THE HILLTOP VILLAGES OF THE LUBERON

At the heart of any Provençal week is a slow circuit of the Luberon villages, a half-dozen of which sit close enough together to be linked by a morning’s drive and an afternoon’s wander. Gordes is the most photographed: a tall, tiered village of pale limestone houses that seem to grow directly out of the cliff beneath them, with art galleries, small boutiques and one of the most spectacular approach views in southern France. A few kilometres east, Roussillon is something else entirely, a village built from the red, yellow and orange ochre of the cliffs it stands on, and a marked path through the old ochre quarries lets you walk among the colours themselves.

A little further south, three villages sit in a near-perfect line along the Luberon’s north flank. Ménerbes, classed among Les Plus Beaux Villages de France, and the village that Peter Mayle made famous in A Year in Provence in 1989, is the most discreet of the three, a long, narrow ridge of honey-coloured houses with views in every direction. Bonnieux tumbles down a steep hillside in tiers, crowned by a 12th-century church reached by a long flight of stone steps and rewarding the climb with one of the great Luberon panoramas. And Lacoste, perched on the opposite slope and overlooked by the ruined château of the Marquis de Sade, has a slightly quieter atmosphere, and feels, by night, almost frozen in time.

Further afield, Lourmarin on the southern flank of the massif is the most sociable of the Luberon villages, a leafy, café-lined place with a Renaissance château, a Friday market that draws half the region, and, in summer, an organic evening market that runs until well after sunset. Albert Camus is buried in its small cemetery, and the village still wears its literary associations well.

THE GORGES DU VERDON AND THE WILDER COUNTRY

East of the Luberon, the landscape changes character. The Verdon river has spent millions of years cutting through the limestone of Haute-Provence to carve out the Gorges du Verdon, a canyon some 25 kilometres long, with cliffs rising as high as 700 metres above an extraordinarily green river. It is the deepest canyon in France and one of the largest in Europe, and the famous Route des Crêtes that traces its rim is among the most dramatic drives in the country. The water itself is a mineral turquoise; the lower reaches widen into the long, calm lake of Sainte-Croix, where you can hire a small electric boat and paddle into the mouth of the gorge for an afternoon.

South and west, the country flattens into the Camargue, a vast delta of salt flats, lagoons and reed-beds where white horses run half-wild, black bulls graze and pink flamingos gather in their thousands. It is a different Provence entirely, and a day spent here, riding a Camargue horse along a beach, or watching the birds at the Parc Ornithologique du Pont de Gau, makes a memorable counterpoint to a week in the hills. Closer to home, the bone-white ridges of Les Alpilles run east from Saint-Rémy-de-Provence past the dramatic rocky outcrop of Les Baux-de-Provence, and offer some of the loveliest walking in the region.

PROVENCE’S CULINARY HEART

Olive oil, tomato, garlic, basil, thyme, rosemary, the small black olives of Nyons, the green ones of Lucques, the anchovy from the coast are the backbone to Provençal cooking. Its great dishes are simple ones. Ratatouille, the slow-cooked stew of aubergine, courgette, pepper, onion and tomato; tapenade, a salty paste of black olives, capers, anchovy and olive oil spread on toast with the aperitif; daube provençale, the great winter dish of beef marinated overnight in red wine and slow-braised the next day with orange peel and herbs; and on the coast, bouillabaisse, the Marseillaise fisherman’s stew of rascasse, conger and red mullet, served in two courses, the broth first, the fish second, both with rouille and toasted bread.

The wines, by long tradition, are mostly drunk young and cold. Côtes de Provence is the region’s largest appellation and produces the pale, dry rosé, its colour now exported around the world, that has become almost synonymous with summer. South of Toulon, the small and serious appellation of Bandol makes a deeper, more structured style: rosés with real weight, and reds based on the Mourvèdre grape that are among the longest-lived in France. A Bandol rouge with a daube, a chilled glass of Côtes de Provence with a plate of tapenade on a hot afternoon, these are small Provençal rituals worth seeking out.