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Day 7 - The next leg of our journey was to the main area for lavender. Hopefully we would see some fields that had not yet been cut. The first stop of Simian le Rotund was a dud. We were told there are fields of lavender around the village; nothing, not even the plants. We decided to head on and try and find a good field but not much luck so turned around and headed for Sault. As we climbed higher (1000 metres eventually) we got lucky with a good field of lavender.
Sault, when we arrived was mad busy with traffic. We had not realised it was market day and arrived towards the end of the market time whilst there was still traffic heavy on the roads. We parked up and looked around but many of the stalls were those we had seen already at other markets.
We decided to head back to the Gite and see the a historic moulin (windmill) on the way but were directed off on to a different road due to roadworks. So we didn't get to see it in the end.
We were nearly back to the Gite when we saw a good field of lavender not five minutes from the Where we are staying. C'est typique. I'll have to pop back to get a picture.
Once we had seen to the dogs needs we headed back out into the heat (not feeling too guilty about leaving the dogs again in the nice cool Gite) and made our way down to the Moulins de Bouillon museum to see the ancient Gallo-Roman olive press. As the only visitors we had the guide to ourselves and learnt about how olives were pressed to extract the oil; cold press = extra Virgin oil, and then they add hot water to do further presses in which you get the lesser quality olive oils.
The ancient press is really impressive being 10 metres in length and made from one whole tree trunk. We came away knowing much more about the history of olive oil and how the oil was extracted in the same way for hundreds of years right up to the 1920's. Well worth the visit.
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