Tarn!
Today we drove to the Gorges du Tarn with Jon, Sue, Ian and Susan. It was a bit of a long drive, but we broke it up with a stop in Voguë: a charming "plus beau village de France", with a little passageway called the Chemin des Puces:
It also has an artisanale ice cream shop, which is conveniently closed between noon and 15:00. After lunch on the river, we headed out on small and windy roads to la Maléne. We eventually arrived, and met the owner of the gite, to transport our baggage across the river
I was a little worried that our things would go plummeting into the river, but everything made it across just fine. After unloading our things, we drove to la Malene for the hike to Hauterives. First, of course, was the small matter of beers in the shade. Zoe got ahold of my Zeiss binoculars, which made me a very nervous daddy:
The hike wasn't bad, but I had to carry Zoe up the one steep part on my back. Happily, we soon arrived at the gite and hopped into the river immediately
Next, we moved into our room
And grilled up sausages for dinner.
A few words about Hauterives -- the town in which we were staying: It is only accessible by boat or path (~45 minutes walk from La Maléne), and is so beautiful that it routinely causes near traffic accidents and traffic jams on the other side of the gorge. The rooves are made of limestone, and are quarried from the plains above the gorge. I watched a video (Lauzes de Lozére) on how they are made, and it looks like hard work. The only nice thing about the process is that the limestone forms strata that are generally the right thickness for tiles. Having said that, it looks like quite a job to install one.
