No hiking today because of fire hazard — this was supposed to be the 6.2 mile (10km) loop south along the Van Gogh trail and Saint Paul de Mausole, into the Alpilles east of the main road to the the Rocher des Deux Trous (the rock with two holes), and back north to finish.

So we went to Saint Paul de Mausole and Glanum, and after a break, the Museum of the Alpilles.

We walked back down the Van Gogh Trail to Saint Paul de Mausole, a former Romanesque monastery that was converted into a psychiatric home in the 19th century. Van Gogh completed 150 drawings and paintings in the (almost) year he was here. The walking path from the entrance to the building is lined with flowers and shrubs, and features nice reproductions of his works on the stone walls. We visited a re-creation of his room and then walked through the gardens of lavender and poppies, a view he could see and painted from his barred window.

We then walked a short way down the road to the ruins of Glanum – an enormous site occupied across many centuries, starting with Celtic tribes, then Greek influence, and finally Roman. We walked up to an overlook and took in Glanum and St. Rémy in the background on the left. Across the road is Les Antiques, a mausoleum from 30 BCE and France’s oldest triumphal arch, built around 20 CE.

After a break back at our room, we went to the Alpilles Museum — an Ethnographic and Natural History museum of Provence.

And of course another excellent dinner, this one at La Cuisine des Anges.