Feeling hot hot hot!! Roof down, shoulders out, Australian Gold on (my tan accelerator of choice!).

The first Col of the day was the Col D’Izoard which took us to Gap. Another Tour De France route that even had sculptures of Fausto Coppi and Louis Bobbet (the cyclists) in a museum/cycle shop at the summit of the Col (Dad refrained from purchasing another skin hugging cycling shirt!). Although we didn’t realise the sculptures were inside the shop (Ma and Pa even scaled a small mountain to look for them) we did get a shot of the memorial.

We continued along the beautiful windy passes to Embrun – once a small village that has now been sunk to make way for the large man made lake which was used to produce energy. We passed through quite a busy town, crossed over a little bridge and pulled in by a little marina where we enjoyed a pizza (or 3) for lunch.

We headed on through the larger town of Gap and joined the Route Napoleon towards Corps via the Col Bayard to finish in La Mure where we had booked into the Logis Murtel. Route Napoleon is a 325km stretch of road which runs the route taken by Napoleon himself in 1815 on his return from Elba. It begins at Golfe Juan (where Napoleon disembarked on March 1st 1815 before ending in Waterloo after 100 days) and runs from the French Riviera to the Southern Pre-Alps. Now, we were told it was marked along the way by statues of the French Imperial Eagle – although we only actually saw one and by the time we realised we had missed the photo opp! So here is an example!

As we arrived at the hotel mid-afternoon we decided to do some exploring of the local area which included the Passerelle Himalayenne Du Drac, a 220m bridge across a small lake which saves walkers/cyclists a 30km ride/walk around – blimmin good idea I say, and a lot of fun! After driving around to various starting points of footpaths to the Passerelle and comparing distance vs height vs wigglyness of the path we chose to embark on the shortest route which happened to be straight down and very steep, ok going down, coming back up was, well let’s just say multiple breathing breaks were needed! The walk was about 0.8km and after nearly deciding it was too far for a casual stroll and none of us had sensible footwear on (FYI pretty Kurt Geiger sandals are amazing but NOT suitable girls! Get the trainers out!) we were actually really pleased we completed the challenge!

We finished the day with a great dinner at the hotel where all 4 of us enjoyed the beef fillet – – or well done in English which the French of course found strangely hilarious! As we were sat near the pool we were visited by many a bug so thanks to Alfresco my trusty and actually quite nice smelling to the human nose bug spray. I literally nearly drowned a mosquito in it and I’ve never seen a creature move away so fast, other than myself running away from a mosquito itself – or a wasp!

French sentence of the day:

Nous avons reserve deux chambres pour la nuit (We have reserved 2 bedrooms for the night)

Lexie
xxx