French Alps Pt 2

Day 6 – L'Eschalp to Abries.
We decided to take a circuitous route, via Italy, to see the Pellice Valley that we’d missed seeing because of the high winds when we’d left Refuge Viso.

The Pellice Valley

Slate roofs of half built-in houses

The day began at 8am with a climb uphill from 1687 metres to the Col Lacroix at 2299 metres, where the views were magnificent. We wandered down into the valley before climbing back into France via the Col d'Urine (yes it means the same thing in French). I thought this was the hardest thing we did on the tour. Dale said that he could understand why it is called the Col d’Urine because it pisses people off. The path from the valley to the col runs alongside the river. The little problem was that the river was largely snowed over, which meant that the path was also largely covered by snow or consisted of very muddy loose stones and rock running steeply alongside of the river. It seemed to take forever to climb from the valley (1732 metres) to the col at 2523 metres. Thank god we all had two hiking sticks but even so I found walking quite steeply uphill through snow pretty challenging and exhausting. Unlike a couple of days before the snow was pretty icy and difficult to get traction in. Having said that, when we finally arrived at the top a walking group with a guide came over the col from the other direction and they merrily marched downhill right through the middle of all snow – including parts that we’d avoided because they looked too dangerous. I suppose it is all about experience and confidence. Julia suffered an injury on this stage when she banged her knee while clambering over some huge rocks alongside the river.

Wild rhododendrons on the way to Col d’Urine

The merciless ascent to Col d’Urine

Once over the col we walked through forest down to Abries. We arrived in Abries 9 hours after leaving L’Eschalp. We had made total ascents of 1400m and descents of 1500m. We were utterly wrecked. Dinner at the gite in Abries was also the least good that we’d encountered. The coq au vin was not a patch on the one the Julia makes. The people were also not quite as friendly. The people at our table seemed to decide that talking to foreigners was too difficult and we were all too exhausted to make much of an effort.

Day 7 – Abries to Le Font de Cervieres
This day’s walk provided the most spectacular views of the entire tour. It was a hot day and as it was Sunday there were a lot of hikers on the path. We started with a steady climb above the town of Abries (at 1553 metres) that afforded some excellent views of the valley in which Abries is nestled.

Plenty of pasture for Dolores

The path levelled off for a while as it followed a pretty brook, before we began climbing quite steeply towards the stunning Lac de Grand Laus at 2579 metres. We stopped here for lunch and to admire the view along with many other hikers. While we were having lunch one of the people, who we’d unsuccessfully attempted to engage in conversation the night before, very politely smiled at us and stopped to say a few words. That was nice!

This lake was so beautiful, but no-one else was swimming so we had to restrain ourselves

After lunch the climb continued even more steeply to the Col du Malrif at 2866 metres. At the Col we got awesome views in 2 directions. Ahead we could see the Alpine mountains known as Les Ecrins and behind we could see the mountains of the Queyras Region, including Monte Viso.

The Queyras

Behind us, Les Ecrins

Stream on the walk down to Les Fonts

The Col du Malrif represents one of the boundaries of the Queyras Park, so we walked out of the park downhill for about an hour and a half to the hamlet of Les Fonts de Cervieres, which is at 2035 metres. There are about 20 or so houses in the hamlet and many of them seem to be part of the one gite/refuge/restaurant establishment. When we arrived it was a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon and the hamlet was alive with people finishing lunch at the restaurant and having a few drinks after their randonees. We were placed in one of the houses which had 3 dorms and could probably sleep quite a lot of people but we got a dorm for 7 people to ourselves. We liked that!

Les Fonts de Cervieres

The town is in a very pretty little valley that doesn’t see the sun during winter because the surrounding mountains are all so high. We enjoyed staying somewhere that wasn’t a town but still had some interesting buildings to look at.

We had a very enjoyable meal that evening although we ate a lot more than we would have liked because we all failed to understand that our host was asking us if we wanted seconds of the very nice chicken curry. As a result more chicken curry arrived and we felt obliged to have some. If this had been the only course this wouldn’t have been such a grave mistake but we’d already had the obligatory potato soup (which was more tasty than normal) and after chicken curry we had beautiful crème caramel which was then followed by 4 huge slabs of cheese and salad to share between the 3 of us.

Little did we realise when we took this photo that tomorrows picnic would contain...a whole boiled potato – mmm...not

Day 8 – Les Fonts de Cervieres to Souliers.
Our final proper day of walking had finally arrived. We climbed about 600 metres up to the Col de Pees at 2629 metres. We only walked for about 4 hours and despite our late start we arrived at our final gite at 1.40 pm.

Walking up to the col

Bovine bliss at 2400m

The descent to Souliers

The town of Souliers is also very small and doesn’t have any shops although it does have a gite and a Chambre d’Hote. It is extremely picturesque so after our showers we wandered around and took a few photos – there were a couple of noteworthy sundials in town. The gite was delightful and very professionally run. We were sleeping in a dorm that could sleep 32 people, but thankfully there were only 7 of us.

Souliers

Sundial with a chamois at top

Us and our 29 closest friends

We had a very sociable time at Souliers. We had a great chat with a couple from Paris. We also talked to a single guy from Bordeaux who works in Geneva, and who was quite nice except for his faux pas in asking us if he could borrow our soap. Ew - Bring your own soap!

At dinner there were also 2 Swiss mountain bikers who had ridden god knows how many kilometres up and down mountainous terrain for about 1 week. They seemed to speak every known European language and one of them wouldn’t stop talking about where they’d ridden and what he liked in very Italian sounding French. You couldn’t have a conversation with him, he just talked at you.

After dinner our hostess showed us a 20 minute documentary that had been made about the village in the late 60s. We couldn’t understand it all but it involved lots of footage of kids riding bobsleds to school and mothers and daughters preparing endless amounts of food. I’m still having nightmares about mama welding her knife on the meat. There was also a delightful scene in the local school room with the teacher wearing his very fetching red and white knitted jumper and discussing the medieval history of the Queyras. There was also a sad touch to the documentary as it featured a teenage boy who died not long afterwards in his early twenties while trying to climb Monte Viso. There was a big picture of him hanging up in the gite.

During the afternoon I managed to bang my toe on a very hard large stone step in the gite and thought I’d done some serious damage. Fortunately it is ok thanks to our hostess appearing rapidly with a great ice spray and another guest loaning me her special anti inflammatory cream (made from some special plant in the region). I spent the rest of the day and evening with my foot elevated and was ok to walk the next morning. We felt like the walking wounded on our last day as Dale had grazed behind his knee quite seriously and Julia had also grazed her knee seriously.

ET says Ouch!

In the morning we noticed that one of our fellow guests was wearing a t-shirt with Buis les Baronnies on it so Dale asked him if he lived in Buis, and he said that he did. He was also hiking with his wife (the lady who had loaned me her anti inflammatory cream), who we discovered is the President of the Buis les Baronnies randonneurs club. We are convinced that we now know all the important people in Buis. Dale told them that he’d spoken with the mayor to which the response was an amused ”oui, il aime parler beaucoup” (yes, he likes to talk a lot). We thought it best not to enter into local Buis politics by responding.

Day 9 – stroll down the hill from Souliers to Chateau Queyras and back to Briancon via Mont Dauphin.
There is a fort called Chateau Queyras in the valley about an hour’s walk from Souliers. We wandered down there and did a tour of the fort. It is more interesting from outside than the inside but it was yet another fort that had been updated by Vauban during the late 17th century, along with Briancon and Mont Dauphin.

Chateau Queyras

We had arranged for a taxi to pick us up and take us back to Mont Dauphin, from where we caught a bus back to Briancon. When we got back to Briancon we had to do one more big march up the steep hill to the old town. With that out of the way the hike was truly over. We recovered our luggage and had long showers utilising all the beauty products that we could lay our hands on.

Dale and I got up early and spent Wednesday travelling by train from Briancon to Marseilles and then on to Porto Vecchio in Corsica by overnight ferry. Julia went on to Aix for 5 days with a few recommendations from us about how to chill out in Aix.

Sunrise on the ferry to Porto Vecchio, Corsica

Porto Vecchio

Next time - Hiking and beaching in Corsica