We left the hotel at Gap and headed to the nearest supermarket, Leclerc where we bought some pain-au-raisin and refuelled the car. As usual in France, it seems impossible to use the automatic petrol pumps if you have anything other than a French bank card so we had to choose a fuel station with an attendant who is happy to take any credit card!
We had decided that we would head east from Gap and go over a fairly low pass into Italy, follow the border and then cross the Col de Tende back into France before re-entering Italy near Ventemiglia and joining the motorway to get to Albenga. This plan went out of the window when we got closer to the town of Barcelonette when we discovered that the Col de Cayolle was open. We had assumed it would be closed as usually it is blocked from November to June by snow.
We decided to give it a go and joined a fairly narrow road, the D902, that started climbing from the very start. Two things happened, it got steeper and even narrower, much of the road was single carriageway on the side of a cliff. Luckily, there was almost nothing on the road apart from a few cyclists. As we got higher, we started to see odd patches of snow at first and then it progressed to a full covering of snow except on the road. The higher we got, the higher the banks of snow either side of the road became.
We stopped briefly after Lynn spotted a Marmot sitting by the side of the road. It didn't seem to fussed about us taking pictures and just sat quietly on a heap of pine needles.
As we neared the top of the pass, the snow on either side of the road was often 2-3 metres high and we were just driving through a snow-lined corridor. At the top, at 2326M, there was a space to park so we got out and took a few photographs. Amazingly, it was 12C at the top despite all the snow.
At the top of the pass, the road number changed to the D2202 and rapidly descended, first to the source of the river Var and then following the river valley down to the pretty village of Guillaume. Not satisfied with our mountain climbing, we started to head east on the D28.
This proved to be another wriggly road that climbed up to a ski resort at Valberg before dropping down to Beuil. Here, we joined the D30 and climbed up to the Col de la Couille at 1678M before plunging down the vertiginous road to St Saveur-sur-Tinee. Eager for more narrow and steep roads, we continued east on the D2665 over the Col St Martin at 1500m and down to St Martin Versubie. Here the road joined the river Versubie down to La Bollene Versubie where we turned off onto the D70/D2566 and up to the Col de Turini at 1607M and again down to the very busy and pretty town of Sospel. As a final fling to the Alps, we then turned off again onto the D93, a very minor road heading to the Italian village of Olivetta. The road crossed another minor pass on top of which we crossed into Italy. From here, we headed down toward the coast at Ventimiglia.
We joined the motorway near Ventemiglia and followed it as far as Albenga a distance of about 45km. We paid our motorway toll of 13 Euros and followed the satnav directions to the village of Ortovenga and our hotel for the night a Restaurant with rooms called, Borgo Fasceo.
The hotel looked very nice and was set in pretty gardens in a very peaceful location. We had some minor problems with the room, but it was not a bad room, just lacking bedside lights. We decided that the menu for the hotel was rather expensive, so drove back into Albenga, parked in a square and found a pizzeria called Bella Napoli. Despite the fact that we were early for dinner, at 19.30, the restaurant welcomed us in and cooked us two delicious pizzas and provided us with two large beers.
After dinner, we had a wander around the old part of Albenga. Their annual fair had just finished and the streets clearly had been decorated with lots of flowers. It was a very pleasant old town with lots of historical buildings. After walking off dinner, we returned to the hotel for a peaceful nights sleep.
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