DAY 11: Tuesday June 12th - Seyne to Costeplane: 26k, 8hrs: Rain, overcast then 1hr of sun: 5°C to 18°C (but mostly 10°C all day)
Leaving the Hotel Les Chaumiettes
Tuesday is market day in Seyne
Trudging up the road - 8°C in rain
Boiling the billy, looking for sun
First glimpse of Lake Serre Poncon
A sea of wild flowers in the Alps
It snowed last night
On the old Roman Bridge 100m up
A few minor disasters today. Firstly, for breakfast at the hotel this morning, the tea was luke warm, then this afternoon we ran out of gas for our billy. It was supposed to last another 5 days at least - a gross underestimation - and it will be 2 days before we can buy another gas bottle.
We awoke to great skies and rain at 6.30am after a really long nights sleep. We went downstairs to get a WiFi connection but the breakfast room door was locked, so we had to sit on the stairs in the cold and dark to phone home. Breakfast at 8 was the worst we have had in France - very luke warm tea (on the coldest morning so far), with stale bread, rock hard toast, and awful sweet buns out of a freezer packet. Other than breakfast, the hotel was comfy and warm. I stick my head out onto the street - it's really cold - about 5°C - and drizzling rain. I go back upstairs to relay the good news to Ian and we set about rugging up with flannelette shirt, scarf and beanie then adding waterproof pants and jacket on top.
We leave at 8.30am and directly across the road, less than 5 metres from the door of the hotel, is a Boulangerie - it would have taken the hotel chef 1 minute and 1 Euro to buy a fresh French stick. We are still hungry, so we go in, taking up all the space with our backpacks poking in the face of the 3 locals in the shop, and buy up on bread and a big jam tart. We leave and walk up the road to find that Tuesday is market day in Seyne, with local cheeses and flowers galore. We buy up on cheese and stand in the market square devouring our fresh bread with cheese - what should have been our breakfast - bring on Trip Advisor!! We leave town a little later than we had hoped - about 9am and get a bit lost lon the way out, The GPS is spot on, but we are looking for a short cut to the road, and in doing so, we walk up a muddy path, sodden from the nights rain.
There's no designated path today. It was always going to be a higgledy piggeldy mix of tracks and roads to get around the edge of Lake Serre Poncon. The main track, the GR6 goes cross country and out to the south so we need to part company with this GR. The other main track, the Tour de Lake Serre Poncon, is really meant for mountain bikes, with long distance between somewhere and nowhere. So we opt for a mixture of minor roads, some tracks, and a bit on a few major roads. When we eventually got to the lake, and saw the steepness of the sides of the gorges, we could understand why there were very few tracks and only one main road into Lauzet Ubaye.
We follow a minor road and track to the ski station St Jean Montclar, and find a picnic table in the trees - it's still 10°C and though its not raining now, we're looking for some sun. The IGN maps, we discovered, also pinpoint picnic tables. We make good progress considering our late start and its really pretty with fresh powder snow on the top of the mountains so close to us now. We also get our first glimpse of Lake Perre Poncon, the largest manmade lake in France that apparently caused a Treveston dam kind of controversy when it was built in the 1960's.
We take a gravel road towards the pretty village of St Vincent Les Forts, perched high on a cliff top overlooking the lake then follow a track into the forests. We stop for another cup of tea, feeling deprived after this morning, the on to a beautiful sunny picnic spot in the middle of the woods. It's still cold. The fresh bread, sausage, tomato and cheese from the local markets is divine. We now need to take an secondary walking track (not a GR) down the mountainside to the main road at the bottom of the lake - our alternative was to walk 12k on a very major highway around the gorge edge to the only bridge at Lauzet Ubaye. The track starts off two lane - this is good - but soon turns into a very narrow rocky slope - but after yesterday's episode over the vertical shale cliff face, today's rocky path was a piece of cake. After 2hrs we hit the main road at the bottom and walk 2k on the small shoulder to the town of Lauzet Ubaye - its basically deserted this time of the year - it;s only a winter snow sports and summer rafter town and in-between it's dead.
We sit in the village square midst all the barricaded empty shops, and boil our billy - or rather try too - NO GAS - disaster - it wasn't supposed to run out now and should have lasted another 5 days. maybe we were stopping for more cups of tea than we thought. And it will be 2 days and a detour to Embrun to buy another gas bottle - but it's so worth it, so we'll make some amendments to the itinerary.
We leave the village square, cross the old Roman Bridge built high above the gorge and head up on a narrow road to a chamber d'hôte called Nature Sejours (Holidays in Nature) high up in the mountains. We are greeted by a dog and the owner and have a cherry beer with him. The place is very unusual with sets of arches inside. Engraved into the side of one is the date 1861, and he tells us it was originally used for sheltering sheep in the winter.
Dinner is at 8. The dinner is just superb. We first have an aperitif - home made sherry made from grapefruit. First course is salad and quiche tart, followed by salmon and mushroom rice, then apple tart, all washed down with red wine. Then to finish off the meal with genepi. We do a little bit of washing and go to bed. It's really warm and cosy inside - 2 foot thick walls.