Saturday, April 30th, 2016
As promised by the weatherman and every weather app available, the day presented itself rather miserable and wet and windy, with no relief in sight. So I decided to take a rain-rest day and travel with my luggage form La Cazette to Les Mas des Eglantines. I cleared it with Hilde and Chris, my hosts and they didn’t mind my spending the afternoon reading and relaxing at Les Mas. Good decision as the weather definitely did not let up, on the contrary.
Sunday, May 1st, 2016
That morning announced itself dry, a bit overcast, but ‘rather’ cold at 3ºC (37ºF). I mean I was in the South of France on May 1st, right?! The outlook for the day was also dry, sunny, with a very cold wind (I think I’d read something about a ‘polar front’ influencing the weather in Europe…) and temperatures reached a whopping 10º-12ºC (50º-54ºF) later in the day. But it stayed dry and that’s the main thing for me. I am, and always will be, a fair-weather walker.
Breakfast was lovely and Chris and Hilde had prepared lunches for all 5 walkers. I had a long (16km) or short (11km) option to walk to La Grande Combe and decided on the first one. Due to a section being overgrown a kilometer was shaved off (mentioned in the directions), but I ‘made up’ for that by overshooting a turn-off by about 750m and having to double that distance back. Naturally there were issues with rampant dogs again, but luckily at the time I was with two fellow walkers. He wasn’t too keen on the dogs either, but she ‘protected’ us while we walked clear of them. After my earlier mishap I did combine the map, written directions and the Galileo app with the route to avoid more wrong turns; and it was worth it in some forested sections where the path was not always very clear.
I walked onto La Grande Combe around 2:40pm; after stopping for lunch in the hamlet of Salelles.
