As well as being more amenable to overnight stops, the mountainous area of the Alpes Maritime above the Riviera coast has stunning scenery and villages so we continued travelling north and west and enjoying some more off-grid stops. When we were in France last year we watched the seasons change into autumn and then winter and this year we’re watching the changes into spring with trees and vines coming into bud and blossom and spring flowers on the hillsides. The plane trees that are such iconic feature of the French landscape are taking longer to come into bud and maintain their bare structural look in town squares and along the roads.
The first of our overnight stops was at a beautiful viewpoint just outside the remote village of Clans, which had a surprisingly lively bar at the top of the village, but nothing else, and an excellent bakery in the lower Pont de Clans.
Heading west we stopped opposite the medieval former royal village of Entrevaux, located at a strategic bend on the Var river with the Vauban citadel high above it. During an invasion of Provence in 1536 by Charles V, King of Spain an Emperor of Austria, the town was taken and subsequently liberated by the courage of its inhabitants who gave themselves up to the King of France. In recognition the town was given royal status with privileges and tax exemptions until the French revolution in 1789. The citadel is the second designed by the engineer, architect and military strategist Vauban that we have come across on our travels in France. The first was Fort Liberia at Villefranche de Conflent on the other side of France near the Pyrenees, and both seem to be a similar slab-sided construction. Entrevaux still has several drawbridges at the gates in its fortified walls and some lovely squares squirrelled away in its narrow streets and has a medieval pageant every 2 years celebrating its history and lighting up the stairway up to the citadel.
Heading further west with another off-grid stop at Lac de Castillon, we were making for Castellane, a town in the Alpes de Haute Provence that sits at one end of the Gorges de Verdon. We’ve visited this area a couple of times before, once on the motorbike, staying at the other end of the gorge and three years ago in the old campervan when Claire’s brother also joined us for some motorcycling in the Gorges. On that trip we swam in the turquoise lake which is fed by the Verdon river. An artificial lake, the level is way down at the moment and apparently it will be ‘filled’ in time for the summer season.
This time we planned to use a campsite in the town as a base to do some motorcycling in areas we hadn’t previously visited. From a practical point of view we also need to use campsites every now and then for chores you can’t escape from, even in a motorhome, such as washing clothes as most campsites have washing machines and dryers. When we look at our photos we’re conscious that we’re often wearing the same clothes – clean of course! That’s mainly due to being limited as to how much we can bring with us, taking into account changing seasons and different activities. We’ve decided that we will think of ourselves like some TV journalists in a travel programme who wear the same outfit in different locations for continuity – so this is our version of ‘continuity clothing’.
The town of Castellane is dominated by the imposing Roc Notre Dame with its small chapel right on the top. The Roc was inhabited in the Middle Ages and is now a classed site. We have done the walk up to the chapel on a previous visit and the views are amazing.
The area attracts many motorcyclists, some drawn by the roads along and above the Gorges du Verdon and others by the Route Napoleon, an iconic biking road which starts near Nice, passes up through Grasse and on to Grenoble. The roads that make up the Route Napoleon follow the route that Napoleon took to Grenoble and then on to Paris in 1815 on his return from exile in Elba. From Castellane we followed the Route Napoleon south to Grasse, with Joe declaring it to be one of the best biking roads he has ridden. We had planned to visit Grasse, considered to be the perfume capital of the world, from the south but it was much easier doing it on the bike. We couldn’t visit the town without visiting a perfume factory and we did an interesting free tour of the Fragonard factory, probably the best known perfume house in Grasse. With the amount of sales as you ‘exit via the gift shop’ you can see how they can afford to run free tours throughout the day. It was probably our imagination but the whole town seems to smell very fragrant although some of that was due to the heady scent from wisteria in full bloom. It’s certainly an elegant town with a very Provençal look and feel about it. The ride back along a slightly different route if gorges and mountain valley was just as enjoyable.
