Sunny, with a thin layer of cloud, and warm today. We started by driving to nearby Mougins, a foodie hilltop village, which I hated. A perfect village, everything remodelled, lined with restaurants and art galleries. Not even a nice cafe to sit at. I am bored with these perfect towns that are all for tourists. Yesterday Steve said that while we love France, if we drank wine and ate dead animals, we would love it more. I think if you were going to Mougins to have a long lunch you would like it. I was warned that I wouldn't like it, but I wanted to see it.
We walked around it then changed our plans for the day. We decided we needed a hike so we drove further inland to Mons. It was only 30 minutes in the car to Mougins and then another 50 minutes to Mons, but in that drive we went way up in altitude and it changed to windy and cold fall weather.
The first part of the drive, off the autoroute towards Feyance, was extended suburb. Then the GPS decided to take a shortcut and we drove on narrow lanes right into the town of Tourettes, where we had to squeeze between stone buildings almost driving over doorsteps to get through. Well done GPS you saved us 5 minutes of driving but took a few years off my life. Luckily Steve was driving.
Finally back on a "main" road heading north that got narrower and more winding as we climbed towards Mons. Suburbs and villages gone now, just woods and rock mountains. There was not much traffic but what there was came hurtling towards us pretending the road was wide enough (it wasn't).
At last we reached Mons, a cute but not too cute village perched on the edge of a deep gorge. The wind was howling. The only people about were a couple of guys doing roadworks, an older woman leaning out her window to watch us and two other visitors as we realised there was nothing open here. One restaurant looked like it might open someday. The other had a sign saying it would re-open April 2017. We sat on a bench, in the park on the edge of the gorge, in a wind so strong that it blew my purse off the bench, and ate peanut butter sandwiches.
This was the view.
We walked around the town which had some lovely bits and a blasting wind.
I have had Mons on my list for years because there are four vacation rentals there that have interested me. I almost rented one a couple of years ago when we instead went to Forcalquier (great town, hideous vacation rental). I didn't even bother looking for the building. We won't be staying there. You could see it might be nice there in the summer but it is a long drive to anything.
The hike, walk 21 Gorges de la Siagne from the Sunflower guide, starts 6.8 kilometres from Mons, down an even more narrow lane into the gorge. I wanted to see the start of the Frejus aqueduct and Roche Talliers, a passage cut into the rock by the Romans. But there was no way we were going to drive on more narrow roads.
We didn't want to go back the way we came, so drove north, climbing higher, until we reached a main road that goes from Sisteron to Grasse - the Route d'Napoleon. This drive was incredible! The road went along the edge of Rocky Mountains and a big gorge. Big views - very dramatic.
When reached Grasse we were back in the more populated area. We ended up driving through the center of Grasse which was nothing like I had pictured it. It sprawls down the side of a steep hill. The center looks interesting but the signs for all the perfume factories and outlets unnerved me so we drove through. (Grasse is a center of perfume production where they take a tiny amount of natural flowers and mix them with toxic chemicals, including a lot of parabens, to create products that make me feel sick when I smell them.)
We got back to Antibes around 4pm and it was overcast and drizzling just a bit. Too much driving! And bad trip planning. But we got to see an area I have been curious about.
We have the car for two more days and I think we will concentrate on more coastal areas. Next up is Menton!