WHERE DID THE WATER GO

Gorges de la Nesque - 50km cycle ride

21st March 2024

We are staying in a typical village of this region in France. The houses are built into a circle with newer properties radiating out. This means quirky houses squashed together, some with brightly painted shutters, many with interesting objects hanging or placed alongside tables and chairs outside. There is a feel of outdoor living when the weather improves. Although we have a great weather week for exploring; twenty degrees and sunshine. Perfect.

( One of my watercolour sketches from the holiday)

This is the last journey of our week, the longest but not the hardest. The wind is gentle today and so are the uphill stretches, which is good because the first half of the ride is uphill.

Villes sur Auzon is quiet when we leave, except for the roadworks that they are trying to complete before the real tourist season starts.

We leave on a gentle uphill that winds up and away from the village. The side of the road has topiary hedges, I’m not kidding, the person who clips the hedges around here does it with finesse and pride. It doesn’t matter how small the bits of hedge are they are neatly shaped into rectangles and squares. We laugh. Its funny and kind of cute.

The trees are short and scrubby, and we soon leave the olives and cherries behind us, they are replaced by oaks still wearing autumn colour fashion, what would the Parisians say?

We pass a cyclist who is taking a break, and another who zooms past on the other side of the road, enjoying the downhill.

Its not long before the gorge opens below us. It twists and wins between steep folded banks covered in short trees and scrubby plants. The riverbed is dry, like many in the region, rocks, stones, and gravel are all the evidence that sometimes water runs through this valley.

It is so quiet, not even birds are singing, and there are no cars. We lift our faces and enjoy the craggy rocks that tower above, below and across the gorge. There are impressive cracks, smoothed hollows, and is that a cave? Its hard to imagine that once the water swirled where we are cycling, and higher.

The topiary bushes have gone, and the occasional low stone wall is all that stands between us and a long drop, the gorge is four hundred meters deep in places, I ride closer to the center of the road.

We glimpse the mountain bike track near the riverbed and then through a bridge, and Martin says he’d like to do that one day. I prefer the idea of walking through the gorge, I don’t like gravel tracks.

The cyclist we passed speeds by, and we nod a second bonjour.

We can see our winding road above and around the gorge, it looks steep, but isn’t. Effort low, we can enjoy the views, which we do.

A little further up and the cyclist who passed us has stopped again, he is very red in the face, we ask if all is well. He says yes, so we leave him to cycle as he wants and continue with our gentle pace up and around, up and around.

We stop after an hour for some apple leather and a drink. It is so very still and quiet. The rock formations are similar to the ones where we live in the Jura, but the landscape looks different because of the trees. They are smaller, there are less of them, and they are a different type of spruce/pine with lots of tiny cones.

We pass a small house built into the rock and it’s for sale. No Martin, we are not buying it. There is one other house further up the road with some land, a small farm that sells honey, but not today, it’s not tourist season yet.

‘That looks like a castle,’ I say pointing to an impressive rock formation with an archway to allow the road through. It is ‘Le Grande Tunnel’ on the edge of the rocks on a sharp corner, from here it looks like a castle entrance. It’s surprising how far we travel to reach it, and we laugh. The tunnel is an archway through the huge and imposing rockface, but I still ring my bell and Martin whoops although there is no echo. We love the humour of its name, especially as another ‘tunnel’ further up is slightly longer.

Although there are no castles along the top of this gorge, prehistoric remains: teeth, flint tools, and pottery show that neanderthals lived here 150,000 years ago.

We hear birdsong as we continue up, still no cars, but there are a few more cyclists. One man zoomed past us when we were near the start of the climb, and he now zooms back down. A good morning workout for him.

We hear a different sound, water or wind in the trees? We peer down and see sunlight glinting. It is water, but where does it go? The riverbed was so dry lower down, or maybe the water flows the other way? It’s hard to tell from up so high. We hear the water as we continue up but loose site of it as trees fill the gorge, but we see lots of tracks on the gravel scree slopes higher up. Animal or human? Too many to be human they must be animal, but we don’t see anything. There are wild boar, spotted salamander, and deer in the gorge but there are too many places for them to hide.

We reach the viewpoint Belvedere de la Gabelle, and there are people. Cyclists and a car. It's not crowded but feels it, after such a quiet ride up. The views are impressive and above us huge wings soar. It’s a golden eagle. We watch it turn on the upward wind currents, higher and higher. Beautiful. It doesn’t call, but I remember the eagles we saw in the Swiss alps and their haunting cry. There are vultures and buzzards here too, but we don’t see any.

We leave and are alone on the road once more. I don’t know where the other cyclists went, maybe up and down. We are doing a circuit. There is a small lake to our right and we think it is where we plan to have lunch but first we need to reach Monieux, take a very sharp turn at the entrance to the old medieval village and cycle back to the lake before we can eat. There is a ruined castle above the village, and cobbled streets, but we are not climbing up there to explore today. We have completed 23 km of our ride and its time for a drink and some food.

The lake has a small dam that leads into the top of the gorge, so we were right about which way the water flowed but still puzzled by where the water went. I finally found the answer. The water seeps down through the limestone so the lower part is dry when there is not much water flowing.

We cycle around the lake and find a large square rock to lean against. There are a few other cyclists also resting and eating, but it is quiet. A duck comes to welcome us and ask for a crumb or two.

After lunch is the steepest climb of the ride, and not just because we have after lunch legs, but its short and we are soon at the Belvedere de Saint Hubert where yet again we have a view of Mount Venteux. The sunshine and heat of this week has melted the covering of snow and its easy to see one of the winding roads that leads to the top. We are not tempted to cycle up.

The road is now a gentle slope down, around and down, we catch glimpses of the road we traveled on the other side of the gorge, it looks so far away.

There are some burnt trees on the side of the road, but nature is already growing back. Soon the topiary hedges are back, and cherry trees. It’s not taking us long to wind back down, it’s a colder ride though so I stop to add a layer.

We turn off the road and plunge down a steep track where we stop to take photos of the medieval town of Methamis perched high on its rocks.

We don’t go up though but continue back to Villes sur Auzon where the Ice cream shop ‘Lou glace de Vielo’ has opened its doors for the first time since we arrived. A cold drink and two scoops of ice-cream have been earned. Martin has caramel and nougat, and I have coffee and hazelnut. Perfect blends. We enjoy them in the sunshine before wandering back to our little holiday home.