Back to French Adventures

Italy had been so hot we were determined to have a night as high as we could to make it as cool as possible. So heading back into France we stopped for the night at the 2000m high Col du Mont Cenis and a parking area accessed by a dirt road next to the dam on Mont Cenis lake.

The air felt so fresh it was a welcome relief. We could see a fort from where we were parked so I decided to go for a little explore. I later found out that this was the Fort de Variselle which was built by the Italians in 1877 to defend against French attacks. However in 1947, in the Treaty of Paris, the area was handed back to the French.

The fort itself is fenced off because of safety concerns with the bridge into the fort looking very treacherous. I managed to sneak in safely and explored the inside of this large fort which includes two levels of gun emplacements which would have originally been able to defend the entire plateau.

In the morning we woke to the cries of marmots and peered outside to see several scurrying around a few metres from where we were parked. This was a welcome surprise and we spent some time watching their antics.

We decided that we wanted to ride out the rest of the heatwave at high altitude, somewhere we could be outside. So we headed back to the same campsite that we visited on the way up to Italy, at Bramans.

We had another couple of really good days here, it’s a great location. I re-explored the Cave of 14 Chapeaus and managed to wriggle my way deeper into the cave, taking a narrow passage high up rather than the lower passage that I had balked at last time.

I also decided to take my kayak down the Arc river that flows through Bramans. I hiked up river with my kayak and found a place to put in. It was probably a grade 2+ river at this point and my first time doing white-water with my pack-raft. This is the beauty of a pack-raft which weighs only about 5kg including paddle, you can hike with it, making trips like this possible.

The first 1km was a really wild ride and I almost went over a couple of times but just managed to keep control. Overall I descended about 4.5km and it was great fun. I did have to stop after the first 1 km though to let some water out as I’d managed to accumulate a couple of inches in the bottom.

The other thing that we discovered in our second visit to this area was a swimming hole in a mountain river around 400m from our campsite. The water was not too cold and it was a perfect place to cool off in the hot weather with great views.

 After a couple of days here the weather was scheduled to break so it was time to move on. In fact the temperature went from 35c to 10c overnight with some rain so we headed down the mountain and across to the Vercors plateau.

Our first stop was Lans en Vercors. We were stopping here purely as a free stop for the night but when we arrived we realised that there was a country fete on. There was a display of vintage tractors and men demonstrating how wheat was harvested in the olden days.

There was also a steam engine which was hooked up to an old hay baler. Alongside this were some food and drink stalls and we joined the town in their festivities.

Not too far from here is a cave with a very rare type of stalactite. We decided that this was worth a visit.

What we hadn’t bargained on was the road to get there which goes through the Gorges de la Bourne. This is a very narrow road with overhanging cliffs which is quite hairy when you are in tall and wide vehicle. It was a beautiful drive though – in the parts when we weren’t stressing about meeting any oncoming vehicles.

The cave itself, the Grotte de Choranche, is over 30km long although only a small part is accessible to the visitor. It is famous for the straw like stalactites called fistuleuses stalactites. These grow incredibly slowly around 5cm per 100 years and some are over 3 metres long !

The cave was incredible and well worth a visit.

A short hike from the main cave is another smaller cave with a small river flowing out of it which was very pretty although inside there was not much to see.

Near the entrance to the cave there is also a large waterfall which is a little difficult to access but well worth the effort.