Quinson is 2 hours away via gorges du verdon; 500,000 years of local history to examine.
The town square outside is empty at 9.15 and has seen few passers while I've watched, but some impressive construction machinery. They're still building new houses in Le Fugeret. They need to; I'll show you some photos.
Rain overnight; the bike is wet, but sunny now. Away at 9.30. Good riding again straight away, lots of swervery along D932 between x and y and great geology too. The Gorge of Verdon is spectacular, and the little JVC seems to be doing a good job, though it won't run off bike power. It will run, or it will charge, but not at the same time.
The Quinson Musee de Prehistoire is all that I expected, though one disappointment immediately; my visit was fortunately timed to coincide with a large exhibition about Otzi, the frozen neolithic man discovered in the Alps north of Bolzano - but they weren't ready - "next Monday, perhaps" is too late for me, and their only Otzi video is in French.
The museum captions are again only in the local language, but they have an English audio commentary to accompany the 20 or so short videos placed through the exhibits. And photography is allowed, so I photograph the explanations for later, and learn the difference between Paleoloithic and Neolithic. The Neolithic Revolution, they call it. How ignorant I am.
Looking back through all that's happened in the last 400,000 years it strikes me that most of it has happened in the last 5000, and that the Romans were as close in time to the discovery of metal as we are to the Romans. Why do we have that huge technological gap between 100 AD and 1500 AD? And how far we've come in the last 150 years! And I wonder how the biblical literalists, and the Pope's cadre, feel about places like Quinson that display the evidence for the human story.
After a 3-hour indulgence, I buy some videos with an English track to send home. And I'm pleased to see that they have all the Clan of the Cave Bear/Earth's Children books in French.
Back on the road, 60 km to Rians, and more lovely riding to end the day. France seems to be depopulated, though the drivers left are quite polite.
I'm using the iPad GPS all the time now - it doesn't DING me repeatedly when I go too fast as the Garmin does. It just announces politely "The speed limit is 90 kilometres per hour".
Rians is another ancient village with tiny streets and some crumbling buildings, but my Gite de 4 Chemins is great. 3rd level, only person here, excellent modern appointments, but no wifi.
Veronique pushed lovely colour mags of the local area on me, and they are enticing. Had a wander around the village and enjoyed a boulangerie; I think they enjoyed my visit too. A coffee and eclair, a tub of gorgeous pate for later, a lemon tart, some pain for the pate, and a cold beer to drink sitting outside in the sun. Then some more wandering to finish the day.
Location:Rians, Provence, France
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