The Calanques are closed... grrrrr

Our goal today was to do the longest of the three walks in the Calanques National Park. The park (the most famous of the parks with the special types of rock formations) is halfway between Toulon and Marseille.

The photos from the Calanques are up on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645762756254/

I had previously been apprehensive about visiting the Calanques, based on the propensity for park staff to close them during 'adverse weather conditions', and they are pretty pansy when it comes to leaving the parks open.

Having decided to make the trip anyway, we drove to the car park, where there is direct access to the place where the walks start through a bus. The return fare was quite cheap, because we had heard that parking was terrible near the Calanques.

After being dropped at the trail head, it was about a 15-20 minute walk to the start of the longest of the Calanques walks. When we got there, we found out that they had closed it less than 10 minutes before we arrived, due to the wind that was around. It wasn't exactly hot, so we were naturally disappointed. We instead decided to walk back to the trail head and do the smaller, 90-minute round trip out to the closer headland, which is open all year, regardless of weather conditions.

The results were quite spectacular. Despite the fact that we didn't see 'The Calanques', the geology and the colour of the water was amazing. Dad even got to have a swim in the Mediterranean while I sat on the 'beach', which was actually a rocky shoreline. Because of the winds that were up, there were almost waves. Almost. All the locals I'm sure don't even understand what a wave actually is.

 My favourites from the Calanques area

That ended up being most of what we did for the day. We now have two days of travelling ahead of us before we get to Lucca, which is just north of Pisa. We'll travel through more of the Azure Coast in France, as well as Liguria in Italy.

Up the Mont... three times!

Well, sort of. There's this hill in Toulon called Mont Faron. I say hill because in European standards it's a hill - in our good land it would be a mountain, at just over 500 metres.

Day 1 of Toulon is now up on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645762756254/

Our first stop today was the Tourist Office. Dad had said the internet at the one in Avranches was good, but here was a different story - we were allowed to use the internet on one device for 15 minutes. Good thing there was a McDonalds nearby! The internet there is free as well, so we sat there for an hour looking up our route, amongst other chores.

Once we'd decided on a route, we started out. It was supposed to be a reasonably short trip according to Google Maps, but I should have twigged that it was in a straight line. After walking up some stairs, we eventually started walking up a trail, which quickly turned into a cliff face. After a while exploring our possible options, we decided to go back to the road and walk up the road.

After an hour walking up the road, we eventually had to turn back - we were only 10% of the way there! We did get to take some good photos of Toulon while we were walking up the hill though. You could see all the way out to the peninsula on the other side of the harbour, and beyond:

A view of Toulon during the day

So we thus headed back to the apartment, making a stop at the supermarket near McDonalds to pick up some supplies. After eating, we headed back up Mont Faron, this time in the car. By the time we got to the summit it was dark, and at one point we stopped near the zoo to walk back towards the cable car summit station. We reckoned we saw an escapee from the zoo wandering around looking for food.

A view of Toulon during the night

So after a few trips up the mountain, tomorrow we are going to try to visit the Calanques, a national park halfway between Toulon and Marseille. Until then!