After spending the first night in our apartment quite well, we set off early in our rental car toward the Verdon Gorge. We thought the breathtaking scenery would only await us there, but the drive there was simply amazing!
Castellane – starting point for our tour along the Verdon Gorge
To begin our tour along the French canyon (one of the largest in Europe), we drove to Castellane. The wild Verdon River is ideal for rafting, among other activities, and there were already a few boats lined up along the river. We watched the preparations from a small bridge at the entrance to the town. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time to see them start.
We began our tour through the approximately 21 km long and up to 700 m deep canyon. Our first stop was the "Pont de Solleil" viewpoint. Small but beautiful. First, it should be mentioned that you don't have to stop only at the designated spots. Sometimes just a small pull-over on the side of the road offers a much more interesting view!
Pont de sublime (Verdon Gorge)
After that, we headed a bit off the main route to the "Pont de sublime." Various hiking trails also start from here. Since we're not just traveling, but geocachers, we naturally also looked for caches nearby. And lo and behold, there's even one at this viewpoint. So we headed off into the undergrowth next to the road. The search ended at a rock face about 100 meters high. Oh, but wait, how are you supposed to get up there? None of us are good at climbing that kind of thing. So we trotted off again – without the cache we found. When we got back to the circular route by car, we discovered that there was a parking lot for the "Pont de sublime." According to the GPS, the cache was very close again, so we set off. This time it worked, as we were now on the cliffs and we picked up the cache right at the edge. The view from up here was simply amazing!
After this success, we continued with great enthusiasm. A very special stretch is Route 23, which runs directly along the canyon. There are so many viewpoints here that you could stop and see if you wanted to. In midsummer, these roads are very busy, and parking spaces quickly fill up. In any case, you should drive carefully and be patient.
At one point, I looked down the gorge and thought to myself how awesome these steep walls must be for climbers. At that moment, the first one came into view. Wow... these people are really brave!
As we drove through the tranquil village of Palude, we returned to the main road. We continued toward the reservoir near the town of Moustier. About halfway there, we saw a waterfall from afar. The water simply cascaded down from the slopes above us. The waterfall was more of a cascade along a cliff crevice, right next to the road!
Moustier
Moustier is a lovely little tourist town. A river cascades down into the valley right in the center of town, creating lovely little pools by gently damming the water just before the waterfall.
For our return trip to Nice, we took the path along the other side of the canyon. You don't see quite as much of the wild Verdon here, but this route is also highly recommended.
On the way to Grass, which you have to pass to get to Nice, we drove through a military area. When we saw huge warehouses, we absolutely had to stop and photograph them: tanks and army vehicles as far as the eye could see.
The return trip took a bit longer than planned. The drive through the suburbs of Nice was quite adventurous, trying to avoid ending up on the toll motorway. A few traffic rules were ignored, but the French don't mind that anyway.
Are you still looking for a suitable hotel on the Côte d'Azur?
You can find a hotel to suit your budget via various online travel agencies such as Agoda, Booking.com, ebookers.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, lastminute.com, opodo, otel.com or Venere.com.
For us, the Verdon Gorge is definitely a must-see. Online and in travel guides, the Verdon Gorge is often compared to the Grand Canyon (USA). Personally, I don't think this comparison is accurate. The vegetation and rocks reminded me more of Yosemite National Park east of San Francisco.
Hey Chris, since when have you been a geocacher? ;-) We should go on a caching tour together sometime.
Otherwise, good blog entry as always (I would have loved to have been in the gorge too)… and as an experienced reader, I immediately see the Chris style :D
The gorge wouldn't be bad for you. There's definitely plenty of climbing to be done there, but also at dizzying heights. If we observed correctly, the climbers abseil down from the top and then climb back up. It's probably the only way, since some of the steep walls are 700 meters high. :)
We've been caching like this since last fall. I saw it at Folker's in Ilmenau and have already found 200 caches. We'd love to do a caching tour sometime. There are many caches in trees where you definitely need climbing gear.
Greetings
200 isn't bad... I think I've been doing this for just as long and I'm at 60 ;-). But let's really do it; climbing caches are always really cool.
Speaking of climbing... I definitely want to see more pictures of the gorge. It looked pretty awesome, and a 700-meter big wall has its appeal. Although I don't really believe the lowering thing. Nobody has a 700-meter rope ;-)
Greetings from the Ländle
We've already found 231 caches. They're all nicely listed in the statistics. ;)
Then we should start a tour sometime. There's a route near us with over 200 caches.
I can't say whether people climbed the entire wall. The walls aren't all 700 meters high. :) Unfortunately, we only saw climbers on the wall and on the plateau, and as laypeople, we figured they were abseiling a few meters and then climbing back up. For training purposes, that's what came to our minds.