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squiz Member Member#: 6644 Location: Registered: 27-05-2007 Diary Entries: 2882 |
13th June 2015 Hiking - Walking: Valley of the Saints, Boudes. Wind Direction: Wind Stength: Surf / Sea State: Air Temperature: Sea Temperature: Weather: Sunny and hot with a little rain and thunder later. Max Speed: Distance Covered: Friday 12th June – Travelling – shop, McDonalds wifi – rain:( Oh dear the weather has well and truly cracked up today! We had thunder and rain in the night and other than a tiny glimpse of blue for a few seconds it continued all day! We had a good lay in reading out books until about 10 a.m. then packed up and left the River Tarn and instead of making our way up through the Aveyron which was our loose plan, we decided to save that for another time because the scenery always looks better with the sun out and it seemed such a waste!! We headed for Millau and went to the McDonalds to get wifi (always good on a rainy day!) and unfortunately the wifi was a bit hit and miss but I posted some bits and pieces. We stopped at Lidl and stocked up then headed to the Millau viaduct viewing point for lunch looking at the bridge through the rain! We drove up the motorway until it stopped raining which was in the area of the Volcanos just below Clermont Ferrand. We pulled off and drove through some lovely countryside, past the castle ruin at Leotoing and through some pretty gorges along the river Allagnon. Found a great place to park up in a tiny village called Vichel. It isn’t far from the motorway and we can actually see it snaking away across the fields in the distance. The view is lovely here with volcanos of various sizes all around. There is a small picnic area with a car park and that is the spot for us:) It started to rain after about half an hour so we spent the evening reading, eating and playing card:) Mag went for a walk when it stopped raining and saw lots of big snails – the sort they eat! Photo Gallery here Saturday 13th June – Hike **** Valley of the Saints, Boudes. Sunny and hot with a little rain and thunder later. It was foggy when we first looked out this morning but as we drank our lemon and hot water we watched it clear away completely leaving a lovely sunny morning. We had a lovely display from a red kite:) Did exercises outside and had breakfast and didn’t hardly see a fly but by the time we were ready to leave there were lots of the horrible things!! House flies but they are biting!! We were intending to investigate a point of interest called Vallee des Saints and then hit the motorway and drive up to the Loire but yet again our map and its points of interest led us to have a great day and we are back in Vichel tonight! We drove through lovely countryside and a village called St. Gervazy which was beautifully restored and had an inhabited castle right in the village instead of being stuck up on top of a hill! Carried on to Boudes to try and find the walk for the Vallee des Saints and were just looking at the information board when a Scottish guy came up to chat and said we were only the second English people he had seen in the seven years he has had a second home here! He was a really nice man from Oxford who lives here with his wife for 5 months of the year. He was on his usual cycle round the countryside and was a mine of information about the walk we were going on and the surrounding area(most of the following information comes from him!). We chatted to him for about half an hour and then on his advice started our walk at the small hamlet of Bard which cut a bit off the length of the walk! We packed our lunch and set off. To start with the walk was surprisingly through a large forest. It was a good track as apparently around 30,000 people a year walk it! The first thing you come to is the source of the river Bard which bubbles up in a very small concrete pool (?!?) and tastes salt. The plants below it are all ones you only find near the sea. Roman coins have been found in the hole – presumably before the invention of concrete!! Then on to the Vallee des Saints which turned out to be a group of rock formation pillars in red stone which have formed through erosion over millions of years. Quite impressive and very like the ones we visited in Provence last year. There was a nice viewing point with a bench where we ate our lunch and some amazing cherries we bought in Lidl yesterday! Continued on the circular walk – round the wrong way but that’s typical of us! When we came out of the forest there were lots of crops – barley, wheat, sunflowers and linseed as well as the odd vineyard. It made it a very pretty sight with all the different coloured fields. Back to the van and Vichel just as the sky went dark and thunder and intermittent rain arrived. Spent evening reading and playing cards and had salmon parcels for tea:) Photo Gallery here Sunday 14th June – Relax, travel – rain rain rain:( A bit murky but nice enough to have exercises and breakfast outside. Left about 11 and drove up to the Loire. Got to Pouilly sur Loire about 2.30 and found a nice place on the river bank out in the wilds just as it started to cloud over. It was really hot and sunny when we parked!! By the time we had had lunch, read and had a doze it was bucketing it down and thundering:( We passed the evening reading and playing Phase 10. |
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