Short summary -- nobody is perfect.
After a nice dinner in our Sisteron hotel of (for most of us) the local specialty -- l'Agneau de Sisteron (lamb) -- and (for some of us) way too much excellent cheese, we went to bed early once again. The following morning I had planned for us to visit the citadel... but for a couple of reasons this plan was summarily shelved. For one thing, a couple of hikers expressed a desire to start early so as to avoid the heat of the afternoon. For another, I wasn't quite sure that the hike was going to be as short as planned (4.25 hours)... in part because the current group hikes at a, shall we say, moderate pace, and in part because the trail went off my maps for a while and I wasn't quite sure what it did there (and thus how long it would take).
So we set off around 9:30, and found, as soon as we reached the other side of the Durance, that the trail had been changed... instead of turning right, as I expected, it turned left and started climbing steeply. This, it was to transpire, was only the first of a number of suprises during the day's hike.
It was a nice day -- warm, but not too warm, with scattered clouds -- and the hike went through lovely and dramatic countryside that ever and anon drew our guide's (i.e., my) atttention away from where we were going. In addition, the hiking group has in the meantime gelled so that there are always several interesting conversations going on at any one time... which also didn't help my concentration. And lastly, I think that in the back of my mind was the attitude that because it wasn't a very long hike, there was no great urgency.
Whatever the reasons, my map-reading was pretty woeful. On one occasion we missed a trail turn (all of us, that is, except for Russell, who bringing up the rear and being some distance behind (for reasons into which it is perhaps better not to go), didn't see which way we had gone and thus took the right path... only to be called back onto the wrong path... a call he followed without telling us that he had seen the trail markings going the other way... sigh). It took a while until we realized the error.
On another occasion an oddly placed hiking signpost pointed us towards our goal (the tiny village of Saint Geniez) along a road... but after a while I noticed that the road wasn't heading in the right direction. So, we retraced our steps to the signpost... and realized that it had been mounted incorrectly: the arrow indicating Saint-Geniez pointed in completely the wrong direction. A fact I could have realized if I had been paying attention to the map....
And then my time estimation was off -- ten minute predictions turning out to take over half an hour.
All in all, unimpressive orienteering. But, as Bismarck (I think) once said in a missive to the Kaiser, after a conference in which all of his plans had gone awry, the situation was hopeless, but not serious. It was, after all, not that long a hike, the trails were excellent, and the weather was fine.
We rolled into Saint-Geniez about 3:45PM, and, after a couple of rounds of drinks at the local café, got to our B&B around 5. Another great day on the H3H.
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