Friday 30th June: Slightly overast skies warm to hot, 18°C to 27°C
Auron to St Dalmas Le Selvage: 15k walk: 9.45am to 3.15pm, 5hrs 30 mins
Scott glueing Graham's shoes
Another relatively short 15k day but still very beautiful in the forested Vallee Tinee. Highlight was walking down the gravel road after climbing to the Col d'Anelle to see the next forested Vallon de St Dalmas and the quaint little village of St Dalmas Le Selvage. At 1500 metres, it's the highest village in the Alpes Maritimes. From above, the village looks like a round circus tent built from leggo. It's such a small compact village with only about 60 old houses clustered around a central square.
A lazy start to the day, as it's not a long day. I discover I have a malware issue on my Mac and it doesn't allow me to publish my blog, nor access Firefox without a series of porn sites taking over. A bit of a worry. Ian chats to Bonnie while I google Malware. I can't fix it so I'll need to leave it til tonight. Breakfast is a really nice spread of breads, cheese, ham and fruit and yoghurt, but the strong black soupy coffee makes me feel quite ill.
Checking for Malware while waiting
St Etienne sur Tinee below
Graham's got coffee
Jenny's new best friend Christian
Hot work up the mountain
But worth the views
Looking back at the Tinee Valee
Now that's a view
Through the flowers
Lunch stop at cold water fountain
Col d'Anelle 1739m
View from Col d'Anelle
St Dalmas Le Selvage below
Home for the night Ancien Hotel
We're out the door at 9.30am and buy a loaf of mountain bread from teh local Casino. And surprise surprise, Graham buys a small jar of coffee! His shoes are also coming apart, and we stop at the local ski shop where the owner helps him glue them back together. We're not sure if it will work. At 9.45am we're walking up the road out of Auron for about a k, until we see the GR5 sign to St Etienne sur Tinee. The track is steep, shaley and slippery, and it takes us an hour and a half to slide our way down to the main road in the Tinee Valley. There's another 2k to walk to the village of St Etienne sur Tinee and we arrive at midday. The local markets are today - prawns at $60 per kilo!!. Lots of tomatoes and cheese but we have enough for the day. Still, it makes a nice morning tea stop, perched on the wall of teh school playground and Graham tries out his new coffee.
The long day 2 days ago has caught up with Jenny, and she's looking fo ra bus/taxi to St Dalmas, as there's another 600 metre climb ahead. While wandering the streets, someone asks us if we are lost, and after a brief conversation with him, as he spoke perfect English, we discover he's married to an Australian and lives for part of the year in Buderim. He offers Jenny a lift to St Dalmas, 7k away by road, and Graham obligingly goes with her. At 12.45pm we part and Ian and I head up the track out of the Vallee Tinee towards the Col d'Anelle.
It's steep but not slippery, and it's so hot that we're dripping sweat as we climb, even though it's through a pine forest. The track zig zags backwards and forwards, crossing a gravel road, and eventually rises out of the forest and across flower filled meadows. Along a contour to a flat section we stop and see we're already at teh Col d'Anelle at 1739 metres before 2pm. There's a nice shady spot under a tree, near a running water fountain with icy cold water - a good place to stop for a late lunch. Two other hikers come past. They're English so we have a chat and find out they are doing the GR5 then the GR52 to Menton where we started.
Down the other side on a good graded gravel road, and soon we see the amazing little round village of St Dalmas Le Selvage. This compact village resembles a circus tent made from leggo. Down to the stream and across the bridge and into the village. I didn't download a google maps of teh area as teh village is so small it would only tale 3 minutes to walk around to find teh hotel and I was right. A stroll past the church into the main square, up teh first paved street and voila! There's the sign to the Ancien Hotel. We poke our noses in and someone in English says our two friends have already arrived and its ok to book in early (Air BnB time is 5pm check in).
We're taken up some steep rickety stairs at 45°- there's a rope to help pull yourself up - to our rooms and Jenny and Graham are there WiFi-ing. We're in the room opposite. We order 4 beers but put them in the mini fridge in the kitchenette for later.
Time to wash our clothes, shower and time for me to untangle my malware from my Macbook air. In an hour I've partially solved the problem by dismantling the browser Firefox and re-installing, but I've lost all my "remembered" stuff like page formats and remembered passwords. But at least it's working. It happened last night when I was looking for maps that explain the layout of the Maritime Alps, The Provence Alps and haut Provence Alps, and clicking an enlarge image probably activated an .exe file that introduced a heap of malware - unwanted porn website pages that intrude after clicking on my usual banking website - nasty.
ian and I take a short walk around town. The village is quite small and dead - it must be because the only people we bump into are Graham and Jenny who'd also gone for a walk. We stick our noses into the St Dalmas Le Selvage church built in 1811 and see 2 women perched on scaffolding, painstakingly restoring the old church mural. One is chiselling away with a minute hammer and chisel, the other daubing with chalk-like paint.
Back at the Hotel Ancien, it's time to sort photos before dinner and at 7.30 we absail down the old staircase to the dining room and meet Minnie and Tim, our host Anna's brother who have come out from Scotland for teh week. A white wine or three later and dinner is served at a beautiful 70mm thick elm timber table by Flaurent and Anna, our hosts. We are joined by a Belgian couple, Roxanne and Jan whom we'd seen arrive at the teh village earlier on our walk. Dinner is lamb stew and mashed potato, then green lettuce (Italian style with oil and salt), cheese and bread, followed by chocoate cake - all washed down with red wine. It's almost 10pm when we finish after much dicussion about various hikes around teh place. Our hosts are going walking in the morning - as the French do because it's Saturday - so breakfast is at 7.30am.
Roses line the streets of St Dalmas
Fruit van arrives in town
Dinner at Ancien Hotel
Gite de Roya