Short summary -- long hot day.
31C predicted... and it was probably about that. 8.5 hours predicted and it took about 8. We were all three of us quite tired by the time we arrived at our yurtish destination shortly before 5PM.
After saying goodbye to Thomas and Suzi... who had originally planned to hike with us today, but for whom the hike would simply have been too long... we walked off along the road to Le Caire around 7:45AM. It was a lovely cool morning, very few cars, and we made good time, arriving in Le Caire after an hour.
There we turned off and headed up into the hills along tracks and then paths that got wilder and wilder. The hills were pretty rugged, and at some point we reached an outlook point from which we could look back along the way we had come... not a sign of civilization to be seen. It felt a little as if we were making our way through some South American landscape before the advent of man... if we had heard monkey calls or the deep cough of a jaguar I wouldn't have been surprised. I've called this France's Empty Quarter before, but this was the first day that it has really felt as if we were all alone.
And then we came to the top, and the valley of the Durance appeared with its motorway, railway, towns and villages, roads, orchards and greenhouses, light industry, electricity pylons, airfield and so on. A stunning view, huge and expansive, framed by mountains... but lacking the magic of the lush and wild hills we had just come through.
Still, off in the distance, but much nearer than when we had seen them last, we could see the snow-tipped peaks of the Parc National des Écrins where we will be in a couple of days. And that was a fine sight too.
The walk down from our pass was delightful for a while, with non-stop views, but towards the end of the morning there was a long, steep, hot and stony descent into Tallard that dragged a bit. It didn't help that I had started to feel a little hungry by mid-morning. At any rate, we came down to the surprisingly tiny Durance RIver shortly before 1PM and sat down in the shade to have lunch.
Looking at the map I saw two things -- why the Durance was tiny (most of the water is diverted through a tunnel for several km to a hydropower statino), and that there wasn't too much further to go to get to Jarjayes. We had done the bulk of the hike before lunch.
But that which remained turned out to be much more difficult than that which we had already done. The heat built up in the afternoon and there was a crushingly steep climb of about 350 meters up a southwest facing slope that just about did us in (photographic proof will be posted shortly!).
We were, as said above, footsore and tired by the time we got to Jarjayes. But some cold water, a shower, and an hour lying down listening to music on my iPad have brought me back from the brink and now I'm thinking about dinner and then bed... instead of just bed. So all's well. Tomorrow's hike should be less strenuous.
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