Well...

I'm in a bit of a quandary at the moment.  What to do next?  I had booked to go canyoning tomorrow but I've been having a bit of stick off my back and so I cancelled it today. The weather wasn't great earlier but the guy in charge of the hotel, bit like a French Rigsby says it will be hot tomorrow.  The quandary is that I'd pretty much decided to leave here tomorrow and go to Italy earlier than planned,(yes there is a plan, well sort of)  but now I don't know what to do. Rigsby says I can decide in the morning.  So I won't decide just yet.

 This morning Jean-Luc from Switzerland showed me his book of motorcycle routes up to the various passes and I decided to have a ride out.  The weather wasn't brilliant but it was dry.  I set off about 10 o'clock and made my way up towards St Julien du Verdon.  I thought it was going to be a bit like TT as there were bikes everywhere but they obviously decided to go elsewhere and so it was quite good for a slowcoach like me.  It appeared it might become a long ride though as I'd only been travelling for about 5 minutes before I stopped to take some pictures and the same again a couple of minutes later.

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I was heading for the Col de la Bonette which is reputed to be the highest paved road in Europe at 2802 metres.  I headed off up the gorge of Gaillard which was brilliant.  It made me think of motorcycle racers when they are warming their tyres and swing from side to side.  That's what it was like but everytime you swung to one side you went round a bend and then over to the opposite side for the next bend was upon you.  I actually nearly got my knee down but I just don't have the bottle but it was great fun.  Didn't want to get it wrong as it was a long way down to the river.

I finally got to Guillard and there was a memorial service going on with Police, Fire and Army veterans there.  I pulled up to watch and towards the end they had a minutes silence; the whole village came to a standstill and then everyone sang a verse of the La Marseillaise.  It was very moving and quite surreal because when they finished everything just started again as if we had been put on pause.

I carried on for about another 20 kilometres of more of the same but then the cloud came down, it was raining and quite slippery.  I decided to turn back and retraced my steps.  The Col de la Bonette will have to be another day.

I'll be shortly going out for tea and will more than likely go to the same restaurant as last night.  When I was there I was sat next to a couple who started chatting to me.  The girl Elisa, whilst French was brought up in Venezuela and  apparently English is spoken quite a lot; as such her English was excellent.  She could also speak German and some Spanish.  Pretty impressive really.  She was eating snails, they were huge and actually looked and smelt okay but thankfully we didn't start chatting until after she had finished them so I wasn't offered any. :)

Well that's it for now,  I'm going to try and get a sneak picture of Rigsby and who knows I might be writing from Italy tomorrow.  Only time will tell.

PS no more explosions so hopefully I'll be okay.