Gorge du Verdon Provence

 

We left our parkup for last night, and after a quick supermarket shop at E.Leclerc (think French Tesco) and after listening to a french lady complaining about rising grocery prices, we told her it was the same in the UK but I don't think she was comforted by that, we set the sat nav for the Gorge du Verdon.

I've done quite a bit of research into driving this route and received much contradictory information.

There's a north route, a south route and a shorter central route.

All of which come with tales of doom, falling be off a ledge, becoming stranded in isolation and having to find a cave to live in and having to forage for food to survive on for the rest of your life, fight wolves and compete with vultures for scraps.

I ignored these tales and carried on regardless.

Coming east to west, I decided the south route would be best for us as the north route carries a lot of local traffic in a hurry to get somewhere.

I wanted to get nowhere quickly on these roads. 

As it happens it was a good choice, there was very little traffic and what traffic there was, was like us, stopping frequently for photographs in laybys to take advantage of the spectacular scenery.

It really is a great drive, made all the more enjoyable by the beautiful weather we're enjoying.

The only thing lacking unfortunately was any water in the river Verdon.

The piddling little excuse of a stream we saw today would never have cut this gigantic gourge.

Is it climate change ? who knows, but there's no doubt the drout is having a effect on the environment in lots of areas of Europe.

I'm sure winter rains will come and top up the levels again and we can only wait and see what next year brings.

This is a spectacular landscape and we're on a campsite tonight on Lake of Sainte-Croix at the north end of the Gorge and again it has much bigger beaches than you'd expect.

There's a small village nearby called Les Salles Sur Verdon which I walked up to this evening. 

We have 4g, water, electric and the satellite is picking up all UK channels so we're going to be happy here for a couple of nights.

Some photos . . . . . . .

Comps Sur Artuby, a village we passed through

Aiguines Chateaux

 Lake of Sainte-Croix