For our last hike of this vacation we climbed from the village of Ville to the limestone plateau of Gras and walked down to the village of Vogüé. Again, this wasn’t difficult or technical hike, just long, and mostly traveled on a smooth trail. Only the ascent from and the descent to Ville was very rocky. Fortunately we wore our proper hiking boots.

Big part of the hike traversed the landscape that was burned in a wildfire in July 2022. The trees were charred and grass had not grown back, and I am not sure if either will recover for the next Summer. Before entering the village of Vogüé we passed an ancient quarry, Carrière Giraud, from where the stones were transported to Paris, and an old chapel, Chapelle Saint-Cerice, that had been completely renovated. We also enjoyed superb views over the village of Vogüé and the Ardèche river valley, or rather a gorge.

The vacation was coming to the end, but we still had one whole day to spend while driving home. We decided to take detour via Montélimar, a town in Drôme we did not know much about. In hindsight, we should have given it a little more thought and gone elsewhere — for instance, explore the picturesque villages of Bassin D’Aubenas — since Montélimar turned out to be not so interesting place. At least we should have scheduled the visit differently by going to the castle first: at the time we got there and noticed it was open, there was only 3o minutes until the lunch time closing.

This was not as sporty as our hiking vacations usually are: still we managed to walk, hike, and run 115 kilometers in little over 34 hours, with about 2100 meters of climbing (only in hiking). Best of all, we enjoyed gorgeous weather for the whole two weeks!