To Rougon

July 4, 2003

Another day with more than one or two photos to show for it! and it’s an itinerary I’m fairly sure of - I know we began in Aiglun; and I know we ended the day in Rougon, another tiny upper Provence village that we went out of our way to get to. And I’m generally sure of the route we took, beginning by backtracking from Aiglun a few miles down the Esteron and then turning north through Sigale before turning back west again along the next trough north of the limestone ridge above Aiglun.

I know we went north through Sigale because we have the photo below to prove it. What I can’t recall though is why we even went this way instead of continuing west from Aiglun past the Clue and continuing on to Saint-Auban. That would have been the obvious route - quiet, scenic, and about twelve miles shorter on what was a long, challenging day. And on a day with a significant attraction at the end we wanted to save time for that would have been the clearly best choice, so I must have had my reasons. Maybe the direct route wasn’t paved twenty years ago, or there was a bridge washout? At this point I can only speculate.

Sigale has such a distinctive profile, so there’s no question that we came this way.

I vaguely remember the ride west from Sigale - very scenic, and we stopped for a snack break in Brianconnet and spoke with a pair of other bikers breaking there. It made me wish we had more time and were staying longer here.

And I remember biking south again to Saint-Auban, through another stunning Clue. And I’m certain of our route here too, because I just remembered we must have come this way going the other direction on our way back to the French Alps in 2015. I looked back at that journal to our ride from Castellane to Puget-Theniers to be sure, and found photographic proof - a shot of the same spot in the Clue de Saint-Auban in both journals.

In the Clue de Saint-Auban, July 4th, 2003.

In the Clue de Saint-Auban, July 7th, 2015.

There are no photos from the next 25 miles, between Saint-Auban and the end of the road in Rougon - not even in Castellane, an interesting place that would have been worth a shot or a memory.

I remember Rougon though, and why we went out of our way to go there. It sits just above Point Sublime, at the very upper end of Gorges du Verdon, the Grand Canyon of Europe. I’d known of Point Sublime since planning for our first tour of Europe because there was a photo of it in my tour guide to France. Rachael and I biked along the gorge on that tour but we came to it from the southeast, well below Point Sublime. Ever since, I’d wanted to return someday and see it from the upper end.

I forget exactly what we did at Rougon, but as I recall we hiked up above the village on the evening we arrived, and walked down into the gorge the next morning before leaving. I can’t sort out the photos though so I’ll just include them all here.

At Point Sublime, staring down into the upper end of Gorges du Verdon.

Heart

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Today's ride: 52 miles (84 km)
Total: 580 miles (933 km)

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