Grenoble to Tulon via The Gorge du Verdon

Hi, Kevin again - Lee-Anne still feeling under the weather with the chicken pox. She still put in a big day however, and we did drive to Toulon and take in some 'interesting' roads.

First thought I'd show you a pic of the modem we used last night,. This is the bit that plugs into the phone wall socket. Just a bit different to those in Oz hey?

 Anyway, onto the important stuff. We left Grenoble and it was raining slightly but we needed to drive to where the gorge drive started, several hours away so off we went. Here are some pics along the way. It was raining really heavily for most of the morning and we were thinking our day to the gorge might be washed out. However, it did improve hugely!

More beautiful French farms: Gargoil (our GPS) took us via about 20km of goat track to get us there. Others obviously had the same GPS, as we passed a dozen cars, which was about a dozen too many given the skinny roads and the fact that people over here like to stick to the middle of the road. (I thought they'd leave that to us foreigners driving on the wrong side of the road to what we normally do). Lee-Anne will have a few more grey hairs when we get home).

And Lavendar:

Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, one of France's "Most Beautiful Villages", is famous all over the world for its faience earthenware - this is what some of it looks like:

And what a beautiful village:

We had to visit the cathedral because it was there and so were we!

This is where we had lunch:

And Roy, Lee-Anne recognized at least three of the tools this guy was using for some restoration work from your tool boxes. If you want to come out of retirement, they would love you in France!

More snaps of the village on my way to Lombard Romanesque bell tower of Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption church built into the high limestone cliffs. Only accessible on foot and takes 20 minutes to climb 262 stone steps. 

 Pretty impressive inside too:

 Then off to the gorge:

The Gorge du Verdon
The world’s 2nd largest gorge, 20km long and plunging more than 300m in places the roads that follows the top of the gorge are quite narrow, winding and steep in places. (Not nearly as scary as the one Gargoil found on the way!)

Lee-Anne didn't feel up to the slippery walk to this view of the gorge. She said be careful, so I took a pic of the very impressive safety rail which I am sure helps protect the lives of thousands of visitors every year!

The gorge really is brilliant.

And then more scenery as we continued our journey:

This was another beautiful spot we stopped at and took lots of pics:

And they do white water rafting over here too.

There was a building to do with Freemasons on the circuit we did - not sure if this was it!

Till tomorrow!