Day 6 - Montbrun to St Auban

On our first night in Les Bayles, Cookie was very restless.  In the morning, we found her asleep on the inner part of her bed, with the outer part practically pulled over herself, so I remarked that she might be cold.  On our second night, the LSH (who doesn't like dogs!!!) covered her up, not only with a towel, but with his favourite sweater!  There wasn't a peep out of them all night!  Yeah, that's the behaviour of a man who doesn't like dogs!

The food in Les Bayles was once again outstanding.  We were the only guests dining "in" that night, and we were invited to join the family for dinner - this is a big thing in France, and we felt quite honoured.  For dinner, we had a homemade charcuterie plate (pate, terrine and tete de veau, which is like the English brawn) to start, followed by blancquette de veau - veal stew.  I don't normally eat veal, but it's different when you're dining in a family situation, and it was delicious!

Today, then, got off to an inauspicious start.  Anne was feeling distinctly unwell, and there were various burping noises emanating from the back seat of the jeep as we drove from St Trinite to Montbrun, our drop-off point.  She insisted she was fine, nothing was going to deter us today!

We were determined to find the horse-trail we missed yesterday, and had checked and double checked on the map so we were sure we knew where we were going.  We were dropped by a bridge, there was a dirt road leading off to the right.  All we had to do was follow this road and we'd join up with the horse trail.  Simple, right?

Well, the road became a private driveway, with a sign for the footpath pointing up a faint track.  We followed this track gamely, ducking under low branches as it climbed steeply uphill, until we were presented with a choice of two trails, one of which ended in some bushes and the other which went up a very narrow, steep, rough scramble.  Anne was not happy with either option, and I was not at all happy at the thought of going back down the steep ground and low branches we'd just travelled through, so I scouted up the rough scramble on foot.

Thankfully, it was really only rough and steep for about 70 meters, after that it levelled out, and I could see where it wound across the hill and joined a bigger trail, which I was sure was the horse trail.

So we led the horses up the rough bit, and God bless 'em, they were great, scrambling up behind us, never once launching themselves over-enthusiastically at it, which would probably have resulted in a Wagon being knocked down!  We finally joined the horse trail and took a breather!

At this stage, we'd covered about 1km and were puffing badly.

We continued onwards and upwards...and upwards...and upwards.

It wasn't exceptionally steep, but it was a steady climb, and it went on for ages.  Both horses were working hard to keep going, and there was not much in the way of scenery, a lot of scrub and rock, with occasional sites where someone had been quarrying for gravel.

Quarry on the way to Col des Arles

I remarked to Anne that this was not my favourite trail, in fact I thought it was quite boring.  Eventually we arrived at the top, 1027M up, having climbed 300 meters in 2 kilometres.  This was a welcome sight :

 but the spectacular views were even better.

Martine & Flurry at the Col des Arles

 

I was fascinated with this flat-topped mountain in the distance.  Our trail was to take us behind this and up the mountain behind it to the left.

 The sky was fantastic, adding to the beauty of the scenery below.

Eventually, 10km into the journey, we passed the point where we should have been collected the previous day.  We agreed that continuing yesterday would have been a mistake, as we would all have struggled with the climb to the Col des Arles at the end of a days trekking.
Flurry was enjoying the views, as usual.

We stopped for lunch at a tiny graveyard, which had the smallest church we'd ever seen beside it.
The closest grave belonged to Sophie Carre, who died in 1994, aged 10 - she would have been the same age as Anne's daughter Polly if she was still alive.  Spare her a thought, or a prayer, or whatever you do...

At this point, we were behind the flat-topped mountain - here's Anne and the equines finishing up lunch, with a very nice crag behind them :

 We skirted the little town of Pelleret, and started climbing once again.

View across Pelleret to the south

The last view of the flat-topped mountain

We crossed the top of the mountain, Mont de Croc, and suddenly a whole new landscape opened up beneath us, a bit rougher and wilder, perhaps, with a different sort of beauty, the mountains of the Drôme stretching away to the North.

 We were fascinated with this ridge :

There is one house situated along the top, with a single lane road leading up to it.  We didn't realise for some time that our route would bring us past the house, through their garden, and continue along the ridge, with jaw-dropping scenery to either side.

Approaching the house, view to the left

Anne & Gigi passing the house

View to the right, after the house

 Anne suffers from vertigo, and was determinedly NOT looking down at this point.

We ended up dismounting just after the house, as the ground was rough and the branches were low.
Finally, the trail levelled off, and then we began the long descent into St Auban sur Ouveze.

As we were riding along the ridge, we could see the road from Montbrun beneath use.  All of a sudden, what did we see but a blue jeep and horsebox - the LSH was on his way!  Unfortunately, I missed the photo by about 5 seconds - désolée!

The road winding into St Auban

So we arrived into St Auban, tired but elated.  After a pretty bad start, it turned out to be  the best day so far.  The LSH was waiting, and he knew that we would have broken the 100km mark, so he had bought a small bottle of champagne and celebratory T-shirts!  The horses got to eat the lushest grass they've seen for ages

and then had a drink at the town fountain - I really love this about French villages, they all have drinking water for horses!

 We've now ridden in three French Départements, Alpes de Haute Provence, Vaucluse and Drôme, covering just over 100km.  Tomorrow we leave Les Bayles and relocate to Aubignan for three days, which is a detour we are doing along the way - it's a sort of pilgrimage for me & Anne!
We are all getting fitter, and although Anne and I still walk a fair bit every day, just to give our legs and bums a break, we're not suffering from cramps and aches as much as we were at the start.  The horses seem to be coping fine, although we might plan on an easier day tomorrow... we'll see what the forecast is like in the morning.

If you're enjoying following our journey, please consider visiting our charity page and donating a few euro to the program for Assistance dogs for children with Autism - a great charity, and the reason we're doing Le Big Trek!

The Everytrail map for today

http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=1535716


Day 6 Montbrun to St Auban at EveryTrail
EveryTrail - Find hiking trails in California and beyond