A quiet morning walking around Aix-en-Provence revealed a beautiful city, a lot less “busy” than Avignon and somewhat less touristy.

Those are qualities that are hard to be really accurate about, but the impression is of a place full of young people – the student population is clearly significant.

Julie visited the cathedral, including a guided tour of its historic cloisters built on the site of a Roman forum and incorporating the pillars found during excavations. The guide spoke English but rather mangled some of her explanations of the many biblical carvings due to her strong accent! Meanwhile Phil explored the several street markets, which included flowers, food and crafts.

Our afternoon was spent riding a couple of hired e-mountain bikes. We had a rough plan to ascend the local mountain, Sainte Victoire, which stand 1,000 metres above sea level but this proved to be further away than expected and the “gravel” trails were also somewhat more challenging than expected.

We used Komoot to plan our route and did several “re-routes” along the way as we revised our plans.

Not only were the trails more technical than expected – very loose, with lots of larger stones and big drifts of fine gravel and dust – they were also closed in places, due to the fire risks.

Nonetheless, we had an excellent ride. It was hot for most of it, but the e-assist kept our effort levels low and we ended up covering a varied 23 miles of roads, tracks and trails.

Late in the ride we realised that the bikes’ tyres had been over inflated and after a major reduction in pressures all round, we found them much more stable and planted.

We suspect the otherwise charming hire shop owner subscribes to a roadie tyre-pressure regime on all his bikes.

For Phil, this was his first longer ride on an e-bike and, predictably, he found it an eye-opener.

Back in Aix we relaxed with well-earned beers before a meal of local sausage and pasta.