[2006-07-15]

Here are some pics from my biking assignment in Provence. The first part of the week we had our base camp in Isle sur la Sourge, a small city in the heart of the district of Luberon, famous for its superb wines. From there we made day trips to small villages in the mountains to take biking pictures, lunch picnics and other stuff such as a trip to world famous Château neuf du Pape, where we did some wine testing.

Midweek we moved four hours drive west to a high plateau called Les Cevennes where we stayed in the little village of Meyrueis. The area is very beautiful with deep gorges cutting through the plateau. We did some hiking but it was mostly just too hot, 36°C, to do any serious stuff, so we ended up kayaking and having picnics in Gorge du Tarn during the hottest part of the days, to hike only in the late afternoon when temperatures dropped to a more sustainable level.

The hi-light of the trip was on one of these late afternoon hikes, when we first spotted a huge predator bird which turned out to be a Bearded vulture. After a few minutes we counted to about fifty of them almost darkening the sky with their wing span of almost three meters.