Into the mountains

Saturday 2nd June

I'm just going to have to diary our doings for this week as we appear to have no wi-fi – supposed to have it but the mountains seem to be a problem and so far have not found the satellite.

Today was moving day and we have moved northwards into the Haute Alpes near a town called Digne les Bains. We are again in a gite on a property out of town and near to a river with a view of mountains all around. We are sitting here listening to the rumble of thunder and watching the clouds building. Rob has just gone and found the torch, just in case.

Home for the week. We are in the rooms on the top right of the photo.
Our car didn't know what had happened - under cover for the week.
The owners live in the rest of tbe house. 

The river ran along the boundary of the property - about 100m away.
With the rain every afternoon we saw the river grow.

Amazing rock formations in a town along the road.

Our trip here was not without something interesting. We had aimed for a town that apparently had something worth seeing, but passed through with no signs pointing to points of interest. Further up the road we decided to detour to a big town we could see to get fuel and have a break for coffee, and we found another lovely little medieval village – one built in a circle so all the roads wound around inside the old walls of the village. The town of Manosque is not something we have seen on any tourist brochures so it was a great surprise. As we entered the village through one of the gateways we heard lots of people noise, and around a corner we found that Saturday was market day, so we wandered the various locations picking up fruit, veges, cheese and meat for dinner. Lots of lovely fresh food to stock up for the week.

One of the entry gates tomthe town of Manosque.

The coat of arms of the town was four hands
which we could see carved into the rock at the entrance.
This was a modern take on the coat of arms.

There were four or five small market locations throughout the village.

This was also a good town for a wander as there were a lot of information boards posted in the town with information in both French and English. One of the churches in the village dated back to the third century though the buildings there now were 7th and 8th century. We had pizzas for lunch in a little square in the village. We managed to nicely fill the couple of hours we had to kill before arriving at our gite.

Lots of doorways about this height
- they obviously don't grow them very tall here.

Rob loves looking at some of the very old organs in the churches
- this one from the 16th century.

So cute!

We have again picked a gite where the owners speak no English (not intentional, just turned out that way) but it is giving us plenty of opportunity to practise our French. We sat with the owners and had a drink when we arrived and managed quite a bit of conversation – simple but we were understood. But it is exhausting to make conversation in a different language – there are so many stages of getting messages to and fro and the brain gets worn out.

Sunday 3rd June

A quiet day with a visit to the tourist information office for internet access, supermarket for groceries,  and car wash – it looks all brand new again. We've bought a kettle as everywhere we go just has coffee machines and they don't get the water hot enough.

Driving in to town today we got our first look at the snow on the mountains nearby. We are well below the snow line so it's not cold. Tomorrow we will go for an explore around the area.