Terry Cudbird: A Ramble Around France

In an ongoing series, Oxford Ramblers member Terry Cudbird writes about his amazing circumnavigation of our Gallic neighbour. Having studied French history as a student, Terry was drawn to the country – eventually covering over 4,000 miles, taking countless pictures and building an excellent website for those wanting to retrace his footsteps. For our third extract, Terry descends into the Valley of the Var…

“At 7am the valley was full of milk white mist, with just a few hills poking up their tops like islands in the sea. I might have been looking at a stage setting for Swan Lake with smoke being pumped on from the wings. A chapel with a tall tower looked like a fairy castle. La Penne is built on a series of terraces. Below the auberge steps led down to the village square, a small platform for the mairie and the miniature thirteenth century Romanesque church. On the church wall I noticed a war memorial from World War One with twelve names, two of which were Italian. Although it is over one hundred and forty years since France absorbed Nice and its hinterland there are still quite a few local people with Italian origins.

I descended through the pine forests to the Var at Touet, pronounced Touette in the Provencal dialect. The old village rose above me under a sheer rock face and the houses seemed to cling to the cliff. Each one had an open attic on the roof which used to be employed for drying figs. The path wound up a narrow crack in the face with a few tufts of vegetation, not a place to look down. I crossed a dried up waterfall on an open ledge, making sure I did not slip three steps to the right! The church tower was immediately underneath.

Brilliant red butterflies flitted around my feet. Tinted smoke bushes lined the way to a rocky promontory and the remains of St. Elizabeth’s chapel. Further along I came across the ruined walls of cottages standing on terraces scattered across the hillside among unpruned fruit trees. I looked at the Var below and wondered how long this village had been deserted. Perhaps the struggle to maintain a few terraces was too much once the road and railway came to provide an easy escape.

Massoins occupied a ridge pointing at the Var. At the far end were the remains of a castle and Penitents’ chapel. The buildings made an ensemble of shapes which would have fascinated Cezanne. An unguarded path along a cliff led to a pocket sized stone bridge over a narrow chasm. The Ullion gorge turned out to be one of the most dramatic walks in the area, a paved mule track winding 500 metres up a precipitous face for six kilometres. At one point the path was reduced to two metres’ width and the side wall disappeared. The rock looked unstable, serrated fangs plunging downwards like forked lightning.”