St-Maximin-la-Ste-Baume

That’s not easy to say or write! We’ve travelled to this town today, via Lidl. Our plan is to do a ridge walk tomorrow, before heading to Aix-en-Provence.

We’ve just joined France Passion. This is a network of producers (for example of wine, olive oil, cheese, and honey) who welcome campervans and provide free overnight parking on their land. Our first visit is to the wine producers Domaine St Jean Le Vieux. There’s no obligation to buy anything, but it would have felt rude not to have purchased a few bottles of wine 😜 We now have 2 reds, 1 rosé and a white in our secret wine drawer. 😋

After lunch, we walked into St Maximin, which our guidebook listed as a ‘must see’. Unfortunately, it was a bit disappointing. Two pages of the book were devoted to the Basilica Ste-Marie-Madeleine and an attached Royal Monastery, neither of which we could fully enjoy.

Although the basilica is huge and impressive and ‘Provence’s finest example of Gothic architecture’, the best bits are currently under renovation and hidden from view. We did enter a crypt where the skull of St Mary Magdalene is on display in some sort of ornate gold casing That seemed a bit macabre to us.

The monastery was also closed because of flooding (I assume not rain as there hasn’t been any for weeks!). Instead of being able to wander through the cloisters, we could just peep at an overgrown garden through a glass door.

Never mind… the town has a medieval quarter, and I always enjoy meandering through narrow cobbled streets. Sadly, these were a bit disappointing too. Some of the buildings are derelict and there’s a lot of graffiti. Although the run down buildings have faded charm, I felt awkward taking photographs because people were living in them. There was lots of building work going on so, hopefully, the town, basilica and monastery will be restored to their former glory soon 🤞