There was little to choose between the Alps, French version, and the Alps, a l'Italienne. But a Sunday drive that began in Barcelonnette, in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, led inadvertently across the border to within 60 miles of Turin.
Look at the map and you do remove any cause for surprise. It just seems a little odd when you have travelled a long way westwards to get to Barcelonnette in the first place.
That journey was made on Saturday morning. Up through serene Varois countryside to join the autoroute at Brignoles and then on to and beyond Aix-en-Provence before heading north-east, with a detour to Digne-les-Bains, to Barcelonnette.
The streets of this pleasant if unprepossessing little town are dotted with plaques commemorating the young French resistants who died during the Second World War.
Our original hotel-apartment was unavailable because of "important water damage" so we were diverted to the modest but functional Hotel la Placette. It was not the Ritz but at €55 for the night you somehow don't expect it to be.
Twinning arrangements with Mexico - should these not be suspended in solidarity with Florence Cassez? - have inspired a few of the restaurant menus. I probably saw more Mexican dishes on offer in Barcelonnette than when holidaying all-inclusive near Cancun in January.
The Beija Flor restaurant, no more than 30m from the hotel, served some such recipes. I played safe and went for salmon, but took a dislike to its lasagne encasement and swapped for Madame Salut's chicken. I completely forgot that this was prepared with chocolate and therefore enjoyed it until the moment I was reminded. Sweet and savoury is a combination that never agrees with me, even if it that disagreement sometimes needs a helping hand (namely being told of its existence).
But the restaurant had great ambience and would be worth a return visit for that, and the heavy Corsican red we were served, alone.
Next morning, we paused at a beautifully located hotel in the hills above the town, where we had stayed a couple of years ago, but ambitions to take breakfast there ran smack into French bureaucracy; yes they can do bed and breakfast, no they cannot do just the petit dejeuner part.
So back to Barcelonnette for coffee and croissants, and to buy the papers (proof, if needed, of the decline of the press: the girl in Carrefour Market had never heard of the Journal du Dimanche, France's only national Sunday newspaper unless you count L'Equipe).
And then into the mountains. The "highest road in Europe" looked promising but led after a few miles to a "mountain pass closed' sign and barrier. So we took another at random, marvelling at the streaky hillsides where enough snow persisted for us to come across occasional parties of skiers.
We followed signs to Cuneo, remembering in time that the reason it didn't appear in our huge French book of road maps was that it wasn't in France at all.
At the border, an Italian lunch seemed enticing. More so than this, the first building we encountered once crossing the frontier ...
The reality was a meal so stodgy that it still weighs on me more than 24 hours later. Onward we proceeded until just before Cueno when the slow decent to the French Mediterranean began.
In the event there was so much driving that we never got round to stopping for the intended walk, arriving home as shattered as if we'd done a 20km trek through the snow.
* Photo quality affected by transfer from mobile phone to computer.
Recent Comments