Hiking the GR6, GR5 & Tour du Mont Blanc 

DAY 6: Thursday June 7th: Sisteron to Authon: 21k, 7hrs: 18°C to 24°C 

All went according to plan today.  No surprises.  The distance was as estimated, 21k, the route was exactly as mapped out and the Gite des Monges was waiting at the end - already booked for a demi pension.

We arise at 6.30am, phone home from the Hotel lounge which has WiFi, and have a leisurely breakfast of dried ham, cheese, yoghurt and that French bread that they shouldn't be allowed to bake because we eat too much.  We leave at 8.15am, and walk down the steps to join the GR6 on the bridge over the River Durance - I had picked the Hotel La Citadelle as it was close to the track.  We immediately start to climb as we are now in the Alpes de Haute Provence (Alps of the High Provence).  We have left the rolling hills of Provence behind, and after 2hrs of climbing, we can look back across Provence and to the right, the mountains of the Lure where we had been 2 days before. 

We continue to climb through forests, and a deer crosses our path.  After 2hrs of climbing, we stop for a coffee and I adjust my hip pads which have alleviated the pressure of the backpack belt over my bones.  We are joined by two dogs who then proceed to follow us for the next 2k.  But TG one of them is a blood hound and when we come across a patch of turf dug up by pigs, one of the dogs picks up the scent and is off on the chase.  The other one follows us for a while but it's easy to turn him around with the blood hound barking his head off up in the hills. The countryside has become spartan, with gorse like bushes dotting the countryside, zillions of wild flowers along the path, and rocky outcrops greeting us at every turn.  But it's so peaceful.  It's very mild, 24°C, a bit hazy, with a cool breeze. We come across a few isolated houses, with one of them covered with about 30 solar panels - probably a government initiative as it would have cost hundreds of thousands of Euro.  

We follow a mixture of the GR6 and country roads, whatever takes our fancy, and at lunchtime, we see the small village of St Geniez in the distance, with it's church steeple prominent.  The village is perched on the side of a hill with a huge rocky outcrop behind it.  To go the Valernes, where Donna and Milton have a villa next week, we would have needed to have climbed that outcrop and slipped down the other side. We bypass the turnoff to the village, its now almost 1 o'clock and all the shops in France, particularly in the villages, close between 12pm and 2pm, so there's not much point going into St Geniez when you can't even buy a bottle of water.  We learned from our last few trips they just when you are hungry, you come across a little village hoping to buy lunch, look at your watch and find it's sometime between 12 and 2.

We follow a small country lane where we meet a group of Donald Simpson walkers having lunch in the cow paddock.  It makes us hungry, so a few hundred metres further on we stop in the shade of a tree,  pull out our dried ham, bullocks-heart tomato, bread, and soft cheese that is now even softer in the 24°C - but who cares when you've just walked 15k up a mountain.  We always carry with us a picnic set of 2 plastic plates, 2 sharp steak knives (good for cutting tomatoes). 2 forks, 2 tea spoons and 2 plastic cups for cups of tea.  Ian also carries a Jetboil - a little billy can sitting on a flame powered by isobutane gas.  The water boils in about 2 minutes and the 100g gas cylinder makes about 50 cups of tea, so there's enough in each cylinder, we calculate, to last 3 weeks.  We've already checked out that we can buy a cylinder in Briancon, half way in our trip.  Silly carrying an extra 200g (110g of gas and 100g of container) when you can buy one on the way.

It's time to join the narrow road to Authon.  We estimate it's only 5k, but the funny thing is, the last 5k of any day, be it a short 12k day or a long 30k day, takes forever - there's always the expectation that your destination will be just around the next corner.  We've been walking up for a long time but now it's time to walk down.  We follow the road winding around very steep cliff edge where rocks have clearly been tumbling dow.  Not on us we hope.  After an eternity, arrive at Authon. The Gite des Monges is not hard to find - there's only 7 houses in the village.  We spy the sign, and Ian heads off across the held when he spies the beer garden out the front.