The village above, the glassworks below
Two addresses share the same commune name and are reached in completely different ways. The medieval village is perched. The glassworks lies below, at 5 chemin des Combes, with its own 500-space car park that takes coaches as well as cars. Thirty minutes are free, then parking costs 0.50 € an hour, and it becomes free again above six euros of purchases.
A passenger who says “the glassworks” and a passenger who says “the village” are not booking the same last kilometre, even though both fit inside the 17 km and 22 minutes of the airport transfer. The question to settle before departure is short: upper or lower.
From noon to midnight, in season, nobody drives up
This is the constraint that shapes the whole day. In season the council closes the heart of the village with access-controlled bollards, from noon until midnight. Only vehicles cleared by the municipal police get through: residents, shopkeepers, health professionals.
A chauffeur car belongs to none of those three groups. The consequence is clean and admits no exception: from midday until the end of the evening, passengers are set down outside and the last stretch is walked. Before noon the question does not arise.
That midday switch is worth settling when you book. Lunch in the village at 12.30 is not prepared like breakfast at 9 am. The route is identical; the final hundred metres are not.
575 free spaces around the village, and the walk that remains
The commune publishes the detail, and it can be used as it stands: 575 free spaces spread over four car parks — Bâchettes 330, Fontanette 141, Saint-Jean 58 and Baume 46. Forty-three reserved bays for reduced-mobility drivers exist across the commune, nine of them at Bâchettes.
Nine is the number to remember when a passenger walks badly. Bâchettes concentrates both the largest capacity and the largest number of adapted bays, which makes it the default drop-off rather than a guess.
What those figures do not tell you is the gradient. No municipal source measures the climb between the ring car parks and the village centre, and we will not invent one. What is certain is that the car stops where the bollards start, and that the quoted fare covers the journey to that point, tolls and parking included.