Alpes-Maritimes - September 10, 2000

We had a nice petit dejuner on the patio with Michelle, Michael and Françoise. More pear applesauce, café, several types of muffin and a mild light honey from rhododendrons – very relaxed. The parents left to take a day hike leaving the boys with Françoise to read comics (they were definitely tired of hiking). Bon and I decided that we had to get more cash so about 9:00 a.m. we walked down to Roquebillière where Françoise said there was a cash station. As you could see Roquebillière below it seemed a short walk. We walked down the yellow trail from the central square - a trail that was longer and much steeper than it appeared. On the main bridge to town, over a lovely clear river, an old man helped us with directions and we walked up the main street into the town square where we found two cash stations and we got some funds. On our way back we stopped at a Templar church where we saw a 13th century baptismal font. The church was in the flood plain of the stream and a pamphlet indicated that it had been destroyed by floods a couple of times. We had hoped to hitch a ride back up to Belvédère as it was a steep climb, but there was very little traffic going in our direction and we walked back up to the main square of Belvédère arriving about 11:30 a.m. There were lots of people out on Sunday. After shopping, we went back to la Raisinée, packed up and left for la Bollène-Vésubie.

The trail dropped steeply to a stream where we passed a wonderful old white-haired man coming up, who gave us some words of encouragement. Then the trail went up for a long way but through pleasant piney forests. It was a warmer day and we were quite dry and thirsty but well recovered from our long journey of the day before. When we reached the top of the hill we found two large cement emplacements of the Maginot Line with fixed turrets pointing to the valley below. Soon afterwards, we passed through some orchards and a rushing water gully appeared on the left, causing us to miss the turn of the trail on the right. We walked down the road and ate some wild figs and then, realizing we'd lost the trail, backtracked to the missed turn. This took us down a farm road between an orchard and the adjacent farm. Further down as we entered the woods, I flushed what appeared to be a pheasant – I thought with a white ring around its neck but darker than the pheasants in the U.S. It followed our path and I heard it scrabbling further on, but could not get another sighting. We crossed a bridge high above a crystal stream which I thought might be fun to swim in, but it looked like a hard scrabble down so we continued on. At about 2:30 p.m. we plopped down on a mossy place with a few thin pines in front overlooking at a wonderful old orange farm building and the orchards we'd passed. We took off our shoes and socks and had a lovely picnic of baguette, cheese, peanuts, orange and muffins with chocolate that Françoise had left for us in our room. After lunch the trail climbed to la Bollène. As we reached the road we chatted with two nice older French women. When we told them where we had started, one said to Bon that she must be in better santé than she was. We walked into the little town looking for a hotel and asked a woman who said the Grand Hotel du Parc was just down the hill one kilometer. After looking in various directions we walked quite far down and a French couple, with large backpacks pointed us in the right direction down the same trail on which we had arrived (GR 52A).

The hotel was beautifully situated with two rows of trees leading to it over a field and mountains rising on both sides. When I asked for a room with a beautiful view, an older woman there added, "de la mer" and we all laughed. The younger woman took us up to a delightful room in the corner of the hotel with one window looking down the valley over yellow poplar trees and the other up into the mountains – spectacular! The sun poured into the room and I fashioned a makeshift clothesline between the two windows from which the clothes flapped and quickly dried. The pedometer read 10.32 miles about half of which was our morning trip to Roquebillière. We reached the hotel about 4:15 p.m. having taken 22,288 steps and expended 1074 calories - still understated. We then walked up the hill into the town again and reconnoitered. On the way back down we met a nice strong looking man who we thought was Algerian. He was changing the flow of the water in the gullies. He said that the water channels were very old and ran all through and under the village.

There were about ten people in a nice dining room that had shellacked wooden beams and posts and taxidermy wildlife – birds, marmot, etc. At the end of the meal I asked the only other couple remaining whether they lived nearby. It turned out they were Belgians on vacation and she was a teacher. We had a nice conversation in my poor French. He talked about a place called l'Authion which was near our planned destination of the next day, Col de Turini, and I made some notes. I collapsed into bed early and Bon watched the moon appear out of our beautiful windows.