Kiki goes Mountaineering

We woke to a chilly but sunny morning in Vallon Pont d’Arc and emptied our tanks before hitting the road.

Our route this morning took us up into the Ardeche mountains - the highest point was a mountain pass at 2,800ft. The scenery is wild with lots of granite crags backed by snow capped mountains - reminiscent of Dartmoor or the Scottish Highlands. There are very few people living here but we did pass through a couple of pretty little villages one of which was a bit of a squeeze for Kiki!

We’re heading to the Lac de Villefort which is actually a reservoir that was built in 1964 by flooding the Bayard valley. The 30 residents of the hamlet of Bayard were offered snorkels but chose to move to higher ground. The reservoir powers a hydro electric power station located some 10km further down the valley.

We parked Kiki and had coffee and chocolate before settling out on a 7km hike around the lac. We were surprised to see that the water level was extremely low - perhaps 30m below normal - and think that some work was going on which necessitated draining the reservoir. We were at 2000ft altitude and a strong northerly wind was blowing so we added plenty of layers before venturing out.

The first leg was very cold as we were heading directly into the wind. Unfortunately is wasn’t very interesting either as what was left of the water was way down below us. As we got deeper into the valley the wind abated and the scenery improved. The nice gentle path turned into a rough track that wound its way along the wooded hillside. We climbed up and down crossing streams and rocky abysses on planks and rickety bridges.

After a couple of hours we completed the circumnavigation and arrived back at Kiki for a late lunch.

Lunch over and the washing up down, we continued driving ever higher as we climbed up the Cevennes mountain range. Our destination tonight is a tiny Aire de Camping Car at Bagnols les Bains which is nestled in the Lot river valley at over 3000ft altitude. En-route we went through a high mountain pass and crossed the watershed of the Atlantic - Mediterranean divide.

Arriving at Bagnols les Bains we parked up and went for a short walk into the village - it was icy cold so we didn’t go far! We returned to Kiki and put the heating as the temperature is dropping rapidly. We had supper and got out our summer duvet to go on top of our winter one as snow is forecast for tonight!