Storms were forecast, so we had battened down and given up on our plans. Although we had distant thunder and light rain the previous evening, I awoke at 7am to a perfect, blue Provençale sky.

“Shall we get up and do the Route des Crêtes?” I asked Mark.

The D23; the Route des Crêtes or Crest Road, is a circular, panoramic road, high above the Gorges du Verdon. Built purely for pleasure on the route of an old mule track, it is another of the famous French balcony roads, cut into a sheer cliff face. Regardless of the weather, we were quite nervous about it anyway. Its high point is around 1,300m (4,200ft); not somewhere to get caught in a storm on a narrow road blessed with hairpins and dizzying drops.

Since the loop is only 23km long, we estimated it would take around an hour to drive. Even with our recent poor record of thunderstorm avoidance, we thought the weather gods would be pushing it to whip up a tempest from nothing in so short a time…Continue reading “A Week in Provence – Driving the Route des Crêtes”