Day 11. Moustiers-Sainte- Marie to Castellane

La Corniche Sublime

Today’s stage above the Grand Canyon du Verdon promised to be the hardest and most spectacular of the whole trip, venturing into what my Rough Guide to Provence describes as ‘cycling country only for the preternaturally fit’.  As my fitness level is certainly well short of preternatural, I resolved to take things slowly with plenty of rests, and I was particularly glad that my panniers were safely tucked away in Les’s car.

After a fast downhill start out of the village, I found myself struggling on a short upward gradient alongside the Lac de Sainte-Croix, making me wonder how I would cope on the 700 m Category 1 climb up to the Col de Vaumale – 12 km of uphill at an average of 5.9%.  Fortunately the climb can be split at the village of Aiguines, where I met Les for coffee and to stock up with water and food, before continuing to the Col d’Illoire at 967 m.  It’s not really a col as the road continues to rise immediately afterwards, but it was a good excuse for a stop as it is the first of numerous viewpoints that allow you to peer down into the gorge.

 
It also marks the start of the well-named Corniche Sublime, a road that was specially built in the 1940s to provide tourists with spectacular views of the gorge.  It was an amazing ride and from a bike you could really appreciate the truly stunning scenery and the remarkable way in which the road clung to the side of the gorge.  At the highest section, just over 1200 m and the high point of the Saint-Malo to Nice ride, you can look straight down to the river which is 700 m below. 

A French motorist came up for a chat and asked me if my bike had ‘les bons freins’.  I assured him that it did, even though I was aware that I had not replaced the brake blocks for a long time, and the freins were certainly tested on a very fast descent to the Hôtel du Grand Canyon.  The hotel looked very busy, so I pressed on, through some tunnels, across an impressive bridge over a tributary gorge and up to a very welcome café by the Balcons de la Mescla. 

What a great pit-stop!  Not only did they sell an excellent calorie-laden banana cake, but there were deckchairs outside on the terrace where I could take in the views while resting a body that was showing a distinct lack of preternatural fitness.  After a very lazy half hour, I wandered down to the balcon and its birds-eye view of the river below, then struggled up the final 200 m climb which needed several short rest stops.

Now it was almost all downhill, very gently at first to a road junction at Comps-sur-Artuby, where I stopped for a coffee and to admire this superb mural, then much more rapidly back down to the Verdon river at Pont-du-Soleil.  

The final 12 km into Castellane was a perfect way to wind down at the end of the day, hugging the bottom of the gorge with steep crags on both sides and rocks overhanging the road.  I was following the river upstream so must have been going uphill, but the gradient was so slight as to be barely noticeable.

We were staying in another quirky hotel on the main square, dominated by a 200 m high cliff with a chapel on top, a fine setting to watch the locals playing what appeared to be some very serious games of pétanque.

Distance today 81 km
Total distance 820 km