Gorges Galore

This part of France is awash with gorges so in order to avoid been gorged out we chose to walk one close by (oppedette) and the following day, the most famous – Verdon.

It was a dull but reasonably dry afternoon by the time we arrived at Gorges d’Oppedette. I have to say it didn’t look anything special from the car park and as it wasn’t exactly warm (talking t-shirt, fleece and coat) my enthusiasm for a 3.5 hour walk was low.

However we set off and it was a pleasant enough walk although the views were fairly muted. There was a bit of excitement where a grab rail was necessary and a couple of viewpoints near the end were quite vertiginous but to be honest, I’ve seen better!

Never mind, on to the Gorges du Verdon.

This entailed a 7am alarm. (I thought I was on holiday? ) The drive to the start of the walk was going to be 1.5 hours and we needed to get there early to walk as much of the gorge as we could.

As I am ridiculously mean, I was not going to pay €40 euros for a taxi to return us to our start point after having walked the whole of the gorge. In the peak summer months there is a shuttle bus that does this but it doesn’t run in shoulder season. Stupid as there were loads of walkers in the gorge who would have used the service.

Anyway, the drive was quiet and scenic and the sky was blue. (Still chilly though)

As we set off, a large group of cyclists stopped near us and proceeded to relieve themselves then and there. This included a young lady who literally pulled down her pants and peed – didn’t even bother to find a tree! Maybe I’ll do that next time I’m out with our walking group. Or perhaps not. Interestingly Steve managed to notice she had false boobs – the observation powers of the male species never fails to amaze.

To cut a long story short, the gorge was beautiful, the air grew warmer and it was a lovely, but quite tiring walk. This was not helped by the 252 uphill steps that Steve insisted doing at speed. I thought my heart might pop by the time I got to the top.

Sadly, literally just after we had completed the steps, and climbed down a similar distance, the trail said we had another 3 hours to go before we reached the end of the canyon which would mean a 5.5hour return journey. It was 1pm at this point. That’ll be back to the steps then via an uphill scramble.

A highlight of the return journey was watching a group of teenage girls get in the river. Obviously some sort of canyoning trip, they were all in wetsuits, life jackets and helmets. Their screams as they hit the water were hilarious.

We meandered on the way back but were pretty bushed by the time we got back to the car.

Statistics said we’d walked 14 miles and climbed 200 floors. Phew!

Rest day tomorrow.