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Haute-Provence and Les Gorges du Verdon - from Aspremont to Moustiers-Sainte-Marie
The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. -- St. Augustine Click and drag on map above to see area around trail. Click here for large zoomable map. FThis seventh section of the H2H takes you through some of the many and varied landscapes of southern France: from coast-hugging, cosmopolitan Monaco to sleepy, hanging villages such as Aiglun, from sea-cliffs to ski areas, from the busy suburbs of Nice to the vast expanse of the depopulated interior, from 1800m mountains to slot canyons and a 500m deep gorge, from the back-country of the Côte d’Azur, to the mountains of Haute Provence, to the hills and spectacular gorge of the Verdon River in the Var. It is for the most part a region that will be new even to frequent visitors: this is not the classic lavender, orchards, fields and vineyards landscape – the soft “province” that so delighted the Romans – that you will see in the valley of the Durance and the Luberon during the next (and last!) section of the H2H… this is a rugged and untamed country with its own wild charm. If you are fortunate, the heat and dust of summer will be past and the hiking will be an unalloyed pleasure… for that is how I see it. There are so many things to love about hiking in the mountains! Waking up in the morning knowing you are going to spend the whole day in the clean fresh air; the sensations of power and energy as your legs and arms and whole body accept the challenge of the climb; the keen pleasure of accomplishment as you reach some high place, knowing that you have at least for this day achieved separation from the vast mass of mankind; the awe and joy as you look around and down at sublimely beautiful, spectacular and dramatic landscapes; the calmness and clarity of thought that comes when you are separated from the hurly-burly of normal life and your sole task is to hike; the fierce appetite one brings to food and drink and the way hunger makes everything tastes so much better; and finally the warm glow of exhaustion at the end of the day, when, drink in hand, you sit in a warm room or relax on a terrace with a view, deeply happy just to be, and to be doing nothing. Is there any other activity that has such a power to transform the everyday into the remarkable? If there is, I don’t know it. And of course, there are the other times. When the weather is bad, the trails are muddy, and you are wet and cold and tired, and all you want is to be inside and dry and warm; or when you have developed yet another blister on your damned heel, and your knees are hurting, and your pack is heavy, and you are tired and grumpy and all you want is for the day’s hike to be over; or when you have had about as much as you can stand of your idiot hiking companions, and the mountains are starting to look all the same – or at least, they would look all the same if you were to raise your eyes from the trail in front of your toes – and you miss your family and warm showers and your own bed and all the other comforts of home, and you ask yourself what the HELL you were thinking when you told everyone you were going to hike over a thousand miles through the mountains. And that is also part of hiking. Like most things in life, you can’t have the good without the bad… and frankly, without a little (but not too much!) bad the good would over time lose some of its sweetness and lustre. I just hope that the proportions are right on the H2H. Stages
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H2H: The House to House Hike
