Avignon
Agence des Sentiers
The Provence Express trail connects together 4 Provençal cities: Avignon, Carpentras, Orange and Cavaillon. It explores the urban plain of Avignon and of the Comtat Venaissin, the "French Garden", that was outside the French Kingdom between the 13th century and 1792. Between the Mont Ventoux and the Rhône river, Fontaine de Vaucluse and Châteauneuf-du-Pape, this trail explores the ordinary landscapes of contemporary Provence.
It was named after the railway system that allowed strawberries that were picked in fields to be in Parisian market stalls the morning after: Provence Express.
Genesis
The reopening in 2015 of the Avignon-Carpentras local railway (closed in 1939) was the occasion for the creation of the Provence Express trail, which explores a sprawled metropolitan area that corresponds to the historic territory of the Comtat Venaissin.
This area, marked by agricultural activity (thanks to the irrigation system of the Sorgues and the Durance rivers, and to the "Provence Express" rail system for shipping early produce) has become a national emblem of the peri-urban.