Walking in Provence

Jen and I have done a few walks while we've been here, both with The Twins and without. The first was a walk around the Mine de Garonne, an old copper mine out to the southeast of here. In fact, I've since been running round that route most days, it's a very handy 5km-ish trip, with some fantastic views of the sea, lovely if harsh scenery and great smells of pine and other herby things. 

 

Trail map near Le Pradet

Here's the official trail maps posted at most of the entry points, this was taken on this morning's jaunt, just up the road from the house. The mine walk is the green ring, and I usually run along the red C30 trail and back to it. The boys did an amazing job walking around the green bit, it's very steep and the ground is alternately rocky, gravelly and sandy, so very hard work for everyone but especially them!

View from Round The Mine walk

Here's the first view you get to - it just explodes in front of you as you emerge from some trees to a sharp right hand bend in the path, where it's on your left.

Time for a pit stop!

The chaps plodded round wonderfully, holding onto hands and pointing out things they liked, and likewise having things pointed out to them! By the time we'd gone 2/3rds of the way round they were flagging, so time for a snack and a drink in the shade! They really enjoyed it though, and we did more later in the week.

Discovery trail map - the round the mine walk!

There are other walks too - I both ran and rode up the C29 red route to the top of the hill, and Jen and I came down that way yesterday when we walked the C30 north from the "You are here" and back down the C17 which ends up at the top of the C29. That was quite a good walk, again about 5km.

View from the top of C29

J&J walk yesterday up C30, C17, down C29

And today, possibly our last day, we did a variation on the Mine walk - basically, do the start of the Mine walk, then branch off on the Blue route, rejoining at the head of the C30. That was pretty "interesting" and challenging - the path is not so well made up, even broken completely in places, and there was a mistaken detour because of the dodgy signing of the route!

Modified Mine walk

You can see the detour - the spur on the western vertical, we were walking clockwise basically. The path ran out of steam fortunately, or we'd have ended up back on the route we'd come on. I really should use a compass to keep my bearings better!

Mysterious Macca pakka stone pile

Again, great views, and we had lunch in a small shaded car park just above the cliff - you can see the meanderings about in the bottom left hand corner! No pictures - hey, gotta be in that moment!

Black trees

I love the way the black-trunked trees stand out, like snakes emerging from grass, or whatever simile matches best. It would be pleasing to render this in some artistic medium sometime, as a reminder!