Geoff and Lucy Adventures: And finally: The Continent!

A 4am wake up to catch an international flight, misunderstandings with the car hire company (in French-English) and unsign-posted highways were not the best way to start the next leg of our trip (and on the wrong side of the road too) but we made it!

We had flown into France and managed, with surprising difficulty, to find our way out of Nice headed north-east. All was well, we were taking the scenic route through the mountains and near the sea, and then disaster struck! Bumper to bumper traffic on a Sunday!?! and then we realised that Monaco is probably not the best place to be on the day of the Grand Prix! We made a hasty retreat involving a U-turn on the highway and headed up to the mountains and watched some of the F1 warm up from above. It was incredible to see so many spectators in the city, so many impressive boats in the bay and so much noise!

Lucy spying out big yachts (and racing cars) above Monaco

We continued on and inland to a lovely town called Sospel where we pitched our tent in a nearby campsite that had been recommended to us by a local. Geoff was buggered so was slept the afternoon and then took a drive up the beautiful Gorges de la Bevera which forms part of the Marine Alps: lush forest, swift flowing clear river, little winding road cut into the dramatic limestone rock. We found and walked up to a serene little Chapel on the top of a rocky outcrop to marvel at the gorge-ous late evening scenery.

Gorges de la Bevera with the Chapelle de la Menour in the background

The next day we explored Sospel which we learnt is a medieval town. Geoff managed to decipher the tourist boards to learn about her clear fountains, amazing church, and some of the little alleyways and arches that seem to make up the town.

The inside of the Sospel Church

Sun and flowers -just what Lucy loves!

Sospel

Then we headed up Gorges de Berque towards Tende and the Italian border. These little winding roads through stunning gorges are such treat to drive. There are little villages perched precariously on mountain sides, the road cut into the cliff at points, waterfalls, hairpin bends, and lots and lots of wire netting to prevent rock falls. We were interested to see how many hydro electric plants we saw along the way.

Just north of Tende the highway disappears through a tunnel a couple of kilometre's long, and as we were enjoying the scenery so much (the peaks were now all covered in snow), Geoff's navigator decided to take us up the old pass instead. It started with a few hair-pin bends on a narrow road and Geoff asking whether we were on the correct road. After about 10 hair-pins of which some were so tight that we had to do 3 point turns to get round them, we were still only about a quarter of the way up the mountain!!! Most sections of road were also less than 200m long!

Some of the easier switch backs in the alpine area

Thanks Google Maps! And it was about that crazy too!!!

After 46 hair-pin bends we reached the Col de Tend at 1824m! The view was amazing - France to the south and Italy to the north with snowy peaks all around!