Gorge du Verdon

[dave hendy]

I am trying to plot all my routes for next summers trip and I seem to remember a friend telling me that you can only ride the Gorge du Verdon in one direction, is this true If so which direction do you have to do it in or if not which direction should you do it in We have 3 nights in Castellane so will be starting from there.
We will be arriving in Castellane from Briancon via Grenoble down Route Napoleon is this a route to especially watch out for police

Dave

ps. sorry if I should have put this in the Alps section?

 

[T900]

you can ride in either direction as i done it last year, the roads are really good with stunning views. watch out for rocks that have fallen on to the roads as they always appear when you least expect.

 

[(RIP) Mark H]

You can ride the gorges in either direction, if you want company, the campsite at Castellane "Camp Du Verdon" will have plenty of BMW`s between the 4th to 11th of September (Hopefully 30+)

http://www.camp-du-verdon.com/

 

[dave hendy]

Thanks for the quick responses and Happy New Year We will be done there the middle of June so hope the snow goes early in 2010 Can't wait to get down there as have not done the region before.

Dave

 

[BegesRus]

Most of it you can ride in either direction
It's to tempting to do it Clockwise so that you are riding on the edge, however
There is a part which IS ONE WAY ONLY
If you want to do the complete route you kust go round ANTICLOCKWISE

 

[Muppet]

Most of it you can ride in either direction
It's to tempting to do it Clockwise so that you are riding on the edge, however
There is a part which IS ONE WAY ONLY
If you want to do the complete route you kust go round ANTICLOCKWISE

Are you certain about that? The only section that is one way is the area on the north side of the Gorge near the middle. It's a small loop with it's start and finish point in the village of Le Palud sur Verdon, road number is D23. You have to do this section clockwise, but it's only a small part that leads off the main road. It is worth it however as you get some fantastic views from the top of it, and I beleive it's the cliff face that the 2 climbers scaled on the Top Gear programme when clarkson raced them in the RS4 Audi. The rest of it you can do in either direction, I've always found anti-clockwise good but clockwise is just as good for the main section.

Don't just do the Gor4ge though, make sure you take a trip out to the East, particularly a small hilltop village called Gourdon. Again stunning views and you may catch site of the local vultures that inhabit the area.

Whatever you do, enjoy!

 

[Steptoe]

Stop and hire a canoe and have a paddle up the gorge.

 

[Wapping]

I seem to remember a friend telling me that you can only ride the Gorge du Verdon in one direction, is this true:

You remember wrong or your friend told you wrongly.

Route Napoleon is this a route to especially watch out for police

Not particularly. Just watch your speed in towns and villages.



You may find the route suggested in post #9 in this http://www.ukgser.com/forums/showthread.php?t=203133 of interest. As you are in the area you may like to look at route #14, too.

Route #9 (and all its sisters) is circular. It is centred on Manosque, but takes in Castellanne, so it would be easy enough to simply ride around it, starting from Castellane instead.

I have all of the 16 routes for the south-east region on one Mapsource file but it is too large to compress for uploading to UKGSer. If it is of any interest PM me your email address and I'll ping you a copy.

 

[dave hendy]

Are you certain about that? The only section that is one way is the area on the north side of the Gorge near the middle. It's a small loop with it's start and finish point in the village of Le Palud sur Verdon, road number is D23. You have to do this section clockwise, but it's only a small part that leads off the main road. It is worth it however as you get some fantastic views from the top of it, and I beleive it's the cliff face that the 2 climbers scaled on the Top Gear programme when clarkson raced them in the RS4 Audi. The rest of it you can do in either direction, I've always found anti-clockwise good but clockwise is just as good for the main section.

Don't just do the Gor4ge though, make sure you take a trip out to the East, particularly a small hilltop village called Gourdon. Again stunning views and you may catch site of the local vultures that inhabit the area.

Whatever you do, enjoy!

I had looked at the D23 and wandered if it was worth adding on to the route, I will. So from Castellane it will be the D952 then the D23 before continuing on the D952. Turn left on the D957, left on D19 which becomes the D71 before picking a route to the coast for a coffee, just to say we got to the coast before heading back to the mountains for the rest of the day

 

[dave hendy]

Stop and hire a canoe and have a paddle up the gorge.

We will see how the time goes and what the weather is like. Did the canoe thing in the Ardeche that was fun. The mate we are going with likes ridding his bike from dawn to dusk

 

[dave hendy]

You remember wrong or your friend told you wrongly.



Not particularly. Just watch your speed in towns and villages.



You may find the route suggested in post #9 in this http://www.ukgser.com/forums/showthread.php?t=203133 of interest. As you are in the area you may like to look at route #14, too.

Route #9 (and all its sisters) is circular. It is centred on Manosque, but takes in Castellanne, so it would be easy enough to simply ride around it, starting from Castellane instead.

I have all of the 16 routes for the south-east region on one Mapsource file but it is too large to compress for uploading to UKGSer. If it is of any interest PM me your email address and I'll ping you a copy.

Thanks for the info, we do try and be good through towns/villages I think thats fare if you can have a bit of fun when the conditions allow PM sent

 

[Wapping]

Thanks for the info, we do try and be good through towns/villages I think thats fare if you can have a bit of fun when the conditions allow PM sent

All 16 routes are on their way to you.

When I plotted the routes out I used a reasonably small scale Michelin map 1:200,000. If you compare them with a suitable Michelin map you can see that they take some interesting twist and turns. If you open up all 16 routes at once, it should be reasonably clear how to join routes together to build your own.

If you are not familiar or uncomfortable with cutting and pasting in Mapsource, simply open a new file, copy a couple of routes over and trace over the original routes and join them up. This is easier if you change the routes colour, so you can see which parts you have traced over.

I tried my best to avoid mistakes when plotting the routes out and would be interested to hear of any glitches.

Richard