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squiz Member Member#: 6644 Location: Registered: 27-05-2007 Diary Entries: 3072 |
18th June 2016 Hiking - Walking: Mont Macaron Wind Direction: Wind Stength: Surf / Sea State: Air Temperature: Sea Temperature: Weather: Max Speed: Distance Covered: Saturday 18th June – hike **** sunny clouding over later We had a wonderful morning, we woke at 8 to the perfect blue skies again and got straight out of the van, sat in our chairs and read for a while. Did exercises then breakfast and more reading. No pressure to go anywhere, no hassles with traffic just us and the amazing view and sky!! Around 1pm we decided to do the circular walk up to Mont Macaron and packed a picnic to eat overlooking Nice and the sea. It was quite a scramble which was a surprise because some people had appeared with mountain bikes earlier and we thought they had done the same track but obviously not!! There are tracks all over these mountains so they could have gone anywhere. We stopped at the summit and had our picnic watching the huge black clouds over the mountains behind us and the sun and blue sky over the sea! There was thunder and we thought we were in for a shower but it didn’t come to anything and by late afternoon the sun and blue sky had returned. We spent a long time watching the airport through binoculars and also watching a ferry dock in Nice Harbour. It is certainly more attractive from this distance!!! The path got very rocky as you descended from the top and took you further on from the peak. It then brought you back to the car park on a lower level. The whole thing was around 4 miles. I went round the castle again when we got back. A couple of cars arrived and the occupants promptly got their chairs and tables out and started a boules tournament in the car park:) However, their game was cut short by the arrival, heralded by much honking of car horns of a wedding party. It is the tradition in France that a convoy of cars follow the bride and groom honking their hooters continuously. I think they wanted a photo opportunity with the castle so the whole convoy had come up the steep rough road to the car park and pulled in right through the boules game!! Needless to say the players packed up pretty quickly and moved further up the hill. When the wedding party had finished taking their many, many photos and convoyed back down the hill they came back and had another few games in the car park. They presented a bottle of wine to the lady who must have won the day and wandered off to the grassy flat area below the castle with their cool boxes for an evening picnic:) Photo Gallery Here Sunday 19th June – Relax, travel and small walk, sunny periods then thunder heavy rain/hail! We had another relaxing morning in our lovely spot at Chateaunerf castle and did our exercises, read and had breakfast outside. The weather wasn’t as clear as yesterday right from the start and we only had about an hour unbroken sunshine. The cloud started to roll in and we could hear thunder. A French lady came round the front of the van to tell us how wonderful she thought it was and ask lots of questions. She said the weather they are having is very unusual for this area and she doesn’t know what is going on!! She also told us there is a big Euro football match in in Nice this afternoon and they were closing all the roads at 2 so she was going home quickly!! We decided to pack up and move on which in hindsight was a bit daft but we had done the walk and had two nights here. Headed down the twisty road and into the valley near Carros before heading up to a place called St. Jeanet where we knew there were walks but it was crowded with Sunday traffic and nowhere to park so after getting stuck and having to turn round in a couple of narrow roads we gave up and carried on towards the Col de Vence. We were very torn to know what to do next because half of me wants to return to Nice and see if we can bike along the sea front but the other half thinks it will be chaos, full of big hotels and not worth the effort of finding somewhere to park! Anyway we found some lovely scenery in the Col and stopped in one of the few car parks to have our lunch – we could still see the sea at this point. There was a car park at the top with stunning views over the whole coast but the thunder was getting ever nearer and you couldn’t actually see the view from the car park. After lunch we carried on on the same road until we came to the ski resort of Greolieres and had a drive round that before returning to a Point de View a little further down the road which has amazing views around all the mountains we have visited over the last two weeks:) Unfortunately, an old lady had decided to park just where we wanted to go and have her picnic so we waited for her to go and dozed in the van. We had just about given up and made a cuppa and she went! We then had to finish our drink before we could move and another van came in to let their dogs out!!! They finally went and we got the spot we wanted, parked up and had our tea. Afterwards, it had turned into a nice evening so we went for a walk up the hill to the right of the car park and it was beautiful with lots of wild lavender and herbs. There was a lady walking a huge dog who decided he would rather be with us. He was huge and boisterous, some sort of husky cross. He was very funny galloping around us (Mag was pretty terrified of him) and then when we got back to the car park he was frolicking about in the huge puddle (there were hail stones lying on the ground when we got here) and then lay in it!! The lady was walking in the hills and calling him but he didn’t care about her at all. When she returned to the car park I was taking photos of the sunset and she played with him with a ball in the puddles for a while. Funny day, we don’t quite know where to head next. The mountains were amazing, the coast was good for what we did – we loved the bike ride at Menton, the walk in and round Monaco, the swim at our beach and the walk in the rough sea spray at Cap Ferrat - but frustrating for parking and access to enjoy it more, especially Nice. |
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