Alpes-Maritimes - September 8, 2000

After a leisurely morning, we decided to walk to Venanson which was perched on a rocky outcropping above and south of St-Martin. We went by road and by a path which cut out some of the switchbacks. It was cool and sunny with blue blue sky overhead. When we reached the town we looked through a graveyard and then walked out to an outcropping above the valley, as directed by an old man, where there was a gun emplacement from the Second World War. As we walked out of town there were swallows diving and looping along the steep cliff above and below us. We looked for the signs of a path shown on the map to the south, away from St-Martin, which looped back below the crag of Venanson and then to St-Martin to the north. It was pleasant walking on the road quite high up, and then down on a little path with red markings through an oak forest to a farm road below which went by orchards alive with the pink crocus-like flower we had seen leaving Tende. We passed apple orchards with blackberries everywhere along the road which were delicious. I finally found the trail which wandered through farms with a cement gutter of clear water gurgling along side of the path. Farmers could tap this to fill tanks from which they watered the orchards and crops. We saw two girls in the distance in one orchard but no one else almost the whole day. The path led down through farms and then up along the side of the mountain cliff passing below the gun emplacement in Venanson. The path was shale rock and box bushes and piney mountains behind us. We stopped to eat our orange – our only nourishment except for the blackberries, at a spot with a view of St-Martin to the north. Then the trail led into forest and a nice woodsy walk but uphill for a long stretch. When it doubled back to climb to road, I decided to take a little path on the map that was more direct. This was a mistake. We ended up scrabbling and bushwhacking through woods and up scree to the stone foundation of the road which was too high to climb up except at one point where I could just pull myself up and then hoist Bon up. The walk was sunny and warm along the road and we saw startlingly red rose hips growing wild on the side of the road. As we approached St-Martin we crossed a bridge over the crystal clear Vésubie, passing a graveyard on the left and a grape arbor and pink cosmos on the right.

We arrived back at the hotel just in time to change for the Musique we had seen advertised at place Jean Gabon. This turned out to be a meeting of a children's music school without performance! We went back up through a square where they were playing boules. Bon noticed a plaque which said that on this very day in 1943, Jews had been taken from St-Martin to Auschwitz. What a contrast to the beautiful day we had.

We walked back at the hotel to laze. On our way to dinner we first walked up the main street with the rushing stream of water looking for restaurants but also looking for the sign for Grand Randonée 52A, the trail that we would take the following day. We passed a very cute little girl in a yellow coat who kissed her mother and then ran up the street ahead of us. We found the trail marker and turned back down and found a nice little restaurant. It was a little too chilly to sit outside, but it was cozy in the restaurant and I had an interesting view of the chef in the kitchen and the young man he was training. It turned out our waitress was the mother who we'd seen before. I told her how cute her daughter was which pleased her. The chef was very involved and we had a lovely dinner. We wandered back to the hotel about 10:00 p.m. According to the pedometer our walk was 7.92 miles, 16,972 steps, 5 hours and 5 minutes and 800 calories – I think we consumed a little more than the latter!