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Published: July 17th 2014
The Gorge du Verdon was a place we had both wanted to see for nearly 20 years. In 1995 whilst going on our first visit to the Côte d'Azur, Terry had seen a shortcut on the map, going from Lyon to Cannes. No going around the long motorway route for him! We left Lyon at 2.30 pm but arrived tired and fed up at our campsite about 1.00am. A journey of 10 and a half hours which should have taken four! We had driven through the Gorge du Verdon during the night, we never saw it!
It was only two and a half hours from Port Grimaud to the campsite which was called, surprisingly, Campsite Gorge du Verdon. The campsite was nice with reasonable size pitches and beautifully set alongside the river Verdon. It was also at the high end of the gorge and so via a circular route it was easy to see the whole gorge by car.
The advice given is to go clockwise but we thought we knew better. However we soon realised that clockwise is the best route, as the parking spots at viewpoints are all on the left meaning that we had
always to cross the road to relish the view, not easy when you cannot see round a bend on a mountain road. Still the sights were amazing, deep green and at times savage valleys with the Verdon meandering along the bottom.
Half way around the Lac Saint Croix comes into view, an incredible shade of blue water stretching down the valley. A nice surprise was free parking alongside the lake where people were swimming, hiring canoes and pedalos, a wonderful spot, but nobody selling drinks or ice cream!
We think the gorge, which is the biggest in Europe, comes only behind The Grand Canyon and Milford Sound as the most beautiful natural phenomena we have ever seen.
Our only problem was that it was over 1,000 metres above sea level and we, having been in Italy and the Côte d'Azur for two months and never cold were suddenly cast into what felt like a 22 degree fridge! We slept with towels on top of our duvet.
Our last day included a visit to the near town of Castellane, which was a surprisingly pretty and interesting town with rows of shops selling the usual tourist trinkets etc.
We stayed three nights at the campsite and made friends with a weird Dutch man who wanted us to spend a night looking at the photos of the gorge he had taken on his phone. Unfortunately we were busy that night.
We moved on to a town called Die but luckily pronounced Dee. We chose this place as we have had good experiences of being in a small French town on Bastille Day, witnessing couples dancing in the street to a wailing squeezebox. It was a formality that there would be something happening in this small town, a ten minute bike ride away.
To be certain of a nice place we arrived at:
8.00pm. Found a bar in the nice square and ordered pastis.
9.00pm people started to arrive.
10.00pm the square was packed.
10.30 canned music started to play (by now we were on our fourth pastis).
10.40pm and fireworks started to go off and coloured lights were displayed on the church.
11.05pm the show ended and people started to go home.
The fireworks were, we suppose, good for a small village. However we have seen better
in Marple and a local French woman we were talking to had just come back from five years in China, she was disappointed to extreme.
Not the greatest Bastille night we have had.
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