As mentioned in the previous post we did not drive home from Narbonne in one day, because a seven-hour drive is quite tiresome for both the driver and the passenger, and it is definitely too much sitting for one day. Instead we stayed overnight in Nyons at about halfway point.

We were in Nyons early enough to stroll around the town center in daylight when going out to grocery shopping, but it was still dark when we went running the next morning.

When in Les Alberts we continued our marathon training program for just one interval run.  Our accommodation was located on top of rather steep hill, and  the road leading there was icy and slippery. Since it was hard to tell the (black) ice apart from just wet road, we drove down to the valley to run. Even there the road, while seemingly dry, was icy at places. It was not very fast interval session.

As skiing conditions were nowhere near ideal — and one of us had started to feel sick — we decided to go to easy hikes for the rest of the vacation. However, we were still secretly hoping that more snow would fall during the week. The first walk took us to the neighboring village of Val-des-Prés. Nothing much had changed there since our last visit in March.

But something had changed. There was a new walking route from Val-des-Prés to Névache, about 12 kilometers long trail that travels  in the forest following the river Clarée. We walked to Plampinet (6.3km) and returned on the road since walking in the snow was quite tedious.

The next day was the only really sunny one. We had planned a hike a little farther away around the village of Le Villaret in the valley of river Durance, but did not realize that most of the route was deep in the shadow, which meant that it was very icy. We paid a short visit to the village and then returned to our valley.

Towards the end of the vacation we started to run out of ideas what to do or where to go, so on our last day we just walked from our village to the direction we have not been so much. We are glad we did, since we found new, completely flat cross-country tracks we did not know were there, or something that had been cross-country tracks earlier in the winter. This was our third time in the Vallée de la Clarée, and most likely we will not return for winter vacation unless the snow situation improves drastically. That is a pity since I really liked the idea of their flat skiing tracks.

If you have managed to read this far, I offer you the following gem (which I am not particularly proud of). There are relatively frequent rest areas along the French national road network (although there are places, where there are none, not even a small widening to let other cars pass or to turn around) usually with picnic tables, trash bins if you are lucky, but no toilets. Only rest areas by the major toll highways, with a gas station, convenience store, and/or restaurant, have toilets. We tend to avoid major highways on our longer road trips — I know it sounds counter-intuitive, since they are so much faster than regular roads, but they are also more stressful to drive because of the speed (limits, that practically no one respects either driving slower or faster), and the number of heavy vehicles. So, also this time we stayed on the national road network when going to Hautes-Alpes, and stopped at one of the rest areas, since I had to go. I chose a place not so visible from the road, and soon noticed I was not the first using that space. What I did not notice was someone’s turd underneath the wet leaves, and of course I had to step on it.  When at our accommodation, cleaning the shoe was not an issue, but getting the smell off was. So I had to discard perfectly good pair of Camper shoes. Bummer!

This incident had nothing to do with our decision to return home via Italy and the Fréjus tunnel, and stay on toll roads all the way, but we wanted to cut down the driving time, to about 3 hours vs. 5-7 hours. A single passage through the tunnel costs about 50€,  but a pass that allows eight passages costs only 175€. So, with seven more paid trips through the 13-kilometer tunnel, apparently we are going to return to Hautes-Alpes and Briançon area in the future after all.