Mountain hike: the Mercantour and its ‘Wonders’
Photos still to come
This is a serious 5-day hike we undertook earlier this month from our base in Nice. It’s probably not for everybody, but I hope it makes good reading even for anyone not planning something similar.
Stats:
54km over 5 days;
Total climb/descent 5600m
Practicalities:
Mountain huts or refuges: Refuge de Fontenalbe, Refuge des Merveilles and Refuge de Valmasque.
Bus 23 (seasonal) from St Dalmas-de-Tende to Castérino, then hike between the refuges. St Dalmas is on the train line between Nice and Tende.
The land of merveilles, or wonders
The vast Mercantour national park is stunning for its own sake, but it is also enhanced by prehistoric rock carvings that make of the park a kind of giant open-air museum. Several people we met hiking in the Mercantour for its beautiful scenery hadn’t heard of the carvings, so it’s worth saying a few words about them.
Most were made by prehistoric peoples between the Neolithic and Bronze ages. Some areas showed carving continuing into the modern era, from the Roman period up to the present day. The best-preserved prehistoric carvings are found on large flat stones covered with a red iron surface layer that has been gouged to expose a grey layer underneath. The people who made them used sharp quartz points to push and twist into the stone, creating their designs out of the resulting ‘dots’.
The meaning of these ancient designs is still as much a mystery as the reason for doing them. Some are simple circles or ‘reticulated’ rectangles, that is, rectangles with subdivisions which might represent a pattern of fields. Some look like horned animals with square heads. Some appear to depict weapons such as daggers or halberds or farming implements such as sickles. Humans are represented sketchily either as rectangular figures with raised hands holding daggers (such as the one known as Le Sorcier, or the wizard), or simple triangular faces with eyes and a beard, like the one known as Le Christ, because he looks like some people’s idea of Jesus. Some carvings appear abstract, with no discernible shape or motive.
The excellent (and free) museum in Tende is the best place to learn about the carvings. They were known about from the 16th century but it’s only from the end of the 19th that they were seriously studied and preserved.
The museum gives the geological background to the the mountainous Mercantour area, which stands at the confluence of the two main mountain-building episodes in European geological history. The newer one, which produced the Alps, displaced a much older episode and caused a metamorphosing of the earlier rock. Add to this repeated glaciations and you have a geologist’s dream landscape. The word ‘merveilles’, which translates as ‘wonders’ or ‘marvels’, officially designates the prehistoric carvings. But we feel that the true wonders of the Mercantour amount to more than this, and encompass the landscape itself.
It’s also worth mentioning that in 1947, all this land was ceded to France by Italy. Many place names are obviously Italian in origin and the more recent carvings are Italian.
What we did
Day 1
Carrying a medium-sized rucksack each, four of us boarded the ‘Train des Merveilles’ for the 2-hour ride to Tende. This is the famous 9.32 train from Nice Ville which is commented by a guide throuh loudspeakers, so that visitors will not miss a single historical landmark. Love it or loathe it, the commentary is broadcast to the whole train.
Our first task at Tende, after refreshments at La Boulangerie des Merveilles, was to take our guests to the Musée des Merveilles which we visited two years ago to plan this trip. We then made a practice walk to La Brigue, taking in lush scenery that contrasted painfully with the parched landscape of drought-stricken England. We saw whole fields of autumn crocuses.
At La Brigue we had missed the 25 bus so walked further to St-Dalmas-de-Tende for our first night stop: a former monastery-turned-hotel called Le Prieuré. We had hoped for a meal at their restaurant but this is now closed on Sunday and Monday evenings (contrary to their own published information) and nothing else was open in St Dalmas on a Monday night. We had to use Le Prieuré’s extraordinary automated dinner dispenser: a chiller delivering meals upon payment, dropping them as packaged portions into a well where we picked them up and heated them in a microwave. This being France, it was possible to buy a three-course meal this way, and all of it was home made and very good. It was just a slightly surreal experience.
Day 2
The 23 bus took us from outside the St Dalmas train station up the winding road to Castérino. This is a village consisting of inns and farms and not much else. We set off, after a refreshment stop, towards Refuge de Fontenalbe where we checked in and dropped off our rucksacks. We walked further to see our first carvings along the ‘Route Sacrée’.
Day 3
We continued over mountains to Refuge des Merveilles. This was our longest and hardest hike, taking in three climbs and descents. We ate our packed lunch by a stunning lake. The day ended in rain, just as we arrived in the Vallée des Merveilles where most of the Mercantour carvings are to be found. Some carving sites can only be visited with a guide but a good number are accessible to ordinary trekkers like us.
The Refuge des Merveilles was very busy with a large press of people and several campers using a designate area. A large group of visitors were only there for a guided tour the following day.
Day 4
Bright sunshine at a slanting angle favoured the admiration of the carvings as we retraced our steps through the Vallée des Merveilles, tracking down the treasures as we went. Our path led us to the same lakeside lunch spot before veering off to the Refuge de Valmasque.
The lake is one of a series controlled by dams, presumably for electricity generation but also to help manage the flow during heavy rainfall. The Refuge de Valmasque was next another such controlled lake which did nothing to mar the beauty and drama of the setting. We had to climb a promontory to reach it, carefully side-stepping a group of donkeys that seemed to be attached to the place.
This refuge was less intensely busy, and although its sleeping area was the most cramped, it also felt the friendliest – and the food was the best! Breakfast was early (6.30am) so we got up in the dark and hovered on the patio waiting for the sunrise. We were richly rewarded with stunning pink light thrown onto the east-facing slopes above the lake.
Day 5
After watching the sunrise, and seeing the donkeys harnessed for their weekly journey to the valley, we ended our hike back at Castérino. After a welcome coffee we boarded the 23 bus to St Dalmas where the train took us back to Nice.
Wildlife and landscape
We were walking mostly above the tree line, the vegetation being mostly grasses where there was any at all. There must have been plenty to eat because we saw an abundance of wildlife. Marmots grazed peacefully, sometimes not even running away when they saw us. They were fattening up for their winter hibernation.
On the first day, while still close to Castérino, we heard bells and saw some of the famous Brigasque sheep with their distinctive faces, accompanied by goats.
Later we saw what we initially took to be wild goats but learned were chamois, and later still, we saw female bouquetins. We were able to observe these animals for long periods through binoculars and cameras and felt deeply privileged.
We identified wagtails through their haunting, echoing cry. There were grasshoppers and butterflies aplenty in the lower areas. Occasionally we saw campanulas in flowers and in some places gentians too. Near a waterfall was some small but plentiful rhododendron, though not in flower at that time of year.
The grandeur of the mountains is hard to put into words. In numbers, we reached about 2250m above sea level. In the Vallée des Merveilles we skirted around the highest peak, Mount Bégo, which stands over 2800m.
Life in a Refuge
After the space and solitude of the mountains, it can be a shock to find yourself crammed into large dormitories and bunk beds with a bunch of strangers. People sleep side by side in narrow cots; storage space for your pack varies from very little to almost none. There is no privacy – people are careful to give each other space, but still it takes some getting used to. There were very few toilets, sometimes just a single outside facility, and few showers if any at all. Lighting indoors is usually poor and it’s easy to leave belongings behind if one isn’t careful. A head torch is a must.
These mountain huts are well organised but for the most part extremely remote. Water for cooking, washing and sanitation is scarce and sometimes rationed while cooking and washing up are taking place. Electricity is at a premium: phone charging facilities are limited where they exist at all. All personal rubbish must be carried off the mountain in one’s own pack. At the Refuge de Valmasque, the donkeys we saw are used to bring supplies and carry away waste once a week; they were being harnessed for work on our last day.
This being France, evening meals are usually excellent. On all three occasions we were served a tasty vegetable soup in hollow plates which we re-used for the following meat and cheese courses. Desserts were served in small pots or ramekins. In the morning, a light breakfast of bread and spreads was served directly on the table, using no plates to save on washing up.
At night, people are as respectful as possible of one another’s sleep but snoring is inevitable. Good ear plugs are recommended alongside the required inner sleeping bag to use with the blankets provided. We brought pillow cases, but we had the wrong size for the large square pillows.
Conclusion
We had a fantastic time. The hikes were generally very do-able for us (in our 60s) and the scenery and wildlife are stunning.