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Solar Tour 2008 – Day 7: One of our favorite travel books for France is the ‘Nature travel guide France’ by Frédérique Roger and Fabrice Milochau (I am only aware of a French and Dutch edition). The book features 160 nature attractions in France. One of the shortcomings of this book is, that the geographical location is not described detailed enough (there are no maps or GPS locations) and often the information in the text is incorrect. That was the case with the Salle du Bal des Demoiselles Coiffees, a couple of kilometers south-east of Gap.  According to the book a 30 minute walk on a blue path should have takes us to the valley with the fairy chimneys. When we arrived on the parking below the village of Théus, there was a map including a blue path and it got obvious that it won’t be 30 minutes. In contrary, signs where bad and for a while we didn’t think we would find it. After Théus it still took quiet a while going up into the mountains on a narrow road to reach a parking from where one can see the valley and climb down (on a blue path) to see the fairy chimneys from close by. It was an amazing landscape to see and absolutely worth the trouble.

Going down the steep road again with our motor home was more difficult and I almost damaged the breaks doing so. Originally we wanted to see more this day but it was already getting late, so we decided to look for a campground in the area.

Solar Tour 2008 – Day 7: In the morning we wanted to see Albertville but it was raining again, so we just got on the road again going south. After Grenoble we took the N85, better known as Route Napoléon. The Route Napoléon is the route taken by Napoléon Bonaparte in 1815 on his return from his exile to Elba. Close to Gap the clouds slowly disappeared and finally we got some blue sky and sun again. A good moment for a lunch break at a lake before moving on towards our fist destination of today. We already visited Gap some years ago, so we didn’t plan to stop this time.