Hiking to Castellar and snorkeling in Roquebrun

Getting in and out of Ja's car is difficult. At home he parks along the main road but the roads aren't very wide so even when the car is pressed right up against the wall it's still in halfway in the road. Getting into the car usually meant waiting for him to pull away from the curb and then jumping in before any cars zoomed up or down the mountain road. Getting out of the car was the same, Ja stops the car in the road and we let vehicles pass before jumping out and waiting for him to park. He also deliberately hit more cars than I've ever experienced in the states. Backing up into the car behind you is the best way to use all the available space and we saw many people making use of their car bumpers in France. I don't think I've ever seen someone deliberately use their bumper in America - it probably doesn't make much sense considering the number of ridiculously jacked pickup trucks, low riders, and the prevalence of guns.

While driving in Menton, (looking for a parking spot) a scooter passed us on the narrow street and Ja drifted a little too far to the right and his mirror hit a parked car. The glass was OK but most of the cars in the southern France had broken side view mirrors and scuffed bumpers.

On this morning Amanda and I got up early and set out along the hiking trail West towards Castellar. This path goes right by Ja's front door and is part of a national network of hiking trails that connects all the local medieval villages. The day before we'd walked East, up the ravine towards Castillon and this morning we walked the other way, down the path to Castellar.

01:02 (15.6MiB)

00:45 (11.2MiB)

Near the house the trail was overgrown with a steep drop on the right. We both stepped off the trail a few times in the deep grass. The weeds along the trail weren't as bad as poison oak or thistle but there were enough thorns and burrs to make it uncomfortable. After a while the trail opened up and we found ourselves walking through a pine forest surrounded by the calls of invisible birds.

01:04 (16.0MiB)

I stopped at a small shack, like garden shed but made of stone and concrete, buried under vegetation and dead leaves beside the trail. It was a little house, in ruins, and only accessible by climbing up the steep bank along the path. The doorway was low, about a 1.5m from the ground and the inside was tiny. The furniture was in shambles but everything was tiny, there was a small stove among a jumble of broken masonry stones, a small fireplace, a tiny chair, and a short bed. The ground above the shack was terraced and probably contained a small garden. It was like the ruins of a dwarfs home.

As we came around the mountain the steeple of the Castellar church came into view and the trail wound around the valley wall and up into the village. There were a scattering of houses on the outskirts of town but the village itself was composed of 4-6 long multi-storied stone buildings separated by narrow streets. Each row was partitioned into hundreds of homes. Doorways in the street led into narrow hallways or to stairs leading up or down to small doors. The rows of buildings were pierced in places by dark corridors that connected to the street on the other side. It was picturesque and quiet and common among the little medieval villages of the area.

A woman passed us followed by a pair of fat cats and we followed her to her house and saw she had tarp covered cat homes in the street out front and a ladder leading up to a cat platform setup in her window.

We saw some boulangerie trucks in the courtyard but couldn't find the bakery. Another thing common thing about these villages was the absence of people. The streets were generally empty and there were few shops. The shops we did see were empty but this could have been because it was the middle of the day. We refilled our water bottles from the public fountain and hiked back to the house to meet up with Ja.

Ja drove us out to another small village called Saint Agnes perched on the top of a hill in the center of the Menton valley. The village was another tightly packed area filled with stone houses with brightly colored doors. On the hill above the village was the ruined remains of an old castle. We hiked up the steep stairs where we found a young woman in short dress manning a ticket counter. She told Ja we could give a donation to tour the castle and the gardens. She asked for 5 euros each but we only had a total of 5 euros on us. She let us in.

The view was spectacular. The ruins were hundred of years old but they'd been rebuilt several times and dated back to the Romans. Most recently the area was a fort used to drive off the Italians (who were only a few miles away) during world war 2. The whole hillside was full of dark tunnels and Ja pointed out the moat and the small openings in the walls where infantry could drop grenades onto attackers.

The castle was situated on the peak of the mountain and from the ramparts you could see the entire valley, from Italy in the East to Roquebrun in the West. We stopped at a boulangerie on the way back for Ja to drop off some recycling and Amanda and I went in to purchase some bread. We got a giant loaf, two baguettes, and a pastry. With the leftover hamburger buns, we had enough bread to last a week.

00:46 (11.5MiB)

Back at the house we packed up our snorkeling gear and then back to the car to go swimming in Roquebrun. Ja knew of a place where we could park (which turned out to be blocked off by construction) and we walked through the city to a beach on the eastern edge of Monaco. The shore was rocky but there was sand a little ways out and there was a strange oily sheen on the water which we decided later was an imperfect mixing of hot and cold water. The water was clear as long as you made forward progress but as soon as you stopped to tread water, the hot and cold layers would mix and refract the light so badly you couldn't see anything.

00:27 (6.7MiB)

00:27 (6.9MiB)

00:17 (4.4MiB)

00:21 (5.3MiB)

00:30 (7.7MiB)

00:45 (11.4MiB)

Octopus 00:19 (5.0MiB)

00:30 (7.5MiB)

We chased a few fish and swam over to the reef/algae area near the rocks to look for more. Amanda spotted an octopus and I swam down and stuck my camera in it's face and it squirted ink. The second time I went down, it puffed up while backing away.

The path through Roquebrun led us below the gardens of a few multi-million dollar homes. We only ever caught glimpses of the beautiful grounds filled with bulging succulents beyond the stone walls. On a rocky crag against the sea was a beautiful house with it's own private brick bridge and mooring area. It was abandoned and located behind a fence topped with razor wire but locked with a simple 4 wheel combination lock. Ja said he often took this trail into Monaco when he biked to and from work and I wondered how long it would take to discover the combination if each time he passed he tried a few different combinations.

00:41 (10.2MiB)

On the hike back we heard someone screaming profanities from the rocks on the side of the path. We thought it was a couple arguing but when we came around the corner we found it was a man yelling at a seagull. He was sitting in a tent and would flip the top back to shout at the bird and then slam the door shut as though he'd just made a particularly good point. We walked closer and I took a video as he talked about telephones and how they wouldn't call him back and gestured at the city of Monaco.

My feet hurt from all all the walking and they were starting to look a little swollen.

That evening for dinner we had duck crop muscles (from a can) over a salad and we discussed next week's itinerary. We considered ways of getting to Ardennes or Montpellier and discussed the best time to go to Florence. Ja had the week off but wanted to use two days to get some personal stuff done. Amanda was ready to rent a scooter to drive us both around the coast like we were stars of a romantic Italian movie.