Bridging the High and Low

For about an hour and a half we hiked along a forested trail that wound its way around the belly of the mountain. When we emerged onto a plateau, we could see behind us fragments of the high, snow-drenched Alps; through a trick of distance they looked as if they were our height, as if we could simply stumble a few steps forward and cup the snow in our hands.

Half an hour later we reached a grassy clearing with a breathtaking panoramic view of the entire valley; a small, green ocean of slopes and peaks quietly jostling over one another. The beauty of it made me ask myself how a bunch of green, uneven bumps rising and falling for miles on end could be so spectacular. Now I think that the most beautiful sights are those that make us powerless to assimilate them into a single point of reference, and something forces us to accept their apparent disorder in all their breadth.

Here we sat down and had our lunch of freshly-made ham and cheese sandwiches that we bought at a deli, owned by an extremely kind couple down at the village. The intoxicating feeling of being so high up, combined with the exercise, made our sandwiches the best things we had tasted for our entire trip.

The village is called Breil-Sur-Roya, which can be reached by the Train Des Merveilles from the central train station in Nice, the heart of the Côte D’Azur in France. Just imagine this: at 10 a.m. you can be on the Promenade Des Anglais taking in the salty breeze of the Mediterranean—an hour later by train and you can be breathing the fresh, sky-towering air of the Alpes-Maritimes in the Roya Valley.

And to think—having lived a stone’s throw away from Monte-Carlo for seven years—that this was practically my backyard, and I never fully explored it! It’s funny how one feels no need to explore what is basically home, but when one has to go back and find interesting places to show a girlfriend, for example—places one hasn’t been bored of seeing already a thousand times—all kinds of new discoveries suddenly open themselves up.

Of course, there is enough to do along the coast from San Remo to Cannes to last you two full weeks. But right behind you is the Vallée des Merveilles with famous Alpine hiking trails like the GR-52, which spans an endless succession of sensational mountain views, forests, and tiny medieval villages.

All we ended up needing was some water, food, train fare, sun-screen, a map, a smile when chatting to friendly locals, and a rewarding cold beer at the very end!