The Village des Bories is an open-air museum and the largest concentration of preserved 'bories' in the region. ‘Bories’, or ‘dorbies’ as I accidentally referred to them more than once, are dry-stone constructions that can range from being a small, temporary shelter for a shepherd to a contiguous set of rooms that together make up a rudimentary farm house. Haute-Provence ("Upper Provence) is covered with innumerable stone constructions ranging from city walls, sheepfolds, roman and medieval monuments and aqueducts to entire villages. The bories are unique because of their dry-stone technique (i.e. no mortar) and because of the general mystery surrounding their origins. The group of dwellings at Gordes, restored between 1969 and 1976, are considered to be among the most spectacular in Provence. These constructions required a considerable amount of stone, most of which was probably gathered on site. Up till now, we had seen a few bories from a distance and it was fascinating to be able to go into them and see the construction up close. That’s when you realize that this type of construction would have taken considerable skill; to build without an arch or a scaffold, to construct false corbelled vaults and only with the help of a hammer. In fact, up to the 20^th century, there were many masons in Provence that were specialised in dry stone constructions. Archaeologists and ethnologists have hypothesized that stand-alone bories were used for temporary shelters, lofts or stores for agricultural tools. When there are multiple huts huddled together however, they seem to form groups of farms, hamlets and even villages. The dwellings are rustic and may include a bench that doubled as beds, alcoves, cupboards and chimneys. The bories that housed livestock were also sometimes equipped with barns, lofts and pigsties The bories that form the museum are believed to have been constructed between the 14^th and 18^th centuries and inhabited till about the mid-19^th century. Even though the nearby town of Gordes was a well-established town at that time, clearly there were people who chose to live a more rural lifestyle.

We visited a number of buildings including the sheep-pen, wine-cistern, goat-pen, oven, barn and silkworm rearing house. Some of the living quarters had been refurnished with typical pottery from the time and it was very evident that it was a simple lifestyle that depended heavily on agriculture. The area surrounding the bories would have been planted with olive and almond trees and the wild lavender, sage and flowers would have been good for raising bees. What we found most striking was the amount of work that would’ve gone into building one of these dwellings seemed to far outweigh the floor space gained. Some of the roofs peaked at probably six to seven meters high and yet the building inside was probably only a few square meters big. The insides of some of the bories were covered in soot and one could imagine that ventilation in these buildings would have been less than ideal. Seeing the communal oven made entirely out of stone was a highlight, too. Some of the buildings had wooden doors on them and I thought that how doors were “hinged" so that they could swing open was very clever. We also got to see some of the rudimentary farming equipment that would have been used at the time and also a few bee hives, which were just simply hollowed out logs. When you looked closely at the stones and how they were stacked to achieve a stable structure, you realized the thousands of hours that must have gone into each construction and how it must have been like a giant puzzle trying to find the proper next stone. This led me to think that Megs could probably be a good builder given her superior jigsaw puzzling skills. We all really enjoyed the museum and after we had sufficiently poked around all the buildings and wandered around the outsides, too, we headed on to our next destination, the village of Menerbes.

Menerbes was a sleepy little village until it was discovered that it was the one Peter Mayle lived in when he wrote his famous book, “A Year in Provence”. We were expecting it to be packed full of tourists like Les Baux had been and surprisingly, it was quite quiet or maybe we just hit it on an off day. It was quite a picturesque village and being built on a hill side, it had some excellent view points over the surrounding countryside. I was quite busy taking photos of the various houses, shutters, doors and lanes as we wandered up and down the steep streets. I can’t quite pinpoint what attracts me to old doors, knockers and colourful shutters but I’m always keeping an eye out for an interesting one. We’ve also found that looking for these little details in every town we visit forces to walk a bit slower and take in the town in a little more detail. One house in particular stood out because it had an amazing arch of jasmine about a meter thick and three to four meters in length. The arch was still a work in progress but it already looked amazing. At one of the viewpoints, we spotted an interesting looking measuring scale. One side was attached to a high wall, and the other to the low wall of the balcony of the viewpoint. We guessed that it was there to measure how much the two walls were separating but since there were no signs around or caution warnings, I figured it was still safe to be standing on the balcony. Menerbes seems to be split into two halves, separated by the main road through town. We walked up one side first and then up the other and when we felt we had sufficiently seen the village, we drove out along a road that should have taken us past a memorial to the resistance that Sheahan was keen on seeing but we never did end up finding it. We continued on the road and we’re pretty sure we spotted the old house that Peter Mayle fixed up, lived in and wrote about in his book. He no longer lives there after someone pieced together where the house in the novel was located and it became a bit of a tourist attraction. Although all three of us really enjoyed his books, we were content to just take a picture as we drove by and not drive up close to the house.

Our final stop of the day was the tiny village of Lacoste and since were driving right through it to get to Gordes, I suggested we stop and walk up to the castle at the top for a view of the town of Bonnieux. It was a charming little village and the walk up to the citadel was along a steep and slippery cobblestone street. Lacoste is infamous because of one its residents, the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814). He lived in this castle for more than 30 years and was the author of dirty novels and is notorious for kidnapping peasants for scandalous purposes. He was eventually arrested and imprisoned for 30 years and it is from him that we have the word sadism. Today, fashion designer Pierre Cardin owns the castle. We were not fortunate enough to get a glimpse of Pierre but we did get a fantastic view over the countryside and of Bonnieux. There was also a very strange looking sculpture that had been donated (I could never guess why anyone would part with it!) to the town. I really can’t describe this work of “art” other than to say it was a pair of outstretched arms, that looked like a sausage as Meghan put it. On the way back down through town, we took the same path but this time stopped to admire the bell tower, which we had a unique perspective on because we were level with it. Many of the bell towers in Provence that we’ve seen are not enclosed and just have a simple, metal frame supporting them and I’m not sure why they were designed in this manner. On our drive back to Gordes, we passed by a house that had an extremely picturesque driveway lined with lavender, olive and cypress trees and we couldn’t resist stopping for a few quick photos. We finally made it back to camp around half past six. The running joke has been that we plan for a short day covering one sight which invariably turns into six to nine hours of touring and multiple sights. Today was definitely just another short day in Provence.