Montelimar to Aspres-sur-Buëch

Montelimar had medieval streets on a grid which was interesting since there had been a town wall. Maybe there was a street around the town wall, with gates to the outside for the bigger ones. A lot of French houses have external shutters which are painted the same colours. Dark red in the north, French blue in the middle and lavender in the south. Montelimar had a lots of houses painted in pastel colours and different coloured shutters: white, blue, brown, green. Sometimes window outlines were painted on to fill in a bare wall.

 The French show great creativity when it comes to decorating country roundabouts. They are mostly rounded in the middle and have: gravel topped with a huge red sculpture, very old olive trees and lavender, pencil pines and box, gravel with man-sized corks.

The Rhone Valley was very hazy, but the windmills were turning fast. We drove through winding gorges and tunnels to get across the mountains from the Rhone valley to the Buëch river valley.

 We are spending one night at an Auberge recommended by Gabriel Gate on SBS during the Tour de France broadcast. We walked up the hill to see the view and went through the camping ground. There was a mega sundial on the ground whereby you could put a stick on the date and the shadow would point to the time more accurately than an ordinary sundial.

The stones around the outside show 24 hour time.