After leaving La Faviere we started the slow journey west in the direction of home. We hoped to visit Cassis which is just east of Marseille, which we had tried to visit a previous time but couldn't find a place to park. It had looked such a lovely town that we thought we would try to get into the campsite 20 mins walk from the port, as that seemed to be the only way we could get a chance to see the place!
On the way we took a scenic road between La Ciotat and Cassis which goes along the clifftops and has the most amazing views, with plenty of places to pull off to take photos.
This natural 'bridge' wasn't as close as it looks in the photo and wasn't really accessible, otherwise we would have taken a closer look!
The kind of views we had. It was a bit of a shame that this scenic road wasn't very long, only about 30 minutes of driving time, though it took us longer due to several stops.
This is a hemi parasitic plant called Odontites luteus. It is a part of the Broomrape family of parasitic plants.
I was stumped by this plant at first because the seed pods looked like they had been carved from wood. They were very unusual. It turns out it is none other than the Sage-leaved Rockrose (Cistus salviifolius), only I've never seen it in the autumn before, only in the spring when it is flowering! Aren't those seed pods amazing?!
Some tourists took some photos of us and vice versa. Only in the first photo I had my eyes shut, and then I was just leaning over to Keith so he could put his arm around me when she took the next photo, so I look a bit strange! 😀
Looking straight down over the cliff!
A view of Cassis.
Cassis again, zoomed in.
It turned out this was to be the best view we would get of Cassis as the campsite was full, of course. They don't allow booking either which is really annoying. I don't think we are destined to ever get here!
Here's a map showing our route from La Faviere to here, and then on to our next, and last, stop of our trip - the Camargue.
It took us a day and a half to drive to the coast to our usual campsite at La Faviere, near Le Lavandou.
Somewhere along the way, still in the mountains, we took these photos.
We also passed the Lac de Serre Poncon again, this time from the south side where we were high up and the views were outstanding.
When we arrived at the campsite, it was full! That's never happened before, as there must be about 500 pitches there. So we were told to go and find another campsite for the night, but we could go back to our campsite of choice for the following couple of nights and we could arrive just before lunchtime, which gave us another half day there. At this campsite we stay put and don't use the Moho and give K a break from driving for a few days. We can take a bus from here or we walk. This time though, we were right the other end of the site from the sea, a good ten minutes walk uphill.
It was all good exercise for us as the restaurant was also ten mins walk and we sat out on the covered terrace, which wasn't particularly warm as you can see. It even rained!
The following day was cloudy but it was market day at nearby Le Lavandou, which is a huge and very good market (another handbag added to the collection. Woven paper or straw handbags are all the rage, don't you know 😉). The campsite has a little train, so we decided to take it to the beach in order to walk into Le Lavandou to the market. However it is actually much quicker to walk! The train went up and down the alleyways and took forever to get to the stop near the beach. This is the best photo of the bunch we took because the train was rattling and jolting along. It was fun and interesting to see all around the vast campsite.
When the weather at last turned sunny we headed to the beach, only to find everyone else had had the same idea (not surprising really). I have never seen it so packed and we've been here before in June, Sept and October. We had planned to swim, but the water was, shock, horror, cold!! I've swum here before in October and it was warmer then. So we had a good old paddle instead and I got as far in as you can see from the pictures, although a wave came along and wet my bum which was annoying. I still couldn't brave going in further though! 😂
We love swimming here as it's totally sandy underfoot in the water which is so nice, especially as my feet can't take gravel with the neuropathy. It was a bit disappointing but there will be plenty of next times. Maybe we'll stop here in September again on our way to Italy.
This shows our route from Guillestre to the campsite by the sea.
Mont Dauphin is yet another Vauban fort, of which there are many around the borders of France, including in the mountains, both Pyrenees and the Alps. This fort was completed in 1700 to protect the Alpine frontier, however after the Treaty of Utrecht 13 years later the borders moved and thus this fort, being no longer near the border, never became the size of garrison town that Vauban had envisaged.
After the first world war the military left the fort and many civilians left too, with the population dropping down to only 30 during the 1970s-1980s. Nowadays, after many artists and craftspeople moved in to work for tourists, the population is 170.
This image gives you an idea of the shape of the fortifications. All the Vauban forts which we've seen have similar shapes. It's very hard to show this from ground level pictures. I've mentioned Vauban before but for anyone who doesn't know, he was a French military engineer who served under Louis XIV, and was considered the greatest military engineer of his time. He also worked on many civilian infrastructure projects, such as ports, canals and roads.
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We entered by the road that you see at the bottom of the photo above and went over a couple of moats/ditches to get into the village part of the fortress.
The views are magnificent here.
Keith in front of one of the Corps de Garde (guardhouses) - this was on our way out so is the same guard house as the one I'm standing in front of above.
The Lunette d'Arcon - with a vaulted artillery proof chamber, which was probably to defend the main entrance to the fort. You can see it (V shaped) bottom left in the aerial photo. (I've got my photo order mixed up - this was before the bridges and guard houses, but I'm not going to change it all now!).
Southern Globethistle (Echinops ritro), a plant that seems to thrive in dry soil at this time of the year. It is very prickly though!
If you look closely at the largest image, you can see a Honey Bee at the top of the largest flower, a Violet Carpenter Bee under the flower, and a wasp of some sort on the right hand flower.
Going over the second bridge to enter the village.
Inside the village area.
There are only a few streets and I've found that the villages within Vauban's forts tend to be a bit austere.
Same street, looking back in the other direction.
We walked past the village and into an area of trees, then into an open area within the fortifications with amazing views. Being perched up on a rock like this adds to the defensive nature of forts like this - there is only one entrance on the flat side.
I think we are looking in the direction of the Ecrins mountain range which is further down that valley where the straight road which crosses the Guil river goes. I think our campsite was up there too - it's hard to tell directions sometimes!
We didn't visit Guillestre town itself and after this we headed south to the coast!👍
I've only been waiting since the beginning of December for the flowers to open! Originally there were six buds but three withered and died, one by one, leaving just three flowers. The stem is so long, it's towering over all my other orchids.
I have three Phalaenopsis in flower now too, which includes a new one that K gave me for Valentine's Day. It's so nice to have plants flowering indoors in winter when there is very little happening in the garden.
Remember my Mother In Law's Tongue that flowered twice last year? I noticed another flower stem on it! That's three times in less than one year. I'll try again to photograph the flowers this time when they open up.
I also cut off the keiki (baby) from my Dendrobium and potted it up. However i basically had to pot it upside down as the roots were sticking upwards when it was attached to the main plant. I had to cut some shoots off in order to get it into the pot and at least four leaves went brown and fell off and I thought it was going to die. But the remaining leaves are fine now and there is a new shoot coming up, so I think it will be OK.
I'm obviously doing something right with my houseplants, bar the Spider Plants. They really don't like it here and just dry out too quickly, and even if I try to water them more often, they are still unhappy and have lots of brown leaves. I always thought Spider Plants were foolproof? It must be the heating which is via warm air coming out of ceiling vents.
My oldest Phalaenopsis which has flowered many times since I got it.
There are also dozens of Early Spider Orchids flowering in the lawn again! I'll take photos later when the grass has dried out. We've had another week of awful high wind and rain. I'm way behind with the garden tidying up after winter. Annoyingly it looks like I have lost all my Bidens in pots, I think because we had a number of very cold days where the temps hovered around freezing all day, which is unusual for here. Never mind, I'll just get some new plants to fill in the gaps in my large pots. They served me well for several years. 😀
St Veran sits at an altitude of 2,042m which is the highest year round inhabited village in France, and third highest in western Europe. It's a village full of alpine style houses dating from the C17th and C18th. Once these mountain villages relied on agriculture to survive whereas now summer tourism and winter sports are also ways to make a living.
The diagram shows how the majority of houses were built. They had a stone ground floor, then wooden floors above made from whole tree trunks. A smaller stone building was attached to the main building called a 'caset'. In this were a kitchen and store rooms. The families lived in the main, largest room with the animals for warmth and the upper wooden floors called 'fustes', which allowed air to circulate, were where they dried and stored fodder for their animals for the long winter. The houses were built mainly of larch and had large larch shingles or flat stone shingles for their roofs. They face south west to take advantage of the sun.
A Rowan tree below showing its lovely orange berries.
The village is long and built mainly around one street and was historically divided into 5 hamlets. This was to do with fighting fires in the wooden buildings and hence where the water fountains were located.
There are five of these fountains/troughs in the village and the water comes from mountain springs. The round bit was for the animals to drink from and the lower rectangular part for washing clothes.
There was a large photo showing the village at the beginning of the C20th, but the buildings haven't changed a lot on the outside, although they have of course been adapted for C20th and C21st century living. That's an Crag Martin flying in the picture.
The scenery around was amazing. We could feel the cool air up here and by the state of the geraniums in planters there had been a recent frost. We had lunch sitting out on the terrace above the village here and it was really a stunning place to sit and eat. The food was extremely filling too, I had a beef stew with gnocchi which was an odd mix and I could only get through about half of it!
Here we can see a number of different roofing styles, and another fountain.
A building that is different from the rest!
We then came down from the village to the valley below and had a walk along beside the stream.
Autumn Crocus (Colchicum autumnale). I've seen them growing in the mountain areas at this time of year both in the Pyrenees and the Southern Alps, but they are widespread throughout much of Europe. There were hundreds of them in the grassy area above.
L'Aigue-Blanche stream, looking in the direction of Italy which was close by.
Looking back in the other direction.
The map shows our journey from Guillestre to St Veran.
