We left Castellane at 9.00am and within ten minutes we were enjoying the views of the Gorges du Verdon. Simply terrific, of course I will admit that perfect weather does make a dramatic difference to the quality of the ride and the enjoyment. Any biker that miss's the Gorge when doing the Route de Napoleon is missing an experience of a life time. The roads while in lots of places are in need of repair are perfectly safe. The whole route around the Gorge of roughly 174km has only got straight bits in total of about 3.5km. A bikers paradise. The views are simply stunning, to see truly what the Gorge has to offer you would need to stop at every bend.
However as we only allowed five hours for stops today we had to make choices. We stopped regularly to enjoy the sights. It's magic to be looking straight down and see eagles ( I have now been told they were Vultures???? They were big anyway ) souring in the air 500m below and then watch them climb and literally fly over our heads.
An option that in my opinion should not be missed while doing the Gorge is the Route des Cretes a sort of tarmaced goat path that is so narrow it's one way. This road/path really does run along the edge of the Gorge with drops of 800m straight down in places, magnificent. In loads of places no crash barriers to spoil the views. With hair pin bends so tight they are really U turns.
Wow, wow and another wow. I am not clever enough to do justice in words to the Gorge. What I will say is that yesterday when the rain stopped and the sun revealed great views we were impressed, what we have seen and done today was a once in a life time experience .......sigh.....I want to do it again.
In my enthusiasm to tell the story of the Gorge I have forgotten to mention a few things. Firstly Paul was still having problems with a stiff shoulder from dropping the bike on Saturday so we all voted to put Pauline on the back of the bike with Sietse.
Naturally we didn't tell Sietse that she was scared of heights. If we did he might have said no. I know the rest of us didn't want a screaming hysterical woman jumping about on the back of the bike shouting Oh my God we are all going die, while going around corners. Especially on the goat path?
But the views were so spectacular that Pauline forgot all about being scared of heights. She never screamed once! Secondly the Dutch lessons they were getting from Bram and Sietse were not going well pronounceation was a problem? Bram's name they could just about manage the name Sietse was to difficult. So his name was changed to Derrick. Sietse now even answers to it (poor bloke).
Any way back to bikes, bends and roads. We left the Gorge and rejoined the Route de Napoleon down to Cannes. Good roads but an anti climax to what we had experienced. I had planned that we would drive along the coast road from Cannes to St Maxime.
What I didn't know was that the route I planned was under what must be the lowest bridge in the world and naturally the French being French don't place warning signs? Cars were going through so I thought if they can get under then so can we??? I got through with two inches clearance at the top of my wind screen, arial bent almost double and head hanging to one side. Luckily my loyal followers also managed to get through without whacking their heads on the bridge.
To be honest the coast road was not one of my best ideas, while it was good to see it, the beaches were simply to busy. Lots of traffic, every pelican crossing was being used as people returned from the beach. We were all pleased to arrive at the hotel and get out of our hot leathers and into some thing cooler. Plus of course to enjoy a pint.
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