A day of rambling

I find it funny whenever I start liking something I hated when I was younger, something I moaned about and had have my mother be the compromise-maker between me and my dad. Like getting up early to take photos and going on walks. Which I now find myself doing every morning. Yikes, I am getting old and turning into my parents!!!! At least I have good ones, I don’t supposed I’ll mind so much if I turn out like them : ) (Love you, Mom and Dad!)

Trail blaze - this one was well marked, thankfully!

Alan didn’t have class till the afternoon, so I bullied him into going on a short hike with me, leaving from Bonniuex and heading up the hill behind it. It wasn’t a loop trail, so we would have about 1 ½ hours to walk in before turning around. My goal was to get high enough to have a good view, but we never really got to a point where you could see out because the trail went through an oak forest most of the time. As we really began to climb the hill and get into the forest we suddenly started seeing these odd rock piles. Alan said that they couldn’t be natural, and then I realized that they were bories ruins, which made me very excited. Alan, having not read the guidebooks, had no idea what I was talking about.

Bories ruins

Bories are little stone huts that dot the slopes of the Luberon (the region we are in) and the Vaucluse plateau (just to the north of us). There are about 3,000 total, and they can be alone or in small groups. We must have walked by at least 30 ruins on our trail. They have been around since the Iron Age, used by shepherds or perhaps by whole villages in times or trouble. Their origin and use still remains a bit unknown. They range from 10-13ft tall at their peak, with a small door facing east or southeast. The walls are very thick, which makes the inside temperature cool in summer and warm in winter.

One still standing (mostly)

I love things that historians haven’t figured out almost more than all the things they have. It’s it neat to just stand by this pile of rocks and think about someone soooo long ago standing right there. I wonder what this area looked like then. Did they like it here, or was that other guy’s hut in a waaaay better place? : )

We returned to Lacoste, Alan to class and me to our studio. But it was just not a sitting still kind of day, so the afternoon found me wandering around our town taking photos. You can check them out by clicking here if you want.

Our street sign