Paul
So I have been handed the keyboard to record my thoughts over the following days.
The day starts beautifully and slowly with bright sun and few worries over Nellie and that sense that we are in no hurry, after all this is our project with no one but us to satisfy. We take time to park Nellie beside a fountain in the centre of Châteauroux-des-Alpes while we have the rare delight of a hot cup of coffee. It seems days since we have tasted hot-food and it only serves to make the coffee that much better.
Climbing out of Châteauroux-des-Alpes (in this trip as with all of our others, there is a law of nature that says the day starts with a climb) we discover a fork and look down at a narrow track snaking along a precipitous slope. This is something that I just don't want to do with Nellie. Fortunately the signposts are with us and show a shorter alternative along and wider and safer track. So why not!
I need to do more research on this but I guess the Roman Road here is now buried under the tarmac of the Route Nationale and instead of offering us the obvious route to follow as it must have done to the earlier generations of pilgrims it offers us just risk and so we are consigned to the hills.
As we make our way up the valley of the Durance there are deep gorges cut by fast running torrents of melt water and today we just have to make the loop up the gorge to a safe crossing point and then back down again. Well that was the plan because this winter must have been a lulu. The safe crossing point was a wooden bridge which we discover has been half destroyed. A pedestrian could wade through the torrent (think white water rafting) and then shin up the centre pier to cross the deepest and fastest section, but this is not something any horse is going to manage and so with slightly hanging heads we retrace our steps and tackle the Route Nationale. Mectifully we are able to choose a route that limits our exposure to just a couple of kilometres before returning to the high wooded slopes.
Approaching the impressive and scary hill-top fortress town of Mont-Dauphin we go into one of those phases of "what do our readers want from their route". Here we can see a way to cut out 4 or 5 kilometres, a bunch of climbing and a few nasty road crossings. The price is not seeing Mont-Dauphin close-up. We go for that option.
Tonight we aim to go au-sauvage, but passing through St Thomas we come across a new wrinkle – au-sauvage in a camp-site. Here it seems the season does not really get going until June and so there are all these deserted camp-sites just crying out to offer sanctuary to us and Nellie. So we choose the best spot on the site right beside the river and settle into a period of self congratulation (helped by the newly discovered joys of small plastic bottles of white wine). Our reveries do not last. Babette is on her feet shouting to Nellie, who has wrapped herself in a cat's cradle of rope and is panicing. We rush and release her but it is too late to avoid the rope biting into her nearly healed wound. We apply all the medication we can find and she seems to be strangely undisturbed despite the blood. So our joy turns to fear that this could have reversed the great progress we have been making.
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