image search confirms.
BlueStater
Could the hilltop town be Grasse? It’s a center for perfume manufacturing and has a delightful odor throughout the town. They also tolerated my schoolboy French when I was there 30-odd years ago.
Obvious Russian Troll
@Peter:
I’m pretty sure you’re correct. We stayed in this weird hotel in Gordes with all these pictures of American celebrities and political figures (Jacquie Onassis dodging paparazzi in NYC and lots of Kennedys) on the wall. It was the only place in France where we encountered the snooty French stereotype. The rest of the town was fine, particularly the restaurant we wound up eating at both nights we were there (Le Loup Blanc).
Les Baux is not far away–we stopped there on the way to Gordes, in fact. The crest of the hill Les Baux is situated on is in ruins.
Nice Marmot
@Peter: Correct!
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Dorothy A. Winsor: What a fun fact! Thanks.
J R in WV
Love the photos, thanks for doing the hard work of taking the slides, then more hard work scanning them and doing post-processing. And the sharing, also too~!!~
Only you know there is light contamination in the lower-left corner!
Of course I’m looking at these on a nice laptop, not a 4K widescreen monitor… also love the note about the ugly between the walls fixed with tricky shit!
We spent a week or so in Southern France, the Dordogne valley where many caves with paintings are found, not as level and farmable as this area, on an AIA tour of archaeological sites in Basque country and the Pyrenees of Spain and France. Beautiful countryside, mostly friendly folks with the odd exception here and there. Loved it, want to go back there and Italy again also too.
Thanks again!
J R in WV
We noticed that in Tuscany every large farm or small town was on a ridge or hilltop, with steep stone walls around the farmstead with arrow slits, to keep brigands from attacking in late winter and stealing all the food, leaving the farm community to starve.
Looks like the same concept in rural France as well…
Quaint looking and beautiful now, but the history is brutal.