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Monday, Sept 10th, 2007
Wow, 60 stages done, and before the end of the week we'll be out of the high Alps. Earlier in the H2H it seemed as if we were crawling along, now it seems as if we are rushing. I'm not quite at the point of nostalgia yet, but I can feel it approaching!
Had our (or rather my, since I'm the only one who speaks French well enough to notice) first encounter with Provence today: the woman from whom we bought sandwiches for lunch spoke with a Provencal accent, and when I asked her about it she laughed and said that we were in the south now.
The weather agrees: today, as for the past several days, was again sunny and cloudless and warm. The hike was very pleasant: a gently rising balcony trail to a picturesque lake, followed by a steep descent to the village of Chateau Queyras with its impressive 13thC castle reworked in the 17thC by our friend Vauban. Afterwards came a long climb up a valley to the Col du Fromage (so named, I think, due to the extensive deposits of white, crumbly chalk up there), and at the end of the day a short descent through golden fields into the village of Ceillac.
The day was marred only by one thing: clouds of flies on the climb to Col Fromage. They didn't bite, but they annoyed nevertheless, particularly Russell who had the misfortune to swallow one and then promptly vomited. Not a recommended way to lose weight. Yuck.
The Queyras, through which we have been hiking since the Col des Ayres, is one of the most remote regions of France, surrounded by 3000m mountains with only one entry point lower than 2400m -- the gorge of the Guil River, long considered impassable, and along which a road was only built at the start of the 20th Century. It is also, no doubt as a result of its long isolation, a charming place, both landscape and villages, and Ceillac is no exception.
Our accommodation here is, however, another matter. Avoid the Gite-Restaurant de Matefaim if you should come to Ceillac. For a start the rooms are in a separate building some 100m from the restaurant where you have dinner and breakfast. And then they are miniscule, with sloping ceilings making for much head-banging. Lastly (thus far) the evening meal compared somewhat unfavourably to the average standard of cuisine in Britain in the 1950's: definitely the worst we have had in France so far. I am not looking forward to breakfast....
