Truffle Hunting in the Lubéron

North of Aix-en-Provence rises the long, blue mass of the Lubéron mountain. Some historians believe that the name comes from the Provencal word for rabbit, supposedly referring to the mountain’s shape. It would need a good stretch of the imagination to see any resemblance, but the Lubéron people have certainly roasted a lot of ‘lapin’ in their time, so perhaps the name is not unjustified.

The Lubéron foothills. The Petit Lubéron are topped with a series of stone villages, originally built to offer refuge from Saracen marauders in the ninth century. They continued to provide protection from later marauders throughout the Middle Ages and well into the nineteenth century, when marauding became, if not less fashionable, at least less violent. Many of the villages were the abandoned to become the ruins that today suggest etchings from a Sir Walter Scott romance. Their former occupants moved to the fertile fruit-and vegetable-rich valleys below to create what is now the great market garden of France. More recent marauders in Provence-artists, writers and musicians who can afford to ignore agricultural inconvenience for the sake of a view - have begun to restore the old villages to a semblance of their past glory.