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Useful advices

A useful Introduction

Corniche sublime- Point sublime
La Palud sur Verdon

Gorges du Verdon-An introduction

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Leave Moustiers along a busy route (in the summer) towards the GRAND CANYON DU VERDON also called LES GORGES DU VERDON. You have two possibilities, when a fork in the road lass than 3 km will offer you a choice. One via the D 952, shortest connection to Castellane and the longer via D 957, D 19 and D 71, heading south skirting the spectacular man-made Lac de Sainte-Croix, a 11 km stretch of perfect azure water created in 1970 by the installation of a hydroelectric dam. The southern route doglegs east to follow the southern ridge of the canyon, known as THE CORNICHE SUBLIME. The other route towards Castellane snakes along the northern ridge, veering away from the canyon edge around halfway along its length. . Undoubtedly the Corniche Sublime has the better views on the unendless deep valley that the Verdon eroded in these calcareous mountains. The best view is from the PONT DE L’ARTUBUY on the famous BALCONS DE LA MESCLA. The left bank has its own impressive belvedere, the POINT SUBLIME, a dizzy 180 m above the river.
Without pretending that the gorges du Verdon are comparable to the Grand Canyon in Colorado, these gorges are one of the most impressive in Europe. It is like somebody used a big axe to notch a deep groove of 21 km long. Thirty years ago the Verdon spouted 800 cubic meter water per second at his highest levels. Today, two dams reduced this to 8 cubic meter a second giving us the opportunity to access the bottom of the canyon. Vertiginous limestone cliffs crushing you with their 300 to 600 m height, gouged by the waters of the Verdon river, in turn glassy and crystalline or tumbling in white water chaos, chaotic rock formations, wild river banks, etc..Colours are unreal: jewelled emerald and turquoise contrasts in autumn with the ochres and russets of surrounding deciduous trees. It’s a hikers paradise!! If any extraction of minerals and fossils is strictly forbidden, fishing is permitted…in the legal boundaries of course.  Trouts, carps, pikes and a lot of others. Ornithologists will enjoy the view of a few dozens of species, while the flora amateurs will discover panels indicating the trees, bushes, aromatic plants and more.
But the Verdon is also the discovery of perched villages, gallo-roman ruins, churches and local patrimony.
It is interesting to know that the Verdon was only really discovered in 1905 by three men, of which Edouard Alfred Martel, also called “the father of speleology”.. They explored the whole Canyon of which we can find today the itineraries in all possible guidebooks. 
Let’s not forget that this is not a Sunday promenade but a risky enterprise. Not only the weather forecast have to be god but be also aware of the warnings by the Chaudanne and Castillon dams when they prepare water transfers or cleaning. In the deep of the canyon there is a constant semi-darkness and you walk though tunnels, chasms, grottos and rapids.
But all this remains “terra incognita” for the car driver on the D 952 and D 19 and D 71, unfortunately jammed during summer months. Tourism has now moved in wholesale, and those in the know make strenuous efforts to avoid the area completely during the month of August.
About the oppressive crowds in the summer, car queues and over commercialisation I will write in next essay. But also more agreeable info about the gorges du Verdon.

Bibliography

A guide to Provence, by Michael Jacobs (Viking, London 1988), "Guide de la Provence mysterieuse" and "Provence Antique"by Jean-Paul Clebert (Ed.Sand, 1986 “Aspects of Provence, by Pope-Henessy James (Penguin Travel 1988), Guides du Routard, (1999) –« Towns in Provence », by M.F.KFischer (New-York-Vintage books 1983), « Regain » by Jean Giono, « Hannibal’s footsteps » by Bernard Levin (Sceptre paperback 1987)