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You need a map to find your way around Arles market. Easily the largest of all we’ve visited this week, the array of goods and produce on offer is truly gobsmacking. Fruit and vegetable stalls butt up to sellers offering paintings, clothes, and records. There are also the traditional tourist tat pedlars, and most shockingly of all, livestock which is still, well live. For eating or to raise, we weren’t sure, but I don’t think the chickens and rabbits would be going home with buyers to enjoy a good life.

The Saturday market in the city is undisputedly a big draw, but what other attractions does the former Roman Emporer military headquarter offer? Like Nimes, there’s an arena (below), and though not as imposing as the one a few miles away, it’s still impressive. And like it’s counterpart it’s still used today, for both modern music concerts, but also for the more traditional sport of bull fighting.

There’s also the open air Roman Theatre (or what’s left of it), and the major square, Place de la République. Just off this large communal hub in the centre of the city, is the place where Van Gogh painted his infamous Café Terrace at Night in 1888. Indeed, it was from here that the painter was sent to asylum in nearby St-Rémy, the base for our visit.

Now a shadow of its former self, the once thriving Rhône port and important Gaul centre looks tired, and appears much less clean and cosmopolitan than Nimes. It’s still worth a visit, though, if only for market day, and to see its once grand Roman treasures.

Once again, today has been almost unbearably hot, but we carried on with our sightseeing plans, jumping in the car for another time, and driving to the very picturesque village of Les Baux-de-Provence (below).

Like Oppède-le-Vieux, Les Baux is perched on a rocky crag, but even more spectacularly so. Seen from a few miles away, it’s almost impossible to see where the houses start, and where they meld into the rock. Look hard enough, though, and the clues are there. The flag flying from the old castle is a dead giveaway, and the tourists’ cars parked at the bottom of the hill mark where the village ends.

No visitors’ cars are allowed into the centre, but languishing under a rocky enclave was a thirty-five-year old Renault 5 (above) in near pristine condition, representative of so many 1970s vehicles here. The dry and hot summer climate does a particularly good job of preserving almost countless Citroen 2CVs and Renault 4s.

Tourists flock to Les Baux and you can see why. A pretty hilltop village with ruins, cobbled squares, and spectacular views across the Provençal landscape, it has everything. Those tourists can be a problem, though, with their sheer numbers. But not today; a healthy headcount of outsiders gave space to walk around, wander in and out of the boutique shops, and generally soak up the atmosphere of the place.

And the laid back atmosphere of the whole region is something we’ll miss when we get home. We leave tomorrow lunchtime on the TGV bound for Paris, changing at the French capital for the Eurostar back to London, where we have a date with Adobe and Madonna’s Sticky & Sweet tour. Sticky’s definitely one thing it has been this week in the heat, but next time, I’ll know what to expect. Yes, there’ll be a next time; I’m looking forward to coming back.

The Luberon region today, and the villages that dot the valley floor and the hillsides of the beautiful area made famous by Peter Mayle’s book A Year in Provence. The tiny commune of Oppède-le-Vieux dates from the 12th century, and is nestled, as so many places in Provence are, on a rocky hillside.

Narrow streets, sometimes made of now shabby cobbles and even narrower alleys twist and wind their way to the top of the settlement, where a solitary church sits among the cypress trees, slowly disintegrating in the sun, against all the wishes of the locals to save it.

We made it to the top of the summit (worth the climb for the view), but, as it has all week, the unrelenting heat made us hot doing it. Though the promise of liquid refreshment was more than tantalising, we jumped back into the car for the short drive to the truly picturesque and traditional Provençal settlement of Ménerbes.

This is the place that has really become known through Mayles’s series of books, telling the story of a British expatriate who settled in Ménerbes. And while it might have the upper hand when it comes to photo opportunities, sandwiches were altogether rarer. After exploring the commune behind the outer walls, we drove to neighbouring Lacoste, where we found a bar offering just what we wanted.

Rested and refreshed, we started to wend our way home, stopping at L’Iles-sur-la-Sorgue on the way home. Another pretty Provence town with the river Sorgue cutting through it, it was recently reported that Kylie may be looking into buying a place there, joining the likes of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis in having a south of France countryside bolthole.

And ours is where we returned to after another hot and sticky day. Jumping into the pool to cool off, and laying on sun loungers to dry, we felt a little like minor celebrities ourselves, if only for a couple of hours.

Another day, another city steeped in Roman history. Built on a 118 BC roman road that connected Italy and Spain, Nîmes’ ancient artefacts give the place its character. The Maison Carrée (above) dominates the square in the centre of the city, its centuries old design contrasting starkly with the 1993 Norman Foster library and arts centre opposite.

One of the best preserved Roman temples anywhere, it’s currently undergoing a clean, but the golden stone is almost too clean, the light finish making the building appear much newer than its 19 BC construction date. Thankfully, the Roman Arena (below) has been left largely alone, and although it has no doubt had some tinkering over the years, its majesty is still intact.

The town is made up of boulevards and avenues separated by canals, made to channel the dye and effluent away from when the town made denim, and the tree-lined provided welcome shade when we weren’t indoors browsing the purpose-built market in Les Halles, under a shade of umbrella enjoying a demi (25cl) beer, or strolling around the Les Jardins de la Fontaine, the first civic gardens of France, laid out in 1738 to 1755.

Geoff goes to Nîmes dancing when he’s in France, and was looking into the possibility of living there, and I can certainly see the attraction. He knows a lot of friends who live there, it has a nice cosmopolitan and south of France feel, is nicely bustling, with cafés and posh shops lining its inward-looking streets.

On leaving Nîmes, we were going to head straight to the impressive Pont du Gard, 20km north east of the city, but as clouds were coming in and the air was getting humid, we decided to see if it would break. It didn’t, so we called in at Uzes that was on the way, parking at the cathedral with its Fenestrelle (windowed) Tower. Milling around the narrow alleys and settling in the square for a few pictures, it wasn’t long before the thunder and lightning were upon us.

A sudden downpour, it didn’t last long, and we were soon on our way to the Roman aqueduct. I’d seen it before in pictures (and in Nik’s mini-world picture on the front room wall), but nothing prepares you for how impressive the stone aqueduct is. Built on three levels, Pont du Gard is 49m high, and the longest level spans 275m, crossing the river Gard.

Made up of 52 arches in three tiers, its size is immense, though its presence is both eerie, but calming. To get a good picture, you have to walk a fair distance away to fit it all in. So, that’s what we did, avoiding the puddles, strolling away from the crowds, finding our own piece of calm, with the view of the bridge at its centre.

You forget that until a few years ago, you could walk across the top unguided, and that until a few years ago the main part was a working road bridge. That’s now in the past, as Pont du Gard has been an UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985, and is now one of the top five tourist attractions in France.

Some would say that’s what the Café des Arts in  St-Rémy should be, too (by all accounts it seems to have been there almost as long), where we decamped to in the evening for an aperitif or two. Celebrating the moving on of my tenant with a Monaco or two (above), we soaked up the atmosphere of life on the evening café terraces, before heading home to enjoy supper on a terrace of our own.