Elsien's Traveblogue

Easter Sunday, 2013

So, how did a very well-planned 12km walk turn into a bit of a 22km marathon – well, half marathon?

It all started so well: the first of the tulips I'd bought in Holland appeared on Easter Sunday, very appropriately, I thought. We had a bit of a cloud hanging over Montpellier, just a little one, said the satellite picture and indeed, it moved over to Nimes or Nice and we set out in the car. We have discovered this very nice wooded and hilly area just about ten minutes north of Montpellier, second exit off the A750, at a nothing place called St.Paul-et-Valmalle. There is an actual Valmalle as well, but there are only three houses there, not even a church …

Under the motorway, D27 towards La Boissière and you are there: the Bois Nègre to the right, some other bois to the left and paths, wood, hills everywhere, walkers' paradise. Some of the paths were old railway tracks, they are pretty straight as you can imagine, but there are overgrown ones, paths that turn into rivers in winter, with very stony dry riverbeds during the dry seasons. We'd decided to start off just after La Boissière this time, because I'd found a walk description and a little map of just the walk I'd worked out from the Ordnance Survey map. The trouble with the French Ordnance Survey maps is that they aren't really OS maps at all, not very detailed and missing landmarks, so this little description was very welcome. 12km, which could be cut short to 6km, beautiful weather and lovely landscape. 

We came across a couple of groups of French families who were having a picnic in the middle of nowhere, with tables and tablecloths, lots of food and even more wine, as you do in France on an Easter Sunday, a handful of cyclists and that was it. All was wonderful. There was a little lake in an old bauxite quarry, a gorgeous pine wood, a babbling little river, some abandoned farms, spring flowers, singing birds, great! The walk was not too taxing, highest point not even 200 metres.

At about 9 kms we were supposed to turn left to cross the hill, back towards the little lake we had passed on our way out, but there was no path. There was something very soggy and swamp-like and blocked after 50 yards, so I thought I'd made a mistake and we carried on. I though the turn-off might be a little further up. A long way later, still no turn-off and we got lost, made another mistake taking the right fork where we should probably have taken the left one and another long way later I started to recognise some places we had passed a few weeks ago, on a previous walk, south of La Boissière. We finally met some horse riders we could ask and they sent us back the way we'd come, but via the top of the hill, called a 'Puech' with the radio mast - 367 metres up.

A hot, steep scramble up to the top later, I found that there was only one way down, in the wrong direction. The right direction was fenced off. Down again, where we finally came to where the soggy blocked off path was and then the only way was back further the way we'd come. Eventually, after another steepish climb up another Puech after crossing the little river at the wrong ford - «Funny», we said, «it's got bigger!», we heard the noise of the road. We stopped a passing motorist who kindly pointed us in the right direction and even took us there, in spite of our very muddy shoes … «We're country people», she said, with a big smile. «We are used to this. The mountains are beautiful, but sometimes people get lost». We got to where our car was parked in less than two minutes,; we'd actually come out where we should have come out … 22 kms we'd done by then … I thought my legs would fall off, but they are still on and after a roast chicken from the corner rotisserie, half a bottle of local red and a good night's sleep they are still working … It was raining today, hurray, so a very good excuse not to do anything, except go to the cinema round the corner: pre-showing of Dustin Hoffman's first film as a director, Quartet, with Maggie Smith and Billy Connelly, a treat! 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1441951/?ref_=sr_1