Day 19 - Villard de Lans to Vassieux en Vercors

 

Friday 25th September 

We had a bit of excitement on the aire this morning when some guys turned up with a hot air balloon and all the kit.

I've no idea what the plan was but they mostly just stood around talking amongst themselves and not much else really happened.

Will they, won't they ? I gave up, I think they may have just been giving it an airing

By about 1000 I got fed up waiting for the frenchmen to decide what they were doing, so we set off for our lunch stop destination.

This was to be Pont en Royans, accessible along the A532 Gorges de la Bourne road. 

This is a famous ‘balcony road’ through the gorge with tunnels and overhanging rocks. 

Unfortunately it’s partly closed at the moment for work to improve security from falling rocks.

So I had to detour onto the D221 which was equally impressive and gave some dramatic scenery views and slightly scary tunnels and rock faces towering over the road, I was very entertained by the drive through the gorgeous landscape.

The main attraction in Pont en Royans are the medieval houses built in the vertical rock face of the gorge with the river flowing below.

Pont en Royans village

The Museum of Water ! but closed for lunch

The medieval houses built in the vertical rock face

This doesn't look too secure

It must have been quite an achievement to build them but I'm not sure what motivated it, there must be easier places to build a home ?

The carpark was impossible for me to get to being a sharp left turn into a very narrow lane, but I managed to find road parking nearby and the village was just a short walk away.

After walking around the village for an hour and taking lots of photos, we set off for tonights parkup.

It's in a small village a few miles further south in the Vercors, called Vassieux en Vercors and is in a stunning setting on the Vercors plateau.

Vassieux en Vercors

Vassieux en Vercors motorhome aire

Vassieux en Vercors WWll museum

A German glider used in an attack on the village

Imagine being told to sit on that bench as you're launched in the air !

WWll memobilia

There's yet more resistance history here and a museum tells the story of a German attack on the village.

After the D day Normandy invasion of June 1944, the allies supported resistance fighters with parachute drops of weapons and supplies along with military advisors to help push back German forces.

They were successful and in August 1944 American forces fully liberated the area.

I must say I'm very impressed with this area of France, the Vercors national park has some breathtaking scenery and I've certainly enjoyed exploring the area.

Day 18 - Lac de la Mirande to Villard de Lans

 

Thursday 24th September 

After a final walk around the lake at Mirande we set off for Villard de Lans in the Vercors National Park.

I'd planned to call in at Lidl and a garage filling station to get some LPG on the way but that soon went wrong.

The bridge over the river Isere was being rebuilt and a temporary crossing was in place but this had a 2.5m height limit, I'm 2.9m so that isn't going to work out well.

The diversion signs seemed to finish after one junction and the sat nav threw a wobbly on me.

I used the old fashioned method, follow the position of the sun, to head in the approximate direction and the sat nav soon sorted itself out, but Lidl and LPG thoughts were abandoned for today.

The next hurdle was getting around and through Grenoble, I saw more of the road network, some of it more than once, than I should have or would want to see again 🤣

Anyway after some odd routing and a few wrong turns, I soon found myself on the D106 climbing up onto the Vercors National Park region.

I've come to a small town called Villard de Lans at the heart of the park, famous for it's rocky limestone landscapes and dramatic rolling hills scenery.

Villard de Lans

Christmas lights going up now

We've had a walk into town this afternoon and it's a nice enough place but not anything to get too excited about.

The areas attraction is clearly the surrounding landscapes

The area does have a lot of WWll French Resistance history, there was quite a famous battle in which the resistance held off advancing Nazi's from the areas high ground around the town.

I'm parked on the towns motorhome aire and opposite is a large open hillside landscape which I plan to explore later.

We had a walk up the hill after tea and it's clear the hillside is used as a fun area when the snow arrives. There are moving walkways uo to the top of the hill and a selection of made up decent slopes, all marked up by name.

I looks a fantastic place for the children of the village to have some winter fun.

The walk up the hill

This is the local High School

I've not seen one of these before, a moving walkway to the top of the hill for the children to get their sledge up without the long climb nobody likes

Pick your route down kiddies ! The moving walkways are the straight dark lines on the left

The motorhome aire, it's busy tonight

The Collete Noire tomato was was tasty, and made a good addition to my omelette, Louis enjoyed some too.

Looking back through the photos, I spotted something I'd not noticed Mont Blanc in the distance

Zoom in and it's clear to see