Vauvenargues (week 9)If you walked diagonally across Mont Ste.-Victoire on the GR9 hiking trail, you would come to Vauvenargues in 6.5 hours (as you can see by the signpost). Since we had two young children, we thought it might take longer, and we'd still have to walk back, so we decided to do a vehicular circumnavigation of the montagne instead.
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| Picasso's shack with Mont Ste.-Victoire behind |
The town is very small, but hosts two important sites. For hikers, it is the location of the trail management site, the people in charge of determining when to close the trails (common for high winds and the concomitant chance of rapidly-spreading wildfires), as well as the forest firefighting HQ. For the artistic community, it is the site of the Picasso family home, still owned by the Picassoes and the location of Pablo's burial site. Because it is privately owned, it is closed to visitors and the gate sign reminds you that, "La musée est à Paris. N'insistez pas, merci." I'm not sure why they don't send you to the much closer Picasso Museum in Antibes... Nevertheless, the exterior of the château is impressive, a manor house built on the restored ruins of a medieval castle. Apparently in the winter when the leaves are off the trees, it's possible to see the tomb from the top of the road, but we couldn't see into that part of the garden at this time of year.
As we've lived in the vicinity of Mont Ste.-Victoire, we are becoming more aware of its attraction to artists. Cézanne, Picasso, and others have been fascinated by, as one guide book put it, "the ever-changing light". In other words, depending on the time of day, cloud cover, etc. the mountain does look very different. You might say it has a lot of character! The photographs don't really show the subtleties very well, so I've only posted a couple here. The lowest one demonstrates how the cloud cover can descend to almost the base of the mountain.
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