Despite not having any time off during my time in France (the joys of a 5 month internship), I have managed to do a fair bit of travelling around the surrounding area of Forcalquier at the weekends. Having a bike has sort of made up for not having a car and there is nothing better than an early morning walk in the hills around the village but it is certainly exciting to go to the seaside and visit some amazing towns and cities.
You can check out my Mont Ventoux Epic Ride video here: https://youtu.be/EnOFV_qsMDg
00:00 Introduction
00:44 Cycling
03:11 Les Pénitents aux Mées
04:34 Les Gorges du Verdon
06:13 Aix-en-Provence
08:33 Les Calanques de Cassis
10:12 Sisteron
11:25 Avignon
12:35 Conclusion
Thanks to Leyla, Matt and Tim for all the work they do for this channel. The music and introduction as well as a lot of the thumbnails are all their work.
If you enjoy my videos, please support me by liking and subscribing. If you’d like to help out a bit more, you can also donate to the channel by following this link to my Ko-fi page: https://ko-fi.com/arthurbownmazzoni
Welcome back to the channel and welcome to this week’s video which is kind of a summary of The Traveling that I’ve done in this region of France in the zerat department um in the provance Alp um it’s a very lovely region and I’ve managed to do a fair amount of
Traveling in and around for and um so yeah I just want to give you sort of a bit of a brief sum up of uh how it’s been what bits I’ve enjoyed and where I think is really worth going so if you enjoy this video give it a
Thumbs up if you have any questions about what I’ve done stick them in the comment section below and subscribe if you haven’t already let’s get into It so to start off and before I go back to my apartment and talk to you through the rest of them um I just want to talk a bit about the magic of cycling a bike here the scenery is stunning and I feel like riding a bike here has really
Allowed me to appreciate the natural beauty of the area a lot more than I would have done otherwise because when you when you sort of go traveling you go and see maybe one specific thing two specific things towns Villages and if you’re in the car you kind of get you
Miss I feel the connection with the nature and the sort of the it’s a bit cheesy but like the journey to get there and I think cycling has been really special for me here and it has allowed me to explore different parts of the region in a different way and um I mean
I’m really that my dad drove me down and I was able to bring my uh road bike um I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t I probably would have run more and injured myself more but there we go I think this might actually be my last
Proper ride while I’m here I’ve only got two weeks left it’s a lovely day uh Sunday afternoon um and I’m currently at the monaster ganagi did a bit of gravel riding up there just now to go and see it it’s a really lovely Monastery that is still a monastery and has been for
There’s no number on there there for many many years basically and the road to get up here is incredible it’s like a a Mediterranean Coastal Road almost so it’s really really cool um whereas the rest of it is s more mountainous provinal roads around here uh I sort of
Turned off the main road and started the climb which was hard by the way and it was just incredible um I think it’s worth mentioning another thing that I’ve done while riding my bike is the Montu I cycled up there right at the start of my placement
Um and you can watch the video by clicking on a card here or here I can’t remember which side and there’ll be a link in the description below as well um so that giv that’ll give you a sort of a more detailed impression of what that
Bike ride was like and what the vtu is like um what they call it something the something of provance I can’t really remember um but yes I’m now going to head back home this is my last sort of stop on my little tour of the villages around FAL here and um once I’m
Back I will take you through the rest of the places I’ve been in poras so here we go okay back in the flat now and admittedly it is slightly later than just after that bike ride you’ve just seen but um we’ll get straight into it with some of the other interesting
Things I’ve seen around here and sort of linking to the little Villages and things uh that I spoke about just there that I’ve explored on my bike and the countryside and things there’s a really interesting rock formation 20 25 from here called the penon or the penon de
I’m not too sure um they’re these really funky big rocks that almost seem man-made in a way it’s that sort of like those sort of houses that seem to be made of seashells and things like that they seem to be made of that almost um but there are these huge walls and
You can go for a walk over the top of them and then as you come down really really steep sketchy descent and you come back into the village where you sort of start the walk you get to look up at these incredible just slabs of
Stone um my dad and I saw them for the first time as we were driving to F and I was like what on Earth is happened there um I actually can’t remember or can’t remember if I even found an explanation for how they were formed um but it’s
Just really cool uh and a bit Rogue I it’s definitely not my favorite thing of the area or what I’ve seen but kind of funky next up we have the gorge du Verdon and I was only able to go and see these because a family friend came to
Visit me and she rented a car um I was going to cycle there and cycle back but we went in the car and we were able to sort of kayak up these wonderful really steep walled Gorges with this fantastic colored wall water it was really really beautiful and um it was
Sort of enough offseason that it wasn’t that crowded I mean you look at some of the photos in the summer and it’s just basically you can’t see the water because there are so many people it’s really popular but it wasn’t cold too cold to be unpleasant and I even managed
To have a really nice swim in the lake uh it’s called lak do sanqua I think um that sort of is the main sort of bit of the gorges well it it kind of leads off of the main bit of the gorges and it’s a really long system of uh
Highwall valleys essentially um and we went to the most famous One by this Lake and yeah it was just stunning and then just nearby there’s a little town called mus s Marie something like that I think um which is also really lovely and you kind of just get to see a bit of
Like a little French Village that there are lots of little French Villages but this one’s particularly nice it’s very touristy because it’s by the gorge Veron but it’s really pretty we had a fantastic burger and a very very good ice cream there afterwards so that’s that really enjoyed those next up we
Have Exon pance twinned with bath near where I live interestingly enough and it’s a city and it has quite a big university in it I believe um and it does remind me a bit of bath actually it’s not uh it doesn’t have Grand Georgian architecture or anything like
Ja anything like that sorry uh but it seems to be a similar size it seems to have a similar kind of Shoppingyour lemonade on um the second time was with my sister actually we had a lovely day just walking around the sort of Saturday market get some really nice stuff I particularly am a fan of the jams that I bought there the strawberry Mint one you’ll probably never find it because it’s this little
Bloku cell on there um is fantastic and it’s just like a nice kind of Fairly relaxed day out the only problem is it’s €1 15 on the bus there € 15 on the bus on the way back so it’s quite expensive and a lot of the shops
There are quite expensive as well but it’s kind of a nice atmosphere I find um we went for the Christmas Market Before Christmas obviously and even there with lots of people it was still really nice and it has a lot more variety of shops than the places around here so I think
For example we went to a vegan ptis ptis sorry and fantastic I had this sort of layered chocolatey cakey type thing that was just amazing and was amazing without feeling heavy or anything like that which is sometimes quite hard with French ptis and it it’s sort of buried
Away in a little corner that was really nice and then we went to a Japanese ptisi the next time where we had a nice green tea got warm and uh tried some funky was it a Japanese cheesecake yes um which I also really liked so it’s
Just nice bigger a bit more variety and um it’s fairly close by just very expensive to get there public transport wise so that’s X next up we have the K CIS now the K are a series of little sort of inlets in land from the sea where again really sort of steep walled
Narrow Gorges almost that come in from the sea and the ones in Cassi Cassi casis not sure uh very famous they have some near Mar and then they have some in Cassie that is sort of a bit further east on the coast and we went there public transport expensive
Again uh so sort of we what did we have to do we have to get a bus to Mar uh then a train to Cassie then a bus to the coast then we walked and actually it’s sort of I would argue it’s more of a walking activity than a sort of sitting
On the beach activity CU once you get to the beach there are lot of people there and sort of the most popular kalank there are lots of people there um we also went sort of probably right at the limit of where I would have been happy
Swimming in the sea not wearing a wet suit I did go for a swim it was very nice but it was also very cold um the walk was actually really technical as well it was quite challenging but uh really really beautiful and I really enjoyed my day there it was nice to go
To the coast and definitely worth it because it was just a really nice Walky activity day out and when we did sit on the beach and read it was also very nice the only thing is as I said the public transport is very expensive so if you’re
Trying to get from here all the way to the coast to go it’s quite expensive next up we have C now this is another interesting one because it’s kind of linked in with the cycling now I think cycling to C was probably the best thing to do it’s quite a small town um
Overlooking a River with an enormous Rock lots of rock faces in this area with an enormous rock face on the other side sort of the town is built on one side and they you’ve got another one on the other side and it’s really really impressive it’s a really impressive site
I went on a well I went early in the morning it was quite an overcast day and uh it was part of quite a big loop that I did um so I didn’t hang around but I did cycle through the streets and it seemed really nice I I enjoyed it and it
Was really cool to just see another slightly bigger town with slightly more things but uh still equally as impressive but and equally as Quirky as all the other ones around here so I really enjoyed that and it kind of goes to show how much as I said at the start how
Much I loved having my bike here because gave me so many options I don’t think I would have gone to C had I not had my bike and it had been on a route that I planned um so that’s really cool now the last thing that I haven’t
Been to yet and I’m thinking of going to on my last weekend here if the weather’s nice if the buses aren’t too expensive and if I want to use my last weekend for this is going to Avon now for those of you who went to a French school or were
At an English Primary School where you sang songs is an absolute Banger I recommend you check it out and I’ve always wanted to go to the famous bridge in Aon so we’ll see I might go there the bus time tables aren’t exactly conducive to a day out um and if the buses are
Expensive I probably won’t go I haven’t had a look yet but uh that’s a possibility a very quick update from a very cold editing Arthur wearing his very fetching DHL jumper um I did actually go to Avon today it was fantastic I much preferred it to X I
Thought it was stunning the weather was lovely and it was really exciting to go out onto the bridge do a bit of a dance and uh yeah it was uh it was a really nice day out and uh I really enjoyed it despite the 4 hours of buses and the 3
Hours I actually got in Avon um so yeah so that is sort of the adventures that I’ve had in uh the provance AL region while I’ve been staying in foral uh it’s been really exciting and I can’t wait to see what Adventures I can go on when I’m
In Corda in Argentina fingers crossed that’s happening we don’t think about it too much so yeah if you enjoyed this video give it a thumbs up if you have any questions about the places I’ve been do ask them down below I’m more than happy to I hope you enjoyed the photos
It’s been amazing uh exploring the region And subscribe so that you do get to see adventures in Argentina stay tuned