Total distance so far - 605 miles (974 km)
What a few days it has been. On arrival in Marseille I was delighted to find a route for the next part of my journey, the GR51 which conveniently goes from Marseille all the way to Menton on the border of Italy. I was surprised I hadn’t spotted this route before but it is quite hard to work out which way all the various GR routes go. It misses a few towns that I definitely want to visit and Monaco as well but I can always do those on my journey back west. This is also going to be excellent for my fitness as it is not only 436km long it has over 15,000m of elevation! I am finally going up some mountains!Â
The first part of the journey was absolutely stunning, if a little brutal. The Calanques are genuinely as dreamy as all of the pictures look and just provide a permanently wonderful view. Whether you are high up on one of the hills or down by the edge of the sea it is stunning. What was interesting was walking from West to East as the two ends are very different. The west is quite sparse and only has a few small villages, each with normally only one little restaurant. The calanques here are small but charming and you can easily find a spot for some peace and quiet. The further East you go the bigger and more spectacular the calanques become and the views genuinely take your breath away, even if that is because some of the footpaths take you up and down some huge hills many many times. It is proper hiking with bits of climbing and some really tricky footing involved but you are just continually rewarded for your efforts around every corner. Here is an example of one of the tough sections of "walking":
I could write poetically about them for ages but here are a load of pictures instead:
However there is an inevitable price for the added grandeur in the Eastern Calanques. Tourists. I met some really wonderful people in the Calanques but, especially around Cassis, I felt the place was a little bit ruined by them. I don’t want to sound offensive (cue me being a little bit offensive) but there were a lot of people who I just don’t enjoy being around. People who go to these beautiful spots and just get completely drunk, play loud music and go to the toilet right by the beach - they just ruin it for everyone else. In my especially nerdy way I kept thinking of Professor McGonagal in Harry Potter who says ‘they are the worst kind of muggles’ - it seems kind of appropriate here; quite a lot of people who don’t really respect the magic that a place like the Calanques can have.
Cassis itself was strange for me as I didn’t arrive in particularly good health. I was completely dehydrated and had already seen a few calanques that I thought would have been stunning had they not been packed full of people. I was desperate for a drink and got annoyed at how far through Cassis I had to go before you actually get to any shops that will sell you a drink. I then found some food (Steak Hache at last!!) and sat on a bench to recover. I felt really bad so stayed and watched a busy pétanque area in the middle of town for about an hour whilst the food and drink did its work. Sat on the bench I actually started appreciating Cassis a little bit more. There are loads of restaurants to fit all budgets, the pétanque area was heaving with locals who seem to have some sort of league type thing going on, the marina is right in the middle of town so there are lots of boats around which make the place look nice and some of the houses around the outskirts of Cassis are stunning. I definitely feel like if I could afford one of the fancier B&Bs with a swimming pool then I could really enjoy myself there. My advice would be to go to the calanques early before the crowds arrive, explore the town and have some lunch before going back to your accommodation when it starts to get loud and lively. There you go - travel advice for those with crowd anxiety!
I had planned to camp that night as Cassis is out of my very modest camping budget so found a shop to stock up on supplies and, despite not being particularly well recovered, walked up a huge hill (380 meters up) and then walked another few miles along a ridge before finding somewhere where I was allowed to camp. The Calanques are understandably very strict about their no camping rule so I made sure I was well out of the area. This also gave the opportunity to try out my new piece of kit. My bivvy bag is great but it suffers from a two flaws that all the bivvys that I have tried have which is condensation and lack of heat control. I will definitely be using it again as, if there is any chance of rain, it will do exactly what I need it to do. For nights when it is clear I now have a bug net! Kind of tent shaped but just a bug net. I roll out my mats and my sleeping bag and that is it. When you’re inside you really don’t see the netting so you still get that wonderful view of the sky above you as you drift off.
PS. Sorry I didn't make my bed before taking the photo!
Terrible tourists aside, one of the things that I am really enjoying is meeting more people on the paths now that it is closer to the hiking season. A great example of this was walking towards Cassis where I met an incredibly friendly group who were really interested in my walk. I love meeting other hikers as straight away there is a shared interest and something to talk about. It also gives me a chance to improve my French though I do find I always end up talking about myself as I have practiced talking about my journey in French and also because everyone is so interested in it. I always come away from those meetings wishing I had found out more about them so that is something I am definitely going to practise! This group of lovely people got me thinking though as they asked me why I was doing my trip. That question threw me a little and I started telling them about some of the bad things that have happened recently. After we had parted ways I thought about it some more and I wish I had told them that meeting people just like themselves is one of the main reasons. I love the walking on this trip and the scenery is incredible but getting to know people from very different backgrounds is so special and those experiences have been some of the most memorable of my trip so far. It is a shame they often only last for a couple of minutes and I wish I had plucked up the courage today to ask to walk with them so we could talk for longer.
During the last two days I have done more of what I now think of as the in-betweeny bits. Not the highlight reel places but still very pleasant, and in some ways these are the bits I have enjoyed the most. Two highlights for me were a small town called Castellet and Mont Caume. Castellet is a great little medieval town at the top of a big hill. The history was interesting, the architecture great and the shops really nice and charming. This is just the sort of tourism that I do like. I didn't buy anything as I would have to carry it around with me for thousands of miles but I did wish that I didn't have my rucksack with me as the shops were selling loads of locally crafted things. There was also an amazing aroma due to some of the shops which used herbs and flowers in their products and this lovely smell seemed to fill the whole town. Another benefit of that was that I didn't feel quite so self-conscious that everyone would be able to smell me as I had at that point been walking for two days in the sun without the chance to wash properly! The last couple of days had also been very muggy at times which made the walking really difficult.
The walking today was much easier and it started off really nicely with a walk into the foothills of the mountains through a lovely little forest which kept me nice and shaded from the Sun. It may have also been helped by the fact that I was walking towards mountains, which always seems to make me smile like a Cheshire cat. I’m not sure if this trait of mine is due to nature or nurture as I may just do it instinctively or I may have learnt it from one of my parents who, for confidentiality reasons, I won’t tell you which one, though that parent is on my father’s side of the family and also has a massive grin on his face as soon as mountains are nearby.
A few of the paths annoyingly seemed to just turn into jungle and were very overgrown but before long I was heading up the mountain proper. For this I was using a map on an app to help me with navigation. This app is great if you follow main routes in France but, if you are using it for some of the smaller marked paths it isn't always that up to date and it doesn't really suggest how good the path is. I ended up climbing Mont Caume, near Toulon, using a very little used path which just got more and more challenging. The tracks turned into paths, which then turned very narrow and then just started to disappear completely. When I got to the last three hundred metres of ascent it suddenly changed to a boulder field with lots of loose rock in between. It was treacherous and I had to look really closely on the map to see that I was going the right way, using ridges and false summits to navigate my way as the path was long gone. It was shortly after I nearly stepped on a snake that I thought about some advice my dad had given me when I was younger that you should always let someone know where you are going just in case you get into trouble. I'm not going to do that every time I go up a hill on this holiday, but I did think that as I was off-route and on a very small path in quite a dangerous boulder field I had better let someone know. I shared my location with my dad (a very handy feature on IPhones) and messaged him to tell him what I was doing. I messaged him as I knew he would worry less than mum and that there was no need to panic as I had all of the equipment that I needed and I was being very careful. He messaged back quite quickly to say that he thought I was doing the right thing in letting him know where I was going, he was proud of me for listening to his advice, that I should take care and have a great time...
I may have paraphrased this a little as Dad sometimes like to write slightly cryptically. His actual message was:
Pretty much what I said...
The top of the mountain was really interesting as there are loads of abandoned buildings near the top and I am really intrigued as to what they are for. The views over Toulon were great and you could see along the coast for miles so well worth the effort in getting up there. I am now in Le Revest-Les-Eaux for a couple of days and am quite excited to explore the village/town as, for the first time on this trip, I have really started to imagine myself living here. I can't quite place what it is about this place that is making me feel this but I am keen to find out more.
PS. Don't panic, I judge lots of towns at home and abroad as to whether I would live there or not so I am not abandoning all of you back in England just yet. Anyway, to I'll finish off with the most popular sections of my blogs:
The Idiocies of Mark
Two this time. In only two days. One serious one to learn from and one just for your enjoyment and blimey this one makes me cringe. I’ll start with the boring one: I made the stupid mistake of leaving a zip open on my rucksack. I know I started the day with a 1.5 litre bottle of water in that pocket. It wasn’t there when I needed it and, by the time I reached Cassis I really needed it. I had to walk eight miles in the boiling hot sun, on a route with some massive and steep ascents and descents, all from the time I decided that I was thirsty and realised I had run out of drinks. When I got to Cassis I had to walk all the way to the centre to get some drink and within about ten minutes I had drained about 2 litres. There were lots of other people around so I was monitoring myself carefully and was ready to ask for some water if needed but I have to make sure that doesn’t happen again. Typical that it did happen in a place that has no running water for miles!
Now time for the cringey one :(
Picture the scene: You have walked to one of the gorgeously quiet Calanques, with only about six other people nearby. The sun is shining. The sea is right there in front of you, the waves crashing gently against the shore. You have a delicious lunch and you unroll your travel mat and lay down for a lazy afternoon snooze. Perfect right?
After about half an hour a gran, mother and daughter get up to leave. I had lain down with a shelf of rocks behind me which is where the group decided to walk. As they approached, the gran, who was leading the way said a cheery ‘bonjour’ which I understood. She then mumbled something about the weather, which I sort of understood. I was struggling for a few reasons. One, she was speaking in French and I am still not very good at it, particularly listening to people. Two, she was old. French old people mumble and croak a lot and they really don’t bother to enunciate their words (I know - it isn’t all of them!). Three, she was from the Marseille area and the lovely people of Marseille talk with an incredibly thick accent which I am really struggling with. Think about the Scottish accent but in French.
Anyway, she then starts saying something which I really didn’t understand but the tone of her voice had certainly changed a little, so I looked her way to try and pick up on any clues from her face as to what she was saying. I didn’t understand at all. She started getting more agitated which made her even harder to understand but I did hear the word ‘dangereux’ so I looked up thinking she was concerned about knocking a stone onto me or something as I was beneath them but this made her even more annoyed! At this point, the daughter was kind of giggling and the Mum finally said something which I did understand which was ‘Ferme tes yeux!’ Which means close your eyes. And then it dawned on me. The danger that she was talking about was that, with me lying down beneath them, the gran didn’t want me looking up her skirt… and everything she had said just made me look in her direction (at her face!!!) even more. I immediately turned around and planted my face into the mat and mumbled an apology that I am sure they didn’t hear. I could genuinely feel my cheeks going red though it definitely wasn’t sunburn.