The Gorgeous Gorges and Castellane

  Castellane, France
Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Castellane. Pop 1349.

The plan today was the "Gorges du Verdon" which are 25km long and are basically known as the limestone "Grand Canyon" of Europe. I was keen to check them out as the Lonely Planet raved about them so we took the road out of Cassis and headed back inland toward a place called Castellane, which is is the gateway town to the gorges. (The gorgeous gorges. :)

The Navman took us on an interesting journey south of the the gorges and down a mostly one-lane road that (almost amazingly) was sealed, fun to drive and had a great view everywhere you looked. On the way down we spotted the amazing sight of a Church high on the side of a hill and wondered what that was all about.

On arrival into the village below the church (which turned out to be Castellane) we rolled the dice once again and spoke to the Tourist Office about accomodation. The very, very, very english spoken person there gave us a list of hotels but really, it almost wan't necessary - almost all of them were around the village square which meant that they were no more than 30 seconds apart. Once again, we hit paydirt and got a great place.

The lady at the reception desk immediately suggested taking in the walk up to the church that we had seen earlier, so once prepped, we did. It was breathtaking. The church overlooks the town of Castellane and the gorge and was built in the 800's (yes, the 800's) to shelter the locals. Over time it was destroyed by numerous invaders but its current form has survived since the 1700s. The walk up is as interesting as the church itself - there are numerous shrines to Jesus, specifically, his road to crusifixion - so I guess what the 30-40 minute (fairly strenuous) walk up means, is to be at one with Christ's burden of dragging the cross and being cruxified..... At least that was what the different stages of the shrine seemed to signify.
Certainly at the end of the hardest point, when I was pretty out of breath, the shrine there portrayed christ dying on the cross....

Steps on the path and one of the shines on the way

The view from the top is incredible - you wouldn't want to suffer from vertigo, especially when leaning over the side of the wall. Amazingly, the church was open and devoid of people. Bridget and I walked in and were able to take a flash-free snap (must have been almost a 2 second exposure) which seems to have grabbed the feeling of the place.

It turns out that Castellane is a bit of an advernture capital too. The gorges have lots of rapids so there are plentof canoeing and rafting operations taking people on wet'n'wild tours. It also seems to be a famous place for cycling because of it's steep hills. (Freaks.) That night we grabbed a great meal including snails (yum!) :) in the sqaure and then hit the sack.

The follow day we headed out of Castellane and north of the gorges to the "Pont Sublime" [sic] for the best view into the famous canyon and then were off to our next destination of Cannes.
 
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