Jour quatroze – qui vivra verra!
Day fourteen begins much like any of the other thirteen except of course we are now some way off our planned route courtesy of many closed (count three) and one hideous (count one) looking campsites.
To be fair I have never seen an advert suggesting that the town of Manosque is the “jewel in the Provençal (or any other) crown” but to be clear it is absolutely not and to be honest it’s a real shock to be somewhere so unpleasant. Unless you are looking for somewhere to go ten pin bowling or get a drive through KFC or have people stare at you whilst rocking slowly backwards and forwards moaning quietly to themselves then I would suggest you give it a miss!
All that said the route out of Manosque is easy cycling and easy on the eye…
….it is not long though before the road starts to kick up as we move out of the valley and move closer to the beginning of the Gorge du Verdons.
The gorge du Verdons is for tomorrow and, apart from Monte Carlo, it is really the last thing on the must do list for our adventure. It promises to be amazing and arduous with lots of climbing…..it’s going to be a big big day.
In the meantime our unscheduled extra miles yesterday mean we arrive in our campsite for the night in Moustiers Saint Marie around 2pm and after only 50 miles… a snip for us now.
Moustiers is heartbreakingly pretty and our new favourite place on the trip so far…..
Given we have some time on our hands we do a bit of sightseeing and take on some sustenance (surprise suprise)….
There are, as we now know with most things French, some elements of weirdness too…
Disappointingly the perfect day is marred only slightly by the worst meal of the trip so far….who knew you could get pizza so wrong! At least we now know where not to eat when we come back…and we will come back.
Early to bed then for what is probably the last truly “big” day of our adventure tomorrow.