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squiz
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Member#: 6644 Location: Registered: 27-05-2007 Diary Entries: 3071
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9th May 2013
Hiking - Walking: Isle st. Lucie Wind Direction: Wind Stength: Surf / Sea State: Air Temperature: Sea Temperature: Weather: sunny periods Max Speed: Distance Covered:
Wednesday 8th May – relax, walk *** and travel – sunny periods
Another lovely morning at Aguilar with the sun on the snowy mountains and
the flowers :) We eventually left there and drove through the Corbieres
– we were amazed to see our three hiker friends from yesterday walking
above the road from Tuchan to Padern:) We were initially intending to
travel a road along a gorge we haven’t been to before but the route was
barre so we had to go a bit further and past the Chateau de Peyrepertuse
again – the chateau is built into a cliff and is so well camouflaged you
can hardly see it. We visited that quite early on in our trips down here
so were not tempted to wind our way up there today. We saw some adorable
goats along the road with kids :) A bit further along we saw a walking sign
to a Dolman so we parked up and scrambled up the path which had obvious
signs of recent visits from Wild Boar! We didn’t see any but we did see
the best Dolman in the most natural setting we have seen :) This one
wasn’t marked on our map but there was one a bit further along the road
so we headed in that direction. As we passed through the beautiful little
village of Dernacueillette we decided to stop for lunch and to fill up with
water. We had a very friendly little French girl trying out her English on
us and Mag tried her very small amount of French on her and they decided
they were both tres bonne at that! There was a walk marked to a cascade
but we found it difficult to even find the start so decided to give that a
miss and drove up to the waterfall on the way to the Dolmans which we
eventually found and although they may have warranted a mention on our map
neither was as good as the one we saw this morning. The paths were very
good and there were lots of orchids :) The saddest thing we saw was quite
a big snake in the road, dropped by a bird of prey we think – what a
waste, why didn’t the bird come back and at least have a meal out of it
instead of it getting squashed on the road! We saw exactly the same thing
yesterday with a fairly big lizard :( We unfortunately then spent a couple
of hours driving through the most boring part of the Corbieres without
anywhere tempting us to stop. We went into the other end of the Gorge road
but after finding the landslide complete with trees and lots of tyres (?)
which had blocked the road there wasn’t much to stop for:( We travelled
further towards the coast than we were expecting and found the Parc Eoliea
which is a massive wind turbine farm on the hills above Port Nouvelle and
Sigean. We rode around there (only getting stuck down one bad track!) and
stopped right underneath a turbine to have a cuppa and biscuits. It was a
bit weird, quite noisy as they kept turning to face the changing wind
direction, and a bit scary too as they are so enormous! We didn’t stop
long because it started to rain!!! We eventually stopped for the night
between our favourite redundant windmill houses on the cliffs above
Roquefort des Corbieres.
Our catalogue of disasters has got bigger as I have squashed and broken my
beloved quicksilver prescription sunglasses! So the list is:
The GPS
The sunglasses
The chairs
The rucksack stitching coming undone because of frayed material
The rucksack clip being broken after being shut in the car door
Lost camera lens hood in waterfall
Thursday 9th May - walk **** Isle st. Lucie – sunny periods
Had a nice morning on the cliffs overlooking Roquefort des Corbieres, the
sun is out and last night’s wind has dropped. We ate our breakfast
sitting right on the edge of the cliff. We drove down into Sigean and went
to the shop and to McDonalds to check the weather etc. Drove to Port la
Nouvelle to have lunch by the canal and then walked from the town along the
canal to the Isle st. Lucie. It is a long way – probably about 3km each
way! You can park a lot nearer but there is a height restriction so
although we could probably drive across the salt works we decided to walk.
The Island is covered in pink flowers and looks really pretty. There was
lots of evidence of Wild Boar again but we didn’t see any or many birds
either :( The walk round the island is 6.5km. Quite a few people walking
because it is another bank holiday today. There was a boat going through
the lock when we walked back so we watched that and a friendly ginger cat
made a big fuss of us and sat on Mag’s lap! There were a lot of cats
behind the lock cottage; it is some kind of rescue centre by the look of
it. When we walked back there were a few camper vans in the car park at
Port la Nouvelle so we decided to stay here :) Nice and near the beach for
tomorrow. The gps may be working again??? And Mag has super glued my
sunglasses back together and they are fine :)
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