Pete's Blog - Week 6(d)
It was a 4km walk along a road and the Ubayette river to Le Pont Rouge which was the entrance to the Lauzanier valley and the beginning of the Mercantour national park. We needed to cross the Pas de la Cavale ( 2671m ) in order to reach Bousiéyas ( 1883m ), our next gîte. We passed lots of Italian school children on our way up and then a few fishermen by one of the many lakes before we tackled the bare scree that led up to the high pass. There was a pretty steep drop down to some ruins ( 2087m ) and looking back it was difficult to see how anyone could have crossed the jagged rocks of the pass. It was a hot climb out the valley over the col des Fourches (2262m.) During the descent we crossed the D64 road which is the highest road in France as it passes over the col de la Bonnette. The gîte de Bousiéyas was vegetarian (nice for me!) and we slept in a very pretty, ancient barn that was straight out of Don Quixote.
Luckily we were now getting used to the greater heat as we had two cols to climb Col dela Colombière
( 2237m ) and Col d'Anelle ( 1739m ) before dropping into the very attractive small town of St. Etienne de Tinée ( 1144m ).