April 19-20: Moustiers Ste-Marie and Gorge du Verdon

[blatherskite]

April 19: Drive to Moustiers Ste-Marie

One final breakfast at Boquiers, and the croissants remain winless. We leave them to contemplate their sorry state of training and prepare for a rematch some future date. Of course, by then we’ll also be older and wiser, so I don’t give much for their chances. We left with some sadness; it was a comfortable place to stay, our hosts were friendly and welcoming, and it was a great base for our first several days in France.

We took the shuttle to the TGV station to get our car, and all was well until we actually sat down in the car and started checking out the controls. We’d asked for an automatic transmission (neither of us having driving stickshift for something like 3 years now), but they gave us a standard. We could have gone for an upgrade, but unlike in North America, where automatic transmissions are the norm, the European preference seems to run to stickshifts, and opting for an automatic transmission would have cost us another 100+ euros. So we exchanged rueful grins, gritted our teeth, and (not without a certain trepidation and surge of adrenaline) set out to see how much we’d forgotten. I volunteered to take the first shift. In the end, it seems, I hadn’t forgotten much. Other than a bit of a tricky time finding reverse for the first time and finding 5th gear a couple times on the highway, the old skills came back to me with surprising speed, and I managed not to stall until much later in the trip, navigating a tight turn in a parking lot. Our car’s a Citroen diesel, and on the whole a pleasant machine to drive, but the shift pattern is much more demanding than on our old Honda: you really have to move at right angles to shift between gears, whereas the Honda allowed much smoother transitions. It’s also insanely fuel-efficient—it seems to get roughly twice the mileage (!!!) of our Prius.

Initially, the hardest part of the drive was navigation (ably handled by copilot Shoshanna). The signage ranges from excellent to absent or confusing, and there were a couple times we had to circle a roundabout twice and guess blindly at which option was correct. I’d never have made it driving alone, or would have had to stop dozens of times to repeatedly consult the map. Having a dedicated navigator who could study the route to the next waypoint beforehand while I concentrated on the road made it simple; we make a good team that way, as in so many others.

Most of the drive was uneventful, at least until we reached the mountains leading up to Moustiers Ste-Marie. The problem there is that the road is very windy, with often narrow passages and erratic indications of speed limits and speed changes. There are generally but not always warnings of roundabouts, so you often find yourself coming at a roundabout at highway speed with little warning, and have to slow down rapidly before you merge. Plus, it’s a popular area for cyclists, so there are times when you have to slow down dramatically to avoid wiping out a whole pack of bikers or (worse yet) straying into the oncoming lane to avoid the bikers and wiping out both the oncoming traffic and then (on the rebound) the bikers. On the plus side, the adrenaline keeps you alert, and the lines of sight are far superior to those on the rural roads we’ve driven in Ireland, Scotland, and England. On the negative side, there are few shoulders and often sheer dropoffs or deep ditches to the side of the road.

We managed to miss the turnoff to the B&B, which was cleverly concealed in plain sight—though in our defence, the sign is small and hard to read—and found ourselves on a series of hairpin switchbacks leading down into the town. It’s challenging driving, because you’re forced to repeatedly downshift into a lower gear to get around tight corners, and then accelerate back up to speed again. And there are no turnarounds. We finally made it down, pulled into a gas station to turn around, and then renegotiated the whole slope in reverse. But this time we managed to spot the turnoff and with a sigh of relief, made it to our B&B.

The B&B, Les Petits Segriès, is a lovely old stone farmhouse that’s been updated from a near-ruin into something quite modern while still retaining its original charm. For example, the floors are tiles but now with underfloor heating and there’s a modern kitchen. It’s located at a midslope position between a ridge and the valley below, with a lovely view downhill in three of the four main compass directions, except for the mountains to the east of the B&B, which are a distant outpost of the Swiss Alps. Our room was on the second floor, with a lovely view of mountains and rolling valleys to the south.

After meeting our hosts and dumping our bags, we went on a nice short hike (an hour and a half or so) up to the ridge behind the B&B, then circling north and back down the road to home. It’s a pleasant mixture of dry oak and pine woodland, with very rocky soils. Not a terribly demanding hike, but a good way to loosen up after a long drive and to stretch our legs before tomorrow’s long hike. Home in plenty of time for a shower before dinner, though they’re currently on water rationing because their spring has dried up and they have to truck in water from their neighbor. That means they appreciate it if you don’t leave the shower running if you don’t need to, so we did the dryland shower routine: get wet, turn off the water, soap up, rinse off. Repeat as necessary. No lingering in the shower.

Our dinner was a true table d’hôte (“host’s table”): we ate with our hosts and about a dozen other guests in the common dining room, a long, low space with thick beams holding up the roof and a long wooden table. It’s a nice mixture of new and old, very solid and comfortable. Dinner started with marinated mushrooms (not really my thing) in a delicious savory sauce (really my thing), mopped up with a ton of good local bread (ditto). The main course was beef stew with very few vegetables, in a thick and savory gravy, accompanied by poulenta and more bread. Dessert was a cheese plate for those who enjoy cheese (not me), followed by a really intense strawberry sorbet. Wine was a local red (not an appelation controlé), which was very nice; not too tannic, with a nice fruitiness and enough body so that it wasn’t either “thick” or watery. No beer, alas, but I was tired and fighting a cold that had been threatening for some time.

Much conversation in both English and French. Two Israeli families were visiting, and one of the wives had grown up in Montreal’s Cote St. Luc suburb. Since my cousins live there and our friend Donna, I asked whether she might know them; stranger coincidences have happened, but not this time. Nothing special to report, apart from the fact that nobody seems to know the meaning of Les Segriès; Noël, our host, made a joke about it having to do with the food cooked there (griès = gree-yay =“grillé” = grilled), but then told us that even some linguists who have looked into the name are unsure. One believed that it has something to do with healthy waters; another thought it had something to do with a local monastery, Le Grand Segriès, but that only moves the question of the name back one step without actually explaining anything. The only thing everyone agreed about was “that’s what it was called when we bought it”.

Early to bed, since we planned a lot of walking tomorrow.

April 20: Moustiers Ste-Marie and Gorge du Verdon

My cold arrived today with a vengeance, bearing stuffy nose and congested chest. It was actually bad enough I resolved to keep an eye on it in case it tried to turn into something nastier. Our plan was to go hiking in the valley of the Verdon River, a real “gorge” with steep sides and (in places) cliffs hundreds to a thousand or more feet high. There’s a reason it’s called “France’s Grand Canyon”. I warned Shoshanna she might have to take it easy on me on the upslopes, and asked her to drive us into town and to the site; the decongestant I took left me able to breathe, but a bit buzzy. We’d come all this way and I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to hike the gorge, so we decided to give it a go anyway. The gorge is long and spectacular, and there are many hikes that go down into it or up along one of France’s “grand randonnées” (a network of long-distance hiking trails that span the country) that rise into the mountains and run along some of the peaks. We didn’t have time for that, and chose to just do one really good shorter hike.

First stop was the tourist information center in Moustiers so we could get a decent map of the area. It was a good thing (for me, leastwise) Shoshanna was driving. Moustiers is a typical Provencal medieval city, with narrow and winding streets, but to add insult to injury, it’s perched on the side of a steep mountain, so navigating turns and dodging tourists with a manual transmission can be an adventure if your wits aren’t firing on all cylinders. (Mine were working on 3 of 4 at best.) She handled it gracefully: no traffic fatalities that I noticed, no sliding downhill backwards into the river, and only one stall at an insanely tight turn.

From Moustiers, you climb switchbacks up into the mountains, driving narrow roads that first run through forest and then continue onto sparsely vegetated rock slopes. In places, the road runs along sheer cliffs that plunge hundreds of feet above and below. Needless to say, there are no shoulders in most places, and there are occasionally cyclists plodding uphill just for special extra fun. It’s not a place for anyone with a fear of heights or a fear of head-on collisions with other vehicles or cyclists. But the scenery is spectacular; in one place, there’s a mountain that appears dome-shaped until you round the bend and find the back half has been completely sheared off and washed away by the Verdon and by time.

We chose to do a moderately long but quite demanding hike called Le Sentier des Pêcheurs (“fisherman’s trail”), which is about 6.5 km long and descends 300 m (i.e., about 4 miles and a descent of close to 1000 feet). It’s rated at about 3 hours if you don’t lollygag; we took closer to 4, with much lollygagging. You start by winding your way down into the gorge along a steep descent through oak and pine forest. It’s easy and pleasant country, except for the growing sense as you keep going down that you’re eventually going to have to come back up again. After about 45 minutes, you round a bend and see the river far below you. The water is that spectacular aquamarine that you only see in Photoshopped pictures of the Caribbean or in Banff’s Lake Louise.

We’ve had God’s own luck with the weather thus far, and it continued today: unbelievable blue skies, and both warm enough for Shoshanna and not so warm I was going to expire from the heat. (Finding a place with weather we can both tolerate is always a challenge.) The spring is still young, with leaves of many plants still expanding, so the whole forest is filled with a green you can only describe as “young”; it’s the green you see when the leaves are still perky, callow innocents rather than the jaded (no pun intended) and tired old leaves of late summer. The light passing through them, combined with the blue sky above and the aquamarine river below, is what I later described to our hosts as “ravissant” (ravishing). If you don’t feel some kind of connection with greater powers, you should check yourself for a pulse.

We made it down to the river after about an hour, and hiked along its banks. They’re covered with willows and poplars, mostly young ones because older trees get swept away right up to the scour line when the river floods during the spring and winter rains. We paused and spent an admiring half hour just enjoying the sound of the water, the light and warmth, and some bread and cheese and fruit we’d brought along. (Plus chocolate, of course. It was warm enough with the sun on my backpack that it had partially melted the chocolate. Côte d’Or chocolate, so a minor tragedy awaiting us if the melting were allowed to continue. So we ate the whole bar then and there before matters reached an unfortunate conclusion.)

The Verdon leads into Lac St. Croix, so people canoe upstream or take pedalboats. Lots of people down there enjoying the water, a few even brave enough to swim; you could hear their shrieks from quite a distance because of the surrounding cliffs. The price you pay for all that beauty is that it’s a significant climb back to the parking area, with much up and down to cross several steep ridges along the way rather than a single smooth ascent. The people get very small indeed as you climb higher above the river. Tough on the thighs and knees, but we’ve been keeping in reasonably good shape. Despite all the prep work and several pauses to admire the scenery, our legs were mighty tired by the time we made it back to the top.

From there, we returned to Moustiers to wander around the town before dinner. As previously noted, Moustiers is perched on the steep slopes below sheer cliffs. There’s a valley at the eastern end of town that splits the cliffs, and a couple hundred years ago, some ambitious locals strung a cable between the two sides and hung a large gold star on it. As the sun sets, the star gleams brilliantly in the fading light. Way up top, but well below the star, there’s a lovely old stone church, so presumably this is the star leading wise men to their savior. We admired it from below rather than climbing the long ascent to reach it; despite drinking a ton of water along the way, I was significantly dehydrated from all that exercise under a hot sun, and feeling the aftereffects of the hike and my cold, so there was no hope I’d make it all the way up. Shoshanna concurred, so we eased our legs by strolling around town. Between browsing in local food shops and tasting local olive oils (most of which are lovely, but with a seriously peppery afterbite) and various spreads, we made time for a local beer (made with honey and thyme, for a very interesting sweet and spicy taste) and a strawberry milkshake made with fresh fruit.

As it was close to Easter weekend, many restaurants were closed, and those that remained open didn’t start serving food until 7 or later. Neither of us were sure we’d be awake to drive home if we waited until then, so we ended up not having much in the way of food; just a couple paninis to hold us over until the morning. Nothing else special to report; we made it home safely and slept the sleep of the virtuously exhausted.