Eight weeks before our visit in mid-October, the lavender farm my sister Gemma and I were bounding through would have been awash with waves of hazy violet. The perfectly planted rows would also have been a zoo of hundreds of other tourists wielding selfie sticks, in search of the best angle for TikTok.
Post-harvest and beyond peak season in the Ardèche, we were alone as we contemplated the views at Maison de la Lavande in Saint-Remèze. Lavender wafts emanated from the broomy mauve-tinted bushes as early autumn’s morning sun made long shadows of our outlines.
“You don’t wish we’d come in July when it was more colourful?” I asked. “No,” Gemma replied. “The light is beautiful now. And besides, it means I don’t feel guilty about spending time in the shop.”
Three lavender hand creams and a queue-free cappuccino at the café later, we rejoined our small group — the only tour there — from Riviera Travel’s ship, the 140-passenger MS William Shakespeare, moored that morning at the town of Viviers, a 40-minute drive away.
It was day three of a seven-night sailing, travelling north from Avignon to Lyons, along the Rhône and the Saône. When we booked the trip it felt like a gamble, given October’s sometimes rainy weather. We won that toss — temperatures mostly hovered around a light-jacket-only 20C.
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The holiday was also a gamble for us: the first we’d had together without parents or partners, as adults. There’s a three-year age gap between Gemma and me, but we are very different. She loves painting and Renaissance art, whereas I can’t muster a stick man. I play the cello, but she’s more Nicki Minaj than Mozart. I won’t bore you with our conflicting attitudes to contemporary dance.
This cruise offered a neat Venn diagram of our interests — art, music and the Romans — with wine and decent grub in the overlap.
Stops such as Avignon, where burnished leaves on the ground hinted at autumn, educated us on the 14th-century papacy with a spin around the Palais des Papes. There were also lots of big-hitting sights that were on both our wish lists, including a trip to the three-storey Pont du Gard aqueduct. Gemma and I spent far longer than necessary trying to photograph the Roman site at the same angle as it appears on the five-euro note. Meanwhile, brave French families were going the whole hog and swimming in the River Gardon, so we gingerly splashed our toes in the water, reminding us of holidays as kids in Weymouth.
Once the warm October sun was firmly over the water siphon, we stopped at Les Terrasses, a shady café with views back over the aqueduct. Mid-afternoon wines quickly became as much of a routine as rolling back the decades with gentle silliness.
The organised excursions — seven in total — were included, but there are no options; everyone does the same. “There’s no pressure to join every tour,” our cruise director, Daniel Tarr, explained. Many passengers skipped several, staying on board for afternoon sunbathing and bridge. Groups, usually of no more than 20, rotated so you were rarely with the same faces, and the personal audio guides meant you could slope off on your own if you wanted to.
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To my surprise, though, we didn’t want to. Gemma and I went on every tour and it was the expertise of guides such as Sian Bell — a wry but warm Brit who has lived for nearly a decade in Arles — who made this trip. “Here are two French people enjoying a typical petit dejeuner,” she quipped, as two Arlesians huffed Gitanes and espressos on the Rue de la Cavalerie near the start of our 90-minute walking tour.
We wandered leisurely around Arles’ Roman amphitheatre, which still hosts bullfights and theatre performances. Gemma was keen to see a few places on the Van Gogh trail — Arles was where he painted The Starry Night and Café Terrace at Night — and the locations were included in Bell’s route. There was more than enough free time to explore Arles’ higgledy-piggledy backstreets, with all the charmingly flaky-but-colourful shutters you could wish for, before heading back to the ship for afternoon tea. Bell had tipped us off about a local small-batch ginmaker, Bigourdan, where we were welcomed for an impromptu tasting. Their sharp, citrussy blend is one aperitif that stands up post-holiday (bigourdan.com).
While I love the Rhône’s red wines, I find that vineyard tours get a bit samey, so was pleased there was just one brief visit to see the vines at Puligny-Montrachet. We then headed to the town of Beaune for a tasting in the vaults of the 17th-century Cellier de la Cabiote. I don’t often drink whites, but even I was converted by a 2021 Chablis Domaine Saumaize. Inevitably Gemma and I followed this with a few more glasses of beaune while sitting outside in the town’s Le Parisien café in the glow of a low-slung autumnal sun.
Life on the MS William Shakespeare was comfortable without being flashy. Our standard starboard-side cabin, No 212 on the upper Hamlet deck, was undeniably dinky and the colour palette of brown and red soft furnishings left me questioning if we’d survive the week without a Shakespearean-style incident of sororicide. However, once we’d stashed our frocks and smellies in the ample storage space and tucked our suitcases under the bed, it was surprisingly clutter-free, if not cat-swingable.
Crucially, with a bedbug outbreak hitting the headlines at the time of our trip, it was ruthlessly clean. Our cabin was our favoured relaxation spot during afternoon sailings, with the floor-to-ceiling patio-style doors flung open as the riverbank unfurled, fairytale châteaux slunk past and the fern-coloured Rhône sploshed against the ship’s side.
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If you’re after swanky West End dance shows, chic design and room service, this is not for you. Facilities on board were limited to a gym (read: a treadmill in a cupboard), a massage room, a lounge and a bar. Every floor was covered in carpet that could have been seconded from the set of Crossroads. But the ship also felt instantly homely, just with two-for-one martinis available from 6pm to 7pm.
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I’m 42 and Gemma is 39, so we, along with a smattering of other guests in their forties, were lowering the average age: many passengers were in their seventies. Everyone was British, apart from a few Canadians and Americans.
“People travel with Riviera because they want to experience the culture of places en route and spend time together. They don’t come for the sequinned evening entertainment,” Tarr said. He wasn’t wrong. At Tournon we skipped a ballroom dancing display and went for a brisk evening walk ashore. On other nights a classical pianist and vocalist whipped through everything from Chopin to Édith Piaf after dinner. Most evenings we were in bed for 10pm.
Passengers also come for Riviera’s affordable prices, with 50 per cent of people on board returning guests. We saw ships with bigger cabins and fancier facilities moored next to us — on a few occasions we had to walk through another boat to get to the quay — but nobody was making comparisons, apart from to smugly point out our Rhône cruise was costing at least £1,000pp less.
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While not every meal was a showstopper, food in the dining room was beautifully presented. There was a terrific chicken curry with homemade mango chutney for lunch one day; smoked salmon was my daily treat at breakfast; and there were nods to French classics including beef bourguignon and confit de canard in the evenings. I admired that in an effort to reduce waste, portions were modest — if you wanted more, you could simply ask.
Some things didn’t quite hit the mark. The house red wine was undrinkable; I just splashed out on the more palatable Domaine Clavel (£33 a bottle). And we had to arrive at 7.30pm on the dot if we wanted a dinner table for two to ourselves — any later and you’d have to pair up with other couples. But these were very much first-world problems.
At Lyons, our final stop, October was setting in. This was the only point I needed my “big coat” and a robust brolly. We joined that morning’s tour to the hilltop Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourvière, followed by a guided walk through the old town with another excellent guide. I’d never have found so many of the city’s traboules — narrow shortcuts between the warren of medieval streets — without Anne Viornery’s expertise.
We were hankering for a bistro lunch before our flight home, so we stopped at Brasserie Georges by the railway station. The restaurant dates from 1836 and is known for its queues, but this being off-season we were seated with a glass of gigondas in our hands five minutes after arriving (mains from £16; brasseriegeorges.com).
A week stuffing ourselves on the ship meant there was absolutely no need to order starters. That didn’t stop us. On we ploughed through the French onion soup (which was bigger than my head), with its inch-thick cheesy croutons topped with a brandy liquor. We followed that with giant rump steak and chips. Heck, it was good. We might not ever see eye-to-eye about the merits of Nicki Minaj, but easygoing off-peak France is something we can both agree on.
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Laura Jackson was a guest of Riviera Travel, which has seven nights’ full board from £2,149pp on a Burgundy, the River Rhône and Provence river cruise including flights, drinks package and excursions (rivieratravel.co.uk)
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