Our winter vacation plans were messed up with uncertainties involved in the apartment sale project, but once the date for signatures was fixed (see the previous post), we booked one week in our favorite place, Serre Chevalier Valley in Hautes-Alpes for a skiing vacation. But then we started seeing worrisome posts on Nordic Serre Chevalier‘s FB page that the snow situation was deteriorating fast and they were planning to close the season in few days. The transit between the Winter and Spring in that altitude is problematic, since the conditions may not be good for skiing anymore but not yet optimal for hiking either (for instance, there are icy snow patches here and there, but not enough to carry the snowshoes). So we searched for other options, and decided to go south enough to find good hiking conditions.
We booked and Airbnb apartment in Manosque, thinking that it will offer us an easy access both to Massif of Luberon and the Verdon Natural Regional Park, but we ended up visiting neither of them. Instead we searched for hiking trails closer to the town.
Sunday: Manosque
On our first day we walked up to the tower of Mont d’Or, sometimes written as Mont d’Aure that comes from the Provençal word ‘auro’ meaning wind. And windy it was on our day of visit. The 17-meter-high tower is what remains of an old castle of Manosque. It has been listed as a national monument since 1927. Afterwards we strolled the deserted downtown.
Monday: Les Margaridètes et Bellevue par Volx (8.6K in 3h 30mins, D+/D- 493m)
Next morning we drove to the nearby town of Volx and started a scenic hike among olive trees — there are a lot of olive trees in this region, and we learned that most families make their own olive oil. We climbed quite a long time to have an outstanding view over to the valley of river Durance. Then we had somewhat shorter but steeper descent back to Volx. Like in all other days, it was very windy, and cold in the shade but warm in the sun.
Tuesday: Le Trou du Loup (14.3K in 4h 12mins, D+/D- 438m)
This was an easy hike starting from Corbières-en-Provence. We mostly followed comfortable dirt roads, and only in the end hit a narrow trail, with steep and sudden drops, that traveled on the balcony of Torrent de Corbières. This may be a good point to mention that during the week we met on average 1.5 other individuals during our daily hikes — usually men running alone.
Wednesday: Les Mourres et Roche Ruine (7.2K in 2h, D+/D- 233m)
Our next hike started at the site of Les Mourres, so named since some of these limestone formations resemble faces; ‘mourre’ designates ‘face’ or ‘figure’, mufle in the Provençal language. The area is quite large, and we explored just half of it before leaving for a hike, which itself was rather unimpressive.
Thursday: Le trail des collines de Giono (12.9K in 4h, D+/D- 503m)
Jean Giono (1895-1970) was a French author from Manosque whose novels were set in Provence region. He must have been in pretty good shape to climb the hills we did during this hike. We started by getting lost, and found ourselves going up very steep mountain bike trails —those trails that are only meant to be ridden downhill. We saw a couple of ‘boris’ on our way. The first one ‘Pain de Sucre’ des Espets, dating back to the end of the 19th century, had partially collapsed in 1997 and was subsequently renovated in 2004-2005. The second one was less remarkable one. Starting from the 13th century, and reaching their peak usage in the 18th and 19th centuries when the area of cultivated land started to increase, these dry stone structures served as temporary shelters during agricultural works.
Friday: Villages of Dauphin, Saint-Maime, and Mane
On this cloudy day we visited three villages we had driven past in the past few days. Nothing really spectacular about any of them, other than they were all located on the hill providing an open view over the surrounding countryside, and to each other.
Saturday: Les Mées – Les Ruines de Chamoye – Oratoire St. Antoine – San Peyre – les Pénitents (15K in 5h, D+/D- 656m)
It was time to leave Manosque, but we were not quite yet ready to drive home. We booked one more night in Tallard (halfway to Grenoble), so we could go for another hike near Les Mées and visit the magnificent site of Pénitents we saw a week earlier when driving to Manosque. After the initial steep climb the hike was very easy, until we started to descend behind the Pénitents. Thanks to a local outdoor enthusiast Jean Millet and his friends, who built the trail with stairs in the 1990’s, the descent was comfortable, even if the steps were quite high.
Sunday: Château de Tallard
On the last morning of our vacation we visited the Tallard castle, and walked to the supermarket to buy lunch before heading home, passing a small airport Gap-Tallard on our way.
During our vacation week we hiked 69K (+9K in Manosque on Sunday) in 21h 35mins, with D+/D- of 2552m. Again, we were quite lucky with the weather: we did not receive any rain, and the sun shone almost all the time. The only thing we did not like so much was the cold and strong wind that blew every day, especially in the afternoons.