The disappointment is somehow inherent in the travel guide.
If a vantage point or a cozy restaurant ends up in one of the little books with “insider tips”, the seclusion is usually over quickly and German tourists jostle in front of the panorama.
The bike tour guide is completely different: he is the cyclist's best friend and, thanks to vital information (the official, “provisional” bike path is actually a multi-lane expressway), I have long enjoyed my trust.
It hit me all the more painfully when I recently cycled along the Rhône through Provence.
The crickets chirped, the sun was burning - but I missed blooming lavender fields: a few mowed rows here and there, but no fresh, spicy purple as far as the eye can see, as the bike guide promised.
Johanna Kuroczik
Editor in the "Science" section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
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Presumably everything had long been harvested and quickly processed in the second summer of the pandemic.
In 2020, the demand for lavender products had increased enormously, with British farmers reporting that their sales had quadrupled.
Because "Lavandula angustifolia" has always been said to have healing powers, lavender oil belongs in the "plague vinegar" that, according to legend, thieves used to protect themselves while they were plundering the homes of the sick when the plague raged in southern France in the 18th century.
Lavender, a mint family, should also work against all sorts of other ailments and also drive away head lice.
Bacteria leave the lavender
In ancient Rome, the flowers of the subshrub were valued as a bath additive, "lavender" comes from the Latin lavare, to wash. Lavender is said to help modern man with stress and insomnia; In studies, lavender oil raised the sleep hormone in the blood of older subjects and, to a modest extent, also calmed patients before an operation. Animal experiments suggest that the typical fragrance linalool in the lavender extract provides relaxation: Mice without a sense of smell stayed excited, as did those rodents in whose brains certain receptors were blocked, through which tranquilizers also work.
Provence is made for lavender, which thrives on dry and stony soils. England also has purple fields, but Bulgaria now produces the most. In the south of France the bacterium "
Stolbur phytoplasma
"
has been rampant for decades
and causes the plants to
wither away
, despite intensive research so far no cure. Glass-winged cicadas, which don't even chirp like summer, are the carriers - a catastrophe for tourism in every respect.