Relaxed climbing in beautiful parts of France

JULIE: 

While traveling it is so difficult to observe without comparison- to home, to things you’ve seen before. I have a dozen insightful ideas a day … but none of these can I share with you, as it’s been more than a month since I last wrote about the trip, and all musings have fled to the recesses of my subconscious.  

But, just occasionally, my mind has stopped its niggling and left me in peace to gaze at something beautiful.   Our 3 weeks (22 June to 9 July) in the Gorges du Tarn were like this.  It is impossible to describe our stay in the area without painting the setting.  The Tarn river is a narrow, crystal clear river that twinkles in green. It flows steadily down to places we never saw and has carved out the largely rocky sides of the plateau into a magnificient steep valley. There are steep, long cliffs with fabulous climbing everywhere.  I’d ventured to say that it was the most beautiful part of France, (though as with all superlatives, they are the devils work and no sooner do you utter the words than swallow them).  

To get from the plateau you take a winding road a little larger than a driveway, which occasionally goes straight through rock caves hollowed for the purpose.   The stone village of Les Vignes (the vines) where we stayed is tiny. There are a couple of restaurants we came to know well over our 3 weeks where you sit and look down over the sparkling water, and out at all the cliffs – most of which have never been climbed.  The restauranteurs came to know us also, or at least our bright blue Renault driving up and down the town.  While bemused at the repetitive ordering of the one vegetarian dish on their menu for sure, they rewarded our enforced patronage with free drinks from time to time.  

Anyway, for 3 weeks in the Tarn Tony and I happily lived camped beside the gurgling river under shady trees.   The weather in France was already hot, around 35 or more each day, but in the Tarn we found shade in the steep gorge and cool evenings to rockclimb in until 10pm.  However, some days were too hot and so we’d float around in the river until early afternoon or go to a nearby town for some provisions.  A highlight was Severac  where we wandered up little cobblestone streets  to a medieval castle surrounded by poppies and plum trees.   We were able to explore the ramshackle castle all alone, for free.  Tony pointed out quite rightly how strange it was that such beautiful  places came about because of war.   

We also visted the Gorges de la Jonte, the next town over.   Here, remarkably, it was even more beautiful than the Tarn.  We climbed several longer routes in the Jonte, both around 100metres, 25 storeys, each.  Not that the height makes any difference to the climbing difficulty. The first was easy climbing up the L’Icorne, the unicorn.  You can imagine the high triangular point at the top.  At the top we had the option of going hands over feet along a wire hooked up between the unicorn and the main cliff, above a 100metre void, or abseiling down the unicorn directly.   As tempted as we were with monkeying over the tyrolean, we couldn’t see a way down on the other side, and so we abseiled down directly.  Later in our trip we pried ourselves out of bed early enough to avoid most of the sun on another climb in the Jonte – L’Arete Ouest (the western arête) of a huge cliff that looks like half a mountain has detached from the rest of its brethren to stand alone.   An early start was required as the sun was too hot to climb in.  However, the thing about climbing an arête is that it is scary… very scary.  You climb right on the edge the whole way so there are no ledges or corners to dissimulate the feeling of being so high.  And right from the start I had to step across a chasm to get ‘en route’.   The highlight for me was right at the top, out of sight of tony who was about 45 metres below courageously pulling a difficult move knowing if I fell I’d drop 6 or 8 metres into nothingness.   Tony then led the next pitches, as I think I used up all my courage then and there. He’s so much braver than I am!

There were a couple of days of rain during our stay in the Tarn.   Tony and I spoiled ourselves by staying in a nice B&B called “The Tranquil Place” run by a couple of British people. Evidently they hadn’t paid much attention during their colonial rule, as after a day or so John finally worked out we were Australian, not Belgian.  He pulled out his Rolf Harris Cds and rugby jokes immediately.  The rain managed to wet all our clothes so the next sunny day was a write off to wash them all.   Fortunately 50 metre climbing ropes can string up a lot of washing, though not sure what the other campers thought about Tony’s crappy socks.

Around the same time, we made friends with another newlywed American couple Allan and Charlotte and their friend Alex (a girl), who were completing post-grad philosophy studies in Spain.  Not sure if when you meet people initially you look for similarities only, but it seemed uncanny how similar we were.  Charlotte and Allan were also in their first year of marriage, are vegetarian and doing a lot of climbing all over the place; they were even considering following us into Iran for the festival.  While we nearly followed them to Spain, we resisted the urge and instead left the Tarn, sadly, for one of the most famous climbing areas in the world… the Gorges du Verdon in Provence.  Hopefully will see our new friends again in California some day.  Would be nice to follow in the steps of some other married couples I know who’ve made lasting friendships on their honeymoon!

Introduction to the Gorges du Verdon

Now I’ve been rockclimbing for years now, but when I looked down at the Gorges du Verdon, a massive 850 metres from the lookout to the tiny line of a river below, my throat choked up and I wanted to back away from the metal railing.  There is only one word to describe this place and it is spectacular.  

Tony did, eventually, entice me onto these amazing cliffs … but for more on these adventures you’ll have to tune in later.  (We’re off right now to sample some more adventures on the town in Cape Town, South Africa.)

Crazy exposure climbing a few hundred meters above the Verdon River. You can just spot Julie tied in above the lip of a void.