| Having decided that climbing “French Munros” was not really a suitable alternative to climbing Scottish ones I searched for something more satisfying. The problems with “French Munros” were: (i) there are too many of them, (ii) there is no official list and (iii) most of them have the annoying feature of a driveable road going right to the summit. The answer I found was to start tackling the “GR”s, the “sentiers de grande randonnée”. There seem to be a manageable number of them, there is an official list, and they’re specially designed to give nice walks. Also, if there’s an interesting mountain in sight, they usually go over the summit anyway. The nearest one to Marseille is the GR98, from Marseille to Sainte-Baume. Dan and I had already talked about walking from Cassis to Marseille, so it seemed like a good start. In fact we abandonned the idea of doing Cassis to Marseille in one day because of transport difficulties. Instead we took the 21 bus from the Centre Bourse to Luminy, intending to do a circular walk and arrive back at, say, Les Baumettes. Nothing was too fixed! We set off from Luminy about 9am through a sort of forested park – all frosty and quite chilly. |
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| Soon we reached the GR98 and struck off in the direction of Cassis, climbing up to quite a high level and skirting around to reach the Col de la Candelle. |
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| There were stunning views everywhere. Now came our problem. We wanted to get down to the path that ran back along at sea level, but the paths that went down to it were all very steep, and Dan wasn’t happy about steep descents. We continued on in the direction of Cassis, hoping something easier might appear, but of course it didn’t. In the end we decided simply to push on along the GR98 all the way to Cassis, a route which, on the map, seemed to present no great difficulties. |
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| The cliffs that offered no way down! |
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| After another half hour’s walk along the edge of immense cliffs overlooking the sea, we sat down to have lunch. There were a few other walkers passing by this time – an increasing number as the day wore on. The next stage, down to sea-level again, involved a steep descent, but we managed it and were soon off up the winding path along the bottom of the Vallon de l’Oule, to arrive at the Col de l’Oule. Then we began the descent back down to the sea again – all this to avoid the virtually impassable cliffs at this point on the coast. |
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| Look carefully – there are some climbers on the bushy ledge halfway down! |
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| We took the more pedestrian route |
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| Eventually we emerged at the beautiful Calanque d’En Vau, the first of the calanques that we had really visited (we’d looked down on the Calanque du Devenson from the cliff-tops), and found a number of people sitting on the stony beach or the rocks at either side. |
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| We ate most of our remaining food sitting on the beach, then set off up a very steep path which, rather worryingly, had no GR paint-marks on it. We hadn’t seen any other path, however, and this one was definitely going in the right direction. After a while we arrived at what Donald Bennet would describe as a “tricky pitch”, which for Dan meant “no way”. We were now pretty sure we had lost the GR, but the thought of going all the way back down to the beach again was very depressing. As it turned out, we were not far off it, and just a few metres below where we had got to was a little path which skirted round to the GR. Once on it, we still had a tricky scramble to negotiate but much easier than on the other path. |
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| Finally we reached the top – the Plateau de Cadeiron – and enjoyed a pleasant tramp over this among scattered pines. The last descent of the day took us down to the Calanque de Port-Pin, another pleasant spot. By this time, of course, my knee was giving trouble, so I was relieved that the rest of the walk was now pretty much on the level. Just over a small hill we came down by the Calanque de Port-Miou, it’s rows and rows of moored yachts showing that we were approaching civilisation once again. Soon we were into Cassis, and hurrying past the port and through the streets in order to catch a bus which, for some reason, Dan thought might leave at 4 o’clock. It was about quarter to when we arrived in Cassis. We got to the bus stop to find that, in fact, the only bus to Marseille was at 5.30, but there was one to Aubagne waiting there to leave at 4.25. From there it would be possible to get a connection to Marseille, but Dan had a simpler plan – I whipped out my mobile and he called Nancy to come and pick us up in Aubagne – “Beam me up, Scotty!” So it was a nice easy finish to the day. As for the walk, it had convinced me that walking the GRs was definitely a nice alternative to climbing 3000ft mountains... |
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| The Calanque de Port-Miou |
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