Cirque de St.Même France

We continued our journey on roads untravelled as we drive through Les Échelles and up through the Gorges du Guilers Vif. It was quite tame to other roads we have done in the past. 

We have seen many villages with their signs upside down which we have been told is a campaign by local farmers to protest against the government.

The views along the way …

We managed to park in the small village of St.Pierre d’Entremont and treated ourselves to some delicious pain au chocolate. The village is the gateway to the Cirque de St.Même. We followed the signs and a little further on we paid the €5 carpark entry fee. There are 2 main walks from here - the green one is an easy 2km return walk along the Guiers River to the base of the falls. The other - red is a hard 3km return walk. We decided to do the later. We were told it was a one way track in a clockwise direction (please note: it is less steep to go anticlockwise to the Grande Cascade and then come back the same way… if only we knew). 

Anyway we survived our climb (just haha).

Along the way we got a view of the first water fall, ‘Pisse du Guiers’.

Then at the end of our climb we were rewarded with the beautiful Grande Cascade. We took a few photos from different spots.

From here it was down hill all the way at a much more comfortable gradient. We ventured off the main path to have a look at the Cascade Isolée (the middle waterfall) which was very pretty. 

The rest of the walk was through some lovely forest. By the time we returned to Bluey (11:30am) the car park was full. We drove back the same way and then took the road south over the Col Cucheron to St.Pierre de Chartreuse.

We stopped here for lunch and had a short stroll through the village.

 

This is my idol.. the creator of the office of tourism in France…. Heheh

Further on at the Col de Porte we turned off to head up to Charmant Som. Unfortunately the road had a 5.5m length restriction on it. So we had to turn back. The upside was that there was parking in the shade here so we decided to stay as the temperature was around 34°. 

We enjoyed a pleasant afternoon and later strolled along a shady track to a popular picnic spot. Along the way we admired the dramatic views of the surrounding escarpments. 

Mark also admired the construction of the wooden hut.