Verdon Gorge

Bonjour, Allo, Hello, Hi

The Verdon Gorge turned out to be another serious adventure. I know, I know, rose coloured glasses again! But you can check this out for yourself with Google. Turns out that the Verdon Gorge is located in the Alps. When we saw our TDF stage it was in the Vosges Mountains. This is just a smaller mountain chain in France, a country that also has the Pyrenees and the Alps. How could we possibly settle for being on some small little mountain when we could be driving on little sidewalk sized roads up mountains in the Alps. Come on, get serious, you know Joani and me by now. In for a penny in for a pound. Truth to tell we didn’t actually know we were in the Alps until after we got back but I’ll tell you this, we have driven up a mountain in Hawaii, been driven up a mountain on the isle of Capri, driven through mountain ranges in Spain as well as walking down through the clouds to the base of the rock of Gibraltar, for all of that I will tell you, we were up in the sky today.

  We left our Hotel and the first 1 ½  hours were spent on normal highways but then we started one by one getting on lesser and lesser roads until finally we ended up on a road that was barely more than the width of the car.

Now, we were heading up our first mountain. Every kilometer there were signs warning us that the road had hairpin turns. These didn’t bother me. It was the signs I saw every 4 or 5 kilometers warning of rockslides that made me nervous.  We went up a small mountain, then down and then up a large mountain and down to the Gorge. It was exhilarating, but something had me curious. When we were standing in the pouring rain waiting for the tour stage to pass, Joani asked me if I thought we were crazy. I of course said, “No dear, we’ve wanted to do this for years”. When we were driving from Le  Thillot to Lyon in the middle of the night she again asked me, ”Are we crazy” to which again I said, “of course not dear, we both know we couldn’t have left any earlier.” But we are driving up and down crazy mountains and she’s not saying anything so I turn to her sitting in the passenger seat and say. “Dear, you haven’t asked if we are crazy.” And she looks at me and answers with one word. ”no”.  So, I looked at her and said, “because you know we’re crazy?” and again a one word reply, “yes”.

We at one point in time were driving through this small little town with the most narrow streets I have ever driven on, (we had about 1/2 inch clearance on either side of our exterior mirrors) and Joani actually squeaked “oh, no” . Just that “oh’ no!!!” I was hoping that would be the worst for her but later on when we were close to the top she actually seemed to start hyperventilating and believe it or not I took my eyes off the road for half a second to see if she was okay. I thought I would have to stop and try to help her calm down and there was no place to stop!

 We stopped at the little town I mentioned earlier to have lunch which is one of the photos I have attached, the café where we had lunch,

the view from the top of the mountain down into the gorge,

some crazy people hang-gliding off the mountaintop,

the view from the bottom looking up

and people boating on the beautiful green water of the gorge.

I might have messed up the order, it was another insane day, maybe we are crazy!

 Garry