Gorges du Verdon

Gorges du Verdon

We woke in Alpe d’Huez to a much calmer day, cold though… 11°C and we had packed for summer. Brilliant! We sorted the van out, zigzagged our way back down the hairpins and carried on our detour towards Briançon and the Gorges du Verdon. After about half an hour, we noticed diversion signs for Briançon pointing back the way we’d come. Oh!..

It looked on the map like you could get through another way via Les Deux Alpes, so we pushed on past rugged cliffs and looming rock formations. The lady in the tourist office advised us that if our journey to Briançon wasn’t essential, we should turn round and go back the way we’d come… Gordon Bennett!

We grabbed a pain au chocolat and a coffee before turning back. Through town, it was interesting to see loads of skiers getting out of cars and buses and traipsing through the rain to the lifts and the glacier skiing beyond. It looked like a party town too. Loads of bars and plenty of neon signs. I love a bit of neon!

An hour or so later we rejoined the Route Napoleon below Grenoble and hot-footed it all the way to Castellane and the gateway to the Gorges du Verdon. Some of our new French friends had recommended Napoleon’s route and it didn’t disappoint. The scenery is incredible with free standing mountains, ridge lines and plateaus that look like something out of the Lost World or Jurassic Park.

There’s plenty more for the kids to look at as well: Wheat fields, maize, apple trees, sugar cane and all sorts of other fruit and veg filling every available space. It’s great for them to see how the landscapes – as well as the sights, sounds, smells and temperatures – change as you drive further south.

We arrived in Castellane at tea time and this place turned out to be campsite central! Our much needed showers were a dead cert. The kids had had enough of travelling and wanted to stop at the first one we drove past but we pushed on and found a nice site, just a short walk from the restaurants in town. We found out the next morning that if we’d held out even longer, the ones closer to the gorge had swimming pools and waterslides! We kept quiet about that as we drove past them the next morning on our way for some touristy gorge gawping.

The spectacular Notre Dame du Rock towering above Castellane.
The spectacular Notre Dame du Roc towering above Castellane.

 

We arrived at the first point of interest and slotted in with a few hundred other people doing the same gorge-merry-go-round of: drive; stop; walk to viewpoint: “ooh”, “ahh”; take photos; walk back; drive to next viewpoint and repeat. The kids did two cycles then were only impressed enough for 1 out of every 5 viewpoints from there on. Amazing scenery though and on an epic scale. The birdlife was impressive too, with golden eagles and the enormous 2.8m wing spanned griffon vultures soaring close beneath us from some of the viewpoints and nesting on the rock faces opposite.

There was a lot of this sort of thing on the drive in to the Gorge du Verdon from Castellane.
Impressive human intervention on the drive into the Gorges du Verdon from Castellane.

 

Gorge du Verdon.
Gorges du Verdon. (To get an idea of scale, zoom into the bottom of the shaded rock face. You can just make out the pathway above the river.)

 

The Gorges du Verdon are well worth a detour if you’re in the area. If we ever went again, we’d drive down to the base of the gorge and walk along some of the footpaths alongside and have a paddle in the emerald green waters. The river was hundreds of metres below but looked soooo inviting on such a hot, dusty day. We did the circuit on the north side of the gorge and stopped in the very pleasant Le Palud sur Verdon for a nice lunch.

Gorge-viewing box ticked, we looped back to Castellane, rejoined Napoleon’s march (in reverse) and pushed on. Driving through more stunning scenery, it was clear that we were getting closer to the Mediterranean Sea. More olives and lavender, and the volume of the secadas was really building to a crescendo. Before long, we rounded and descended yet more breathtaking mountains and the Med opened up in front of us, as did the density of civilisation. Before long, we were surrounded by buildings, cars, lots of people and it was rush hour. Ew!

We crawled through traffic jams and decided that rather than turning left and heading to Monaco, we’d probably be better off heading west along the coast and away from the bigger towns of Nice and Cannes to find somewhere to stay for the night. We battled through the conurbation and finally joined the coast road. The geology changed dramatically again to deep orange cliffs, rocks and outcrops. It also became evident pretty quickly that wild camping down here was going to be nigh on impossible.

Rugged coastline between Cannes and Frejus.
Rugged coastline between Cannes and Fréjus.

 

We got our heads down and cracked on to a lovely place beyond Fréjus called St Aygulf. Here, we spotted a gigantic mega campsite. We decided it was time to throw in the towel and call it a night. We got some more weather as well… Gale-force winds this evening, sir? Nina and the kids slept downstairs…

Tomorrow would be Bastille Day and we’d move on to St Tropez for a spot of high-life people watching. More, perhaps, than we’d bargained for!

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