It\u2019s not all romance of course. Be warned, you\u2019ll almost certainly get stuck behind a slow-moving tractor. You will pass through dreary industrial estates and go around an endless succession of roundabouts. But even at its most prosaic, there is joy to be had in quietly plodding along a narrow road rather than hurtling at 130km\/h on a three-lane highway.<\/p>\n
Completists may want to start the journey in Paris, but we elected to do only the southern half, beginning in Lyon and ending near Nice. Lyon is an underrated city with a mixed reputation, but we found it relaxed and charming in most parts and a real treat for food lovers \u2013 the city is home to legendary restaurants such as La M\u00e8re Brazier and Paul Bocuse. We stayed at Villa Ma\u00efa, a luxurious hotel on the hilltop above Lyon\u2019s old town with stunning views of the city and its two great rivers, the Rh\u00f4ne and Sa\u00f4ne. One night is enough to see the sights, so the next morning we picked up our rental car (there is a large rental centre at the train station) and hit the road.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not always easy to follow the old route as it\u2019s no longer called the \u201cRN7\u201d \u2013 but my best advice is to break the drive into small chunks and set your satnav to \u201cavoid motorways\u201d and \u201cavoid tolls\u201d. Don\u2019t worry too much if you stray a bit here and there; following the RN7 is less about precision and more about intention.<\/p>\n
Pantoufle in Valence. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
The stretch leaving Lyon is in fact one of the easier parts to follow \u2013 it\u2019s marked as the \u201cN7\u201d and you are guided by a succession of famous towns: Vienne, Valence, Orange, Avignon. Once free of Lyon\u2019s sprawl, we ignored signs for the Autoroute with great satisfaction and settled into a slow pace along the single lane N7, passing small villages, flat open farmland and roadside restaurants, which admittedly looked as though they\u2019d seen better days. Still, all part of the charm.<\/p>\n
Our first stop was Valence for lunch at the three Michelin-starred Restaurant Pic, which has been in the same family for over a century and is now run by Anne-Sophie Pic, the only female chef in France to have the three-star accolade. It\u2019s a restaurant synonymous with the RN7, having been moved from its original location in the 1950s by Anne-Sophie\u2019s grandfather Andre, precisely to take advantage of the traffic making its way past the restaurant. After arriving nearly half an hour late (it was an early lesson in just how slow the slow road can be), the slight stress of the journey melted away amongst exquisitely crafted dishes such as Provencal tomato with lavender and lamb with bergamot mint.<\/p>\n
South of Valence, the N7 really begins to shine as the landscape opens out on both sides of the road, filled with green meadows and forests in the distance. We took a small detour to the hilltop village of Marsanne and spent the night at the cute boutique hotel Pantoufle, located in the heart of the village. In the late afternoon, we wandered the narrow medieval streets up to St F\u00e9lix church, then followed a shaded walking path overlooking the valley below.<\/p>\n
Vintage posters in small French towns. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
The next morning, we cut back to the N7 and stopped briefly in Mont\u00e9limar, famous for being the home of nougat. Although shops selling nougat were conspicuously absent, the town was fully alive with a Saturday morning market, and we stocked up on fresh local strawberries, tomatoes and peaches before driving on to Orange. One of the route\u2019s essential stops, the road sweeps right past the Roman Arc de Triomphe before leading into the heart of town, dominated by the ruins of its ancient amphitheatre, one of the best preserved in Europe and well worth a visit.<\/p>\n
Pick up fresh produce from French markets in small towns. Photo \/ Unsplash<\/p>\n
Heading south, you enter the heart of the Rh\u00f4ne Valley, where vineyards dominate the landscape. Feeling the vines\u2019 siren call, we stopped for a wine tasting and tour at Le Prieur\u00e9 des Papes and wandered through the vineyards in the late afternoon sun before spending the night at La M\u00e8re Germaine, a legendary hotel and restaurant in the Rh\u00f4ne\u2019s most iconic wine village, Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Opened in 1922, La M\u00e8re Germaine was once a must-stop for travellers heading south along the RN7. A century later, it\u2019s been restored by the owner of Le Prieur\u00e9 des Papes and has reclaimed its former glory, complete with a Michelin star.<\/p>\n
Vintage bottles of wine from Ch\u00e2teauneuf-du-Pape. Photo \/ 123RF<\/p>\n
Leaving the Rh\u00f4ne, the road curves southeastward away from Avignon, as it trundles through the heart of Provence. Aix-en-Provence is the region\u2019s biggest city and well worth a stop for lunch and a visit to the old studio of C\u00e9zanne, the city\u2019s most famous son. From here, the road (now labelled as the DN7) heads east through a series of small towns that were once at the heart of the route \u2013 Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume; Brignoles; and Les Arcs \u2013 many of which still display the famous old red and white RN7 road markers. We stayed the night in the pretty medieval village of Les Arcs and feasted on treats like p\u00e2t\u00e9 en cro\u00fbte and rillettes from the counter of the local butcher.<\/p>\n
Exploring the vineyards in Ch\u00e2teauneuf-du-Pape. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
From Les Arcs, the flat open expanses of lush vineyards are gradually replaced by pine trees and craggy mountains as the road winds along precarious cliff edges (not for the faint-hearted) to the sun-kissed promised land of the C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur. Any one of its beach towns could be your final destination, from glitzy Cannes to the laid-back town of Th\u00e9oule-sur-Mer. We headed a little further along the coast to Cap d\u2019Antibes and spent our final night at the newly opened Villa Mira\u00e9, a luxurious yet low-key hotel just a minute\u2019s walk from the beach. We walked the rocky path around the coastline and swam in the clear blue Mediterranean, before sitting down to dinner at the hotel\u2019s restaurant, Amarines, run by superstar chef Mauro Colagreco.<\/p>\n
Sun-kissed Cannes is a great spot to stop. Photo \/ Unsplash<\/p>\n
Over prawn carpaccio and a glass of Provence ros\u00e9 there was time to reflect on whether our six-day journey along the RN7 had really been worth it \u2013 ultimately, the autoroute would have taken us from Lyon to Cap d\u2019Antibes in five hours, but we would have missed out on so much along the way. On Route Nationale 7, the journey really is the destination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s not all romance of course. Be warned, you\u2019ll almost certainly get stuck behind a slow-moving tractor. You…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93713,96690,97030,156,1221,228,17467,97029,97028,111,139,2388,69,25057,97031,1314,63502,23851,199,223,210,61,1315,58922,9192],"class_list":["post-143844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-charm","tag-cte","tag-dazur","tag-entertainment","tag-france","tag-guide","tag-joel","tag-lyon","tag-nationale","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nostalgia","tag-nz","tag-porter","tag-provence","tag-road","tag-route","tag-slow","tag-take","tag-the","tag-through","tag-to","tag-trip","tag-via","tag-writes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}