Provence Trip June/July 2023 - Part 5 St Martin Vesubie to Entrevaux

The next day we left Isola in the Tinee Valley and headed to Entrevaux. I'd forgotten I had marked out our routes on Google Maps and made screenshots of them, which would have been more helpful for you for the previous routes! The reason for the longer route below was because there were several gorges on the routes south that didn't sound like they would be possible in our motorhome.

Again I took photos with my phone out of the side window as we drove along.

Here we are coming into St Martin Vesubie. This town and those further down the valley suffered dreadfully from Storm Alex in 2020. About 600mm of rain (about a year's worth for some parts of France) fell in one day, resulting in mud slides and flash flooding in the narrow river valley, which caused roads and buildings to be washed away and loss of life. Even now, a lot remains to be rebuilt. The river bed was full of bulldozers and concrete blocks piled up. There were huge boulders everywhere which presumably had been washed down the valley. Hard to believe when the river itself was only a little stream when we went through - the power of water is really scary. There are some heartbreaking photos in this online gallery here.

Coming closer to that building, you can see how much of the bank was washed away and this poor building, whilst it still looks ok would have been condemned as it is far too dangerous to be lived in!

You can see if you click on the photo that the bridge is no longer there - just concrete stumps on either side. I can't actually see the stream here at all. We are  driving over a new bridge whilst the photo was being taken.

Another view of what was left of the original bridge here, on the right side of the river bed.

This area looks like the banks have been built up and the river bed cleared of boulders.

Poor old house!

When we arrived at our campsite near Entrevaux we went for a walk beside the Var river to the little town. It was on this path where I saw the Southern Comma butterfly.

Entrevaux, which was a bit of a sleepy hollow to be honest. There is a castle up the top of the hill.

Here you can see the castle perched on top of the rock, with lovely zigzag paths leading all the way up to it. I had originally thought about going up there, but changed my mind when I saw just how far it was - and I think I'd have been going on my own anyway! 😀

From here we headed to the coast - to be followed in Part 6.