Short summary -- living on the edge.
By which is meant both the paths and the weather... as I'll explain below. But first I need to finish off the day before, since I wrote the blog entry before dinner, and before our cousin Sophie, who was supposed to join us at Jas des Bailles, had appeared.
Dinnertime was at 7:30, and, since Sophie had neither appeared nor sent message of her arrival time (apparently -- in fact she had sent me an SMS but due to poor connectivity it did not arrive), we started without her. As each course appeared, we conscientiously set aside one seventh for her... only to divide it up amongst ourselves when the next course seemed imminent and Sophie still had not arrived. In this way we reached the end of dinner (which was very nice... and copious :-). And of course shortly afterwards Sophie showed up (her train had been delayed). Hungry, poor thing.
Fortunately, our very nice landlady (who had started to doubt that Sophie existed as more than a way for us to get extra large helpings of dinner) sprang to the rescue and offered her an omelette with paté, salad, and cheese... so although Sophie missed out on the superb lasagna main course, overall she did ok. The only problem was that the rest of us were all tired from our hike... so we all went to bed at 10PM, about fifteen minutes after she finished eating. It is a good thing that Sophie is a very understanding person.
The next day dawned cloudy and muggy. Since the hike would not be too long and no thunderstorms were expected, we didn't especially hurry to leave... eventually starting around 9AM. Another lovely hike. Down a valley, around a shoulder, along an outthrust ridge sloping down to the village of Valbelle, then to and across the wide valley of the Jabron, and up into the hills on the far side. After lunch we climbed to another high ridge, like but lower than the Montagne de Lure from the previous day, and walked several kilometers along it, with great views to either side, until the trail dropped down into the town of Sisteron.
I should say, into the very lovely town of Sisteron. It has a spectacular location between two huge spurs of rock where in ages past the Durance River, already very large and powerful due to draining a significant chunk of the French Alps, had carved a passage. Sisteron has a number of spectacular buildings, including a large church, a couple of towers, and an extensively fortified citadel... none of which, of course, anyone looked at closely since we were all tired from the hike! We did have a good view of the citadel when coming down from the ridge, and our hotel was situated on the same square as the church and the towers... but that's as close as we got. It is almost always like that when you hike in the mountains: culture and history take a back seat to baser needs and desires.
And a few last words about Sophie, since this was her first real mountain hike, I think. She did very well. Kept up the whole day, at times even in front, and although tired at the end there were no (ok, minimal... :-) complaints. We might have a convert....
And why "on the edge"? Well, there were dark clouds all day, with the odd raindrop, but as luck would have it, it didn't actually rain until we were in Sisteron having dinner. And the ridge walks at times gave us precipitous views down to either side. A little melodramatic, I know... but I figured Sophie's parents would appreciate the tension :-).
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