Finish line…

Taking advantage of the brief moments without rain to take two or three photos, we crossed the Alps and are inevitably approaching the finish line. This week, we followed the diminishing reliefs of the Alps until the Rhône Delta to end the week surrounded by water and flamingos, in the Camargue National Reserve…

The sun made a brief appearance on Saturday morning over the Italian mountains. Just enough time to take out the drone and walk a bit to enjoy the view over the surrounding mountains and, above all, over the Gran Paradiso and other snow-capped peaks at the end of the valley. The heights of Locana are truly privileged from a landscape point of view. All that was needed was a little patience for the sun to return…

One last night… (5-6/09/2024)

We can take all the possible detours, we are very close to the French border, and we have to face the facts, we are going to have to cross the Alps and go down to the other side… But to enjoy the Italian side a little more, we split our last itinerary in two to take a tour of the Val della Torre, a valley parallel to Locana on the heights of Torino, just to enjoy the view of the valley, at night, with the lights of the city in the background…

We then headed for Cesana Torinese, where we spent our last night at altitude before the Pyrenees, at exactly 1.537m, next to the ski lifts, overlooking the valley… The weather was very variable and we always had to keep our finger on the shutter so as not to miss those seconds when a peak emerged from the clouds, or a ray of sunlight illuminated a mountain, but we hoped that the next morning, at dawn, we would have a clearer view. In any case, the place is impressive, with three large valleys that meet at our feet and high snow-capped peaks all around. The ski slopes of Sestriere are not the most integrated into the landscape, but the valleys are so large that the gaze quickly gets lost in the peaks, and one forgets about the slopes, the chairlifts and other summer slides…

The next day, we would only have to cover the last 6 kilometres that separated us from the border to return to France after more than 6 months around Europe. So to celebrate our last Italian stop, we ate at an excellent restaurant, the Ristorante Pig, in Cesana Torinese. No doubt about it, the Italian Alps are not only beautiful, but the food is also very good here!… 😜

Back in France (7/10/2024)

The expected morning clearings didn’t come. However, for a moment we had a nice view of the valley invaded by clouds, before these same clouds merged with those above and… we found ourselves in the fog… We almost didn’t even see the border, between the tunnels, the fog and… the fog in the tunnels… 😁

Our itinerary for the day therefore began with a short 6km climb up to the Col de Montgenèvre, at an altitude of 1.860m, ​​to find that on the French side it was sunny, while on the Italian side it was completely foggy… In addition to the beautiful scenery that surrounds it, the Montgenèvre Pass is also famous because it could be where Hannibal crossed the Alps, with his elephants, to reach Italy from the Rhône Valley (the exact place is actually not known, but the Montgenèvre Pass could have been a logical route).

A few kilometres further down the valley, we made our first stop in the pretty town of Briançon, hidden behind its fortifications. Briançon is the highest town in France, at 1.326m, and we obviously owe its fortifications to Sébastien Le Prestre, Marquis de Vauban (is there any fortification in France that was not built by Vauban!?… 😜), who had the ones already in place around the town reinforced in 1700, in response to Duke Victor-Amédée II of Savoy’s campaign of destruction and plunder in the south of the Dauphiné to prove that “not even the mountains could stop him”. But Briançon is also famous for an episode of which its people is particularly proud. It takes place in the summer of 1815, at the end of the imperial campaign. While Napoleon was in exile on Saint Helena, defeated France submitted to the rule of the Allies and saw part of its territory occupied for three years. The Briançonnais were among the only ones who wanted to escape the rule of the Austro-Sardinian and banned them from entering their city on 15 August 1815, in a solemn session. The threats were ineffective. The famous General Eberlé, in command of the city, renewed his energetic refusal to surrender. The enemy eventually grew tired and lifted the siege on 19 October.

Briançon is today a quiet, medium-sized mountain town whose tranquillity is hardly disturbed during a few months of the year, when hordes of tourists invade the region to go skiing, among other places, at Serre Chevalier (“Serre Che” for the posh people) or other nearby resorts. The rest of the time, it is very pleasant to have the town to yourself and to be able to walk quietly along the ramparts of the fortifications or along the main street, enjoying the morning sun (without forgetting, of course, the magnificent Écrins National Park, very close by)…

It must be said that lately we have to take advantage of the sun when there is any! We had barely finished our coffee on the terrace of a bakery in Briançon when the clouds began to reappear and we barely had time to reach our destination for the day, in Puy-Sanières, just above the large lake of Serre-Ponçon, before it started to rain… We still managed to take some last photos of this place which looks particularly beautiful, with the blue lake and the mountains around. What a pity that this time the weather doesn’t even give us hope that it will clear up before 48 hours!… ☹️

Amber alert (8/10/2024)

It’s never a good sign when our phones start vibrating and displaying weather alerts, but we always hope that it’s a mistake or that the cloud will pass by… Last night it wasn’t like that. The orange weather alert for heavy rain and flooding throughout the Hautes Alpes department turned out to be quite accurate (at least as far as heavy rain goes…). It’s been pouring rain since 3am, so much so that this morning we were hesitating for a while whether it was better to move or stay in our little corner waiting for it to pass. But as the neighbouring department of Alpes de Haute Provence, where we were supposed to go today, was only on yellow alert (one level below), we finally decided to cross the lake and continue our route south!…

Obviously, the landscapes today are a bit… cloudy (🙄), but that doesn’t detract from the value of this region, which looks extremely beautiful, even though we could only see the lower part of the mountains that surrounded us. The rivers, on the other hand, which are normally like the typical ones where we slept a couple of times in Italy, are full from one side to the other and drag whole trunks with an impressive noise. Until then, we had always seen these large river beds full of white pebbles, which occupy a good part of the bottom of the alpine valleys, with just a small torrent running in the middle. Today we better understand the difference in proportion between the small torrent in normal times and the great width of white pebbles. The water, normally turquoise or transparent, today varied between dark brown and almost black…

We have settled not far from a forest track, above the village of Prads-Haute-Bléone, about a hundred metres higher than the river Bléone, which we can hear as if it were passing between Marvin’s wheels… In front of us, even if we have not yet had the opportunity to see it, is the Trois-Évêchés (Three Bishoprics) massif, which owes its name to the fact that its central peak, the Pic des Trois-Évêchés (2,818 m), once marked the border between the dioceses of Digne, Embrun and Senez. The massif is also sadly famous because it was here that, on 24 March 2015, Andreas Lubitz, co-pilot of Germanwings flight 9525 (Barcelona-Dusseldorf), suffering from mental health problems, deliberately crashed his plane into the massif, after having locked the captain out of the cockpit. There were no survivors…

To end on a more positive note, we are just waiting for the weather to improve a bit (it should happen by the end of the day) so we can enjoy the views and the beautiful landscapes we can glimpse at times, between two clouds…

Like a smell of lavender… (9/10/2024)

Indeed, the weather improved a bit yesterday afternoon, and we even had the sun come back for a few moments. Just enough time for the last clouds to disperse, and we were able to see the landscapes around us. And once again, it was worth enduring the vagaries of the autumn storms to be able to admire the pretty Trois Évêchés massif…

And then this morning, we went back down slowly into the valley after a few last photos, and we, to our great regret, left the Alps to enter Provence, and more precisely the Luberon Regional Natural Park. Before that, we passed through Digne, and especially through the village of Les Mées, which would probably not be in any tourist guide if it were not for its “Pénitents”, large rock formations like those of the Mallos de Riglos, in Spain, or the fairy chimneys that can be found in many places (but in XXL format), like an atypical witness to the formation of the Alps.

We then headed to the village of Vachères, where we settled for today’s stage. It is a pretty little village, typically Provençal, with its stone houses and streets and its lavender fields dotting the scrubland all around. Vachères is one of the 77 municipalities that are members of the Luberon Regional Natural Park, and like many others in the region, the village is known for its historical and paleontological heritage. It is indeed in the Vachères limestone plates that the only complete skeleton of the genus Bachitherium known to date (and 30 to 35 million years old) was found, a herbivorous mammal ancestor of current Indian and African gazelles, and it is also in Vachères, not far from where we have settled, that the famous “Warrior of Vachères” (1st century BC) was found, a statue of a Celto-Ligurian warrior from the army of the Emperor Augustus, impressive by its size (2m high, originally) and by the finesse of its carvings. This should be enough to make us forget for a moment that it is expected the rain will return this evening… 🙄

Mistral (10/10/2024)

After the rain last night, the sun came out again, and it should last until Saturday. So, to celebrate, we went to have breakfast at the Café des Lavandes, in Vachères, before hitting the road again towards our destination of the day: the Alpilles Regional Natural Park…

The Alpilles are these limestone rocks that stand out in the scrubland, south of Saint-Remy-de-Provence (and north of Salon-de-Provence). The last undulations before the Rhône delta and the Camargue, in a way…

On the way, we stopped at Pont Julien, a bridge from the Roman era where the Via Domitia passed, and then we settled at Pas de la Figuière, not far from Saint-Rémy and Les Baux-de-Provence. We are in the heart of the Alpilles Park, in a typical Mediterranean area, with its pine trees, scrublands and… the mistral that blows (often) here. But hey, on the other hand, it allows for a cloudless sky or almost. A blessing in disguise, in the end…

This afternoon, we did a short hike to the Aureille fire watchtower which, perched on a small hill, offers a breathtaking view of a large part of the region, from the Luberon to Fos-sur-Mer and its refineries, Mont Ventoux, Avignon, the Camargue and the Mediterranean, without forgetting, in the distance, the unmistakable silhouette of Pic Saint-Loup. Seeing the Mediterranean again in these conditions, even if still from afar, makes you feel a bit like Ulysses (in Du Bellay’s version, of course):

Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage,
Ou comme cestuy-là qui conquit la toison,
Et puis est retourné, plein d’usage et raison,
Vivre entre ses parents le reste de son âge…

(Happy is he who, like Ulysses, has made a beautiful voyage,
Or like that one who conquered the fleece,
And then returned, full of experience and reason,
To live among his parents the rest of his life…)

Hitting rock bottom (11/10/2024)

The reasons why a place or another particularly marks us can be multiple, and sometimes inexplicable. The Carrières des Lumières, in Baux de Provence, are one of these places. The immense underground quarries, known worldwide for having served as the setting for Jean Cocteau’s “The Testament of Orpheus”, were converted in 1978 into a sound and light show venue. Representations of masterpieces are projected onto the immense smooth stone walls, pillars and floors of the quarry, and the show changes over the years. This year, it was the Egypt of the pharaohs that was highlighted, as well as orientalist painters. And it may seem silly, like that, but finding yourself in front of a Delacroix painting about ten meters high in ultra-high definition leaves you a little speechless… And what about the landscapes of ancient Egypt, the masks or jewels of pharaohs projected in monumental size onto the walls of the quarry? Enough to send a few shivers of emotion down your spine…

A quick visit to the village of Les Baux de Provence, which, even though extremely touristy, is still worth the detour, and we headed towards the Rhône, which we crossed to reach the core of its delta. We were right on the edge of the Camargue National Reserve, at the Gacholle Lighthouse. Needless to say, we haven’t been this low (in altitude, that is) for a while, since we are exactly at… zero meters!

It is there, in the middle of the various ponds and marshes, surrounded by hundreds of pink flamingos, great egrets and cormorants that we spent the night. Around us, a few reeds, meadows of samphire, the silhouette of the Alpilles in the background, and the reflection of the sea, so close that the wind sometimes carries the sound of the waves, but inaccessible from here at the moment because the ponds are full of water. A short walk in this very emblematic reserve while waiting for the sunset and, as we were recommended, a night walk to listen to the sounds of the night in the marshes. A great way to end the week in style!…

In order not to arrive too quickly (12/10/2024)

The problem with the Camargue is that it’s hard to know if the sunset is more beautiful than the sunrise or vice versa… As for birds, on the other hand, there’s no real hard doubt: there were a lot more flamingos, great egrets and cormorants around Marvin when we woke up than the night before! It’s simply magical to wake up in absolute calm in the middle of the ponds, surrounded by hundreds of birds, and to see the sun rise and the sky gradually changing color. We couldn’t have dreamed of anything better for this last stop before a final technical break and the final stretch towards the Pyrenees…

So after a few photos of the red morning sky, we had our coffee and left the place to the runners of the Grand Raid de Camargue who came to refuel at our parking lot, in the middle of the marshes, after having run from Salins de Giraud and before setting off again running around the other half of the pond… We quietly went back up the Fangassier dam, went around the Vaccarès pond, and we continued our route towards the west to Maraussan, for a last technical-family break before the final straight line which separates us from the Pyrenees.

Next posts around the 21 October, therefore, for the last stages of this adventure…

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One the east side, as on the west side of the alps, LEAVE NO TRACE!

– Always travel on public ways and respect the signs.
– Limit noise and interfere as little as possible with wildlife.
– Respect the other users.
– Leave rocks, plants and other natural features as you found them and respect historic sites.
– Take your waste with you and throw it into the appropriate containers, in the nearest village.
– Do not camp inside protected areas and do not make any fires.