Bargème

Today I was able to pull off the road safely and take my own photo of this “beautiful village”.

It looks like it could be added to the 9 “perched villages” we’ve explored in our time here, but for some reason it’s not included.

It was a very, very interesting drive indeed.

Mainly because we travelled a road that cuts through the largest military base in Europe.

It occupies 350 square kilometres and is set on the site where Julius Caesar prepared for the invasion of Gaul. I doubt whether Caesar used that much land back then though.

The base is know as Camp Canjeurs and it has absorbed loads of farming land and even small villages since its establishment in 1970.

I was able to pull over and get this photo of one such village.

Those buildings are all empty / derelict and are reportedly used in training exercises.

Actually, the road was one of the best we’ve driven on – I guess having the Military needing to use it for its training and to base more than 2500 soldiers are good reasons though.

Anyway, back to Bargème.

Perhaps I misled you about the population. One source stated 141 and another 181. Both sources were pretty old so I rounded up to 200 in my last post.

I now seriously doubt that.

We saw three locals while we were there, and six tourists. There really couldn’t be more than about 40 people live there.

It was very small. But cute!

And steep.

Bargème is the highest village in the Var Department of Provence. There were lots of steps to get us to the ruins of Le Château de Bargème.

I thought this next image of the ruins, from a different angle, interesting because of the modern trails in the sky set above the remains of the 13th century castle.

This is the village’s Mairie and its town hall. No one in sight when we were there though.

To get to this you walked through a narrow archway …

Mick has been saying for some time that he wants to live in France. Well, we may have found just the spot as this Maison de Maître (mansion) in Bargème is for sale.

Click on the link to check it out. It boasts 7 hotel rooms.

At only €770,000 ($AUD1.24M) it is a steal!! I guess.

One of the three locals we saw was running a very quirky shop where Mick made her day by buying a craft beer for €5.

I had high hopes for it as it cost more than most of the bottles of red wine we buy.

Sadly we were too early for a coffee at one of the two restaurants we spotted so we had a bit more of a look and headed off towards the closest bigger village.