France, into the Vercors, 19th April, dawn and start of the French Resistance trail

As we were camped in a fairly scenic spot I got up early and walked to the bridge across the river Bourne. The sky had remained clear overnight and although it was not a dramatic sunrise, the small fluffy clouds that were starting to accumulate were a pretty pink. As I watched the colour drain, the clouds rolled in big time and I knew we were in for another overcast day.

We drove out of Chorance and back down the valley to Pont-en-Royans, where we stopped in a lay-by to take a picture of the river as it leaves the town. I had tried to do this on an earlier day but you have to stand in the road to take it which makes life difficult! Here I was lucky that there was little traffic.

The Vercors was a stronghold of the French resistance movement during the second world war. In 1944 there were 400 active people working here and after D Day that rose to 4,000 volunteers. A plan was drawn up to form an allied bridgehead in the Vercors, aided by the air force and on 3rd July the 'République Vercors' was established. The allies dropped supplies and light armaments to them which brought the enterprise under the scrutiny of the Germans. They dropped commandos on the air strip built to receive allied supplies and surrounded the area with 15,000 men. Three days of fighting ensued and the heavily outnumbered French were forced to retreat to the Fôret de Lente and the patients and staff of the evacuated St Martin military hospital were captured and either killed or sent to Ravensbrück. Grenoble actually surrendered to the allies on 22nd August 1944

In La Chapelle-en-Vercors on 25th July, the Germans took 16 young men from the village and executed them in a courtyard while the houses were set on fire. This site is now a national monument and it was our next port of call. We parked easily in the little place and walked into the courtyard, it was early and no-one else was around. The leaden sky added to the atmosphere.

From the sublime to the slightly ridiculous, I had to take a picture of these legs seen in a shop window in La Chapelle.

We bought some pastries in the village and decided to drive to the Col de Carri, on the edge of the Fôret de Lente, to have coffee and eat them. This road wound up on to a rather bleak mountain plain dotted with beech trees and pine forests. We walked across a footpath so we could just see the tops of the mountains over the brush. We were in an area used for cross country skiing in the winter, although the snow could not have lasted long here.