It begins, as so many good things in Provence do, with a market.
The stalls are already busy by eight in the morning - producers arranging olive oils in colour-graduated rows, a cheesemaker slicing wedges of aged chèvre, bunches of dried lavender propped against old wooden crates. This is where Cloé prefers to start. Not because it is photogenic - though it is - but because it is real. Cloé is a private guide offering bespoke day excursions and multi-day itineraries across Provence and the Côte d’Azur. Her clients are predominantly American, her territory spans Avignon to Nice, and her approach is rooted in something she is quietly insistent about: that the best way to discover Provence is to slow down and let it come to you.
A return to roots
Cloé’s route to guiding was not direct. After studying at an international business school in Lyon, she spent her early career moving - across countries, across industries, accumulating the kind of professional restlessness that tends to precede a significant change of direction. She worked in sales for nearly a decade, competent and successful, but with something quietly unresolved. The South of France, where she had grown up, drew her back. Its familiar light, its landscapes, its particular rhythm of life. Her guiding practice emerged from that return - not as a compromise between ambition and comfort, but as the thing she had been working towards all along.
What she is really offering
An excursion with Cloé is fully bespoke from the first conversation. She begins each client relationship with an exchange - a call or message - in which she listens carefully to what the group actually wants: their pace, their interests, the kind of experience they are hoping to have. The itinerary comes after, not before. The themes she works with range across gastronomy and wine, art and history, nature and sport, and wellness. A day might begin at a vineyard in Châteauneuf-du-Pape for a private tasting, move through a perched village in the Luberon, and end at a family-run olive oil producer whose grove has been in the same hands for four generations. Or it might be built entirely around a single obsession - truffles, say, or Roman heritage, or the painters of the Côte d’Azur. She also handles all transport, from airport and station collections to navigation between sites. On the sometimes narrow roads of inland Provence, this is not a small thing.
“At the bottom of me, the desire to create a project that truly resembled me was growing a little more each day. Each client benefits from an experience entirely conceived and organised around their expectations. I coordinate everything so they can enjoy it fully, without stress, at their own pace."
Practical notes
Cloé offers private excursions from a single day to a full week, across the arc from Avignon to Nice. Itineraries are built from scratch for each client, though she also works from a selection of themed starting points - gastronomy, wine, art and culture, nature and sport, wellbeing - as a basis for the initial conversation. Groups of all configurations are welcome, from couples to multi-generational families. For the latter, Cloé is particularly attentive to creating a pace and programme that holds something for everyone - neither too rushed for older members of the party nor too slow for younger ones. For those staying in one of our villas, we can arrange collection directly from the property. Everything else - reservations, timings, transport between sites - is handled in advance and on the day.
The soul of the region
“What moves me deeply in Provence is the smile you find everywhere. The producers who welcome you early in the morning, the artisans who take the time to tell you about their craft, the locals who give their warmth naturally.”
Ask Cloé what she loves most about Provence and she does not reach for the obvious answers - the lavender, the light, the rosé. She reaches, instead, for the people. This instinct shapes how she designs every itinerary. Rather than a procession of landmarks, a day with Cloé is built around encounters: a winemaker who opens a bottle they were not planning to open, a baker who explains why their fougasse is made with water from a particular source, a ceramicist in a village no tour bus has ever reached. The anecdotes she shares along the way are drawn from genuine local knowledge - the legends, the histories, the small details that transform a beautiful place into a story.
A morning that became a memory
The visit that stays with her most is a recent experience. An American client arrived in Provence carrying a lifelong attachment to the work of Matisse - colours and forms she had grown up with, a painter she had never quite stopped thinking about. Cloé brought her to the Chapelle Matisse in Vence. They arrived in the morning, when the light filters through the stained glass and the chapel’s interior seems lit from within. Then they waited - spending the day nearby, returning in the late afternoon when the angle of the sun changes and the colours shift into something warmer, more intimate, almost otherworldly. It is the kind of moment that cannot be planned, only made possible. The right place, the right time of day, and a guide who understood what the client was really looking for.
When asked to sum up the experience she tries to create in three words, Cloé settles on: personalised and immersive. It is a modest formulation for something that clearly means a great deal more to her than that - a decade of professional groundwork, a deep attachment to a region, and the particular satisfaction of watching someone fall in love with the place she already loves. If you would like to arrange a private excursion with Cloé during your stay in Provence, our experiences team can sort out the logistics for you.
À bientôt
