In Guillestre: Short loop to La Fontaine Petrifiante
We are staying 2 nights at Le Catinat Fleuri, a hotel/chalets/campground complex that doesn’t look like much from the street but the hotel is pretty decent inside and has lots of features we appreciate: friendly and helpful staff, spacious room (I booked a double without balcony but we were given a big room with a queen bed and two singles), good breakfast, nice outdoor area for hanging around, good wifi in the comfortably-furnished lobby if not in our room, and a pool. Plus bicycle storage and laundry service for cyclists: one set of kit per day, washed and dried overnight.
After our late lunch yesterday (we shared a very good French-style Caesar salad followed by ice cream), we stepped into the TI to see if they had any information about short cycling routes or hikes in the area since we figured we weren’t exhausted enough to need the afternoon and a full day off. We saw only maps of mountain bike trails and bigger hikes than we wanted on a hot day. However, we also saw a poster about La Fontaine Petrifiante and that looked intriguing. It wasn’t far and so I mapped out a short loop to see it.
Lunch yesterday at O’Délices—serving a limited selection of meals after 2. We shared the salad; the beer was Al’s, despite it being on my side of the table.
The ride started with a descent to cross the Durance, the same river we walked beside in Briançon. Then a climb on a quiet section of D38, where we saw several other cyclists going in both directions and a descent back to river level. Access to La Fontaine Petrifiante was by a gravel path with info boards spaced along it; only the first few metres of gravel were iffy, the rest was fine.
I missed it but Al thought we should go back for a second look at the structure built into the cliff, buf if was part of a farm guarded by a large dog pretending to sleep in the driveway.
We got back to town in time for a simple boulangerie lunch of wraps and Schweppes Agrume before heading to the hotel to actually rest.
We returned to the same restaurant for dinner tonight. As always, the second time wasn’t quite as good as the first but we weren’t as hungry either.
These two iconic structures of Guillestre were hard to capture at once. Perhaps if I’d hiked up a hill with my camera instead of trying with my phone on the way to dinner.
Dinner. Al had a burger and I had ravioles. I’d ordered the version with chorizo and peppers but was brought the one with Queyras blue cheese (shown). I didn’t notice until the first bite, but it was really good do I wasn’t going to complain. Our server, of perhaps the customer who’d ordered this one, did, so it was switched with many apologies. For reference, the Queyras one was better.
