Framedlight

We had lunch in the car park at the memorial and then set out to explore some more.  On the side of the road there was a direction arrow to a cave, the Grotte du Brudour, not a big commercial affair but just a hole in the cliff, so we stopped to investigate. By now it was raining pretty heavily so we put on our waterproofs and walked up the side of the stream until we came to the cave entrance. Alan explored inside but it was very dark with pools of water underfoot and our torch did not penetrate far. Finally we drove the Combe Laval, the heroic road that had first drawn us to the Vercors. This starts from a col known as the Col de la Machine and runs north to St Jean-en-Royans. The weather had really closed in and at first the visibility was non-existent, which added somewhat to the suspense of driving along this vertiginous passage, suspended nearly a thousand feet above the valley floor. But the mist did descend a little allowing me to take a picture of the clas...

We drove on to the second resistance site that we visited, the monument at Vassieux-en-Vercors, which is situated in a commanding position on the Col de la Chau. The town of Vassiuex, which lost 73 people during the uprising, was given the Ordre de la Libération for it's contribution to the 1944 struggle and the cemetery by the memorial gives testament to it's sacrifice. The memorial is a concrete edifice built to contour the hill, and it looms over the surrounding countryside. The inside is stark and has a small display for which you can get an audiovisual guide (our's did not work). It was built in 1994, presumably to commemorate the 50th anniversary. Here are some monochrome infrared pictures of it. Steps are used to get up from the car park and the meadow we passed through was filled with crocuses and scilla. With the patches of snow and low mist the surrounding hills looked bleak. We visited the cemetery next door to the memoria...

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 J...

We recommenced our journey, heading for the Gorges de la Bourne through a narrow mountain pass which led up to the Vercors plateau. The roads were narrow and vertiginous and I would not have liked to have been in anything larger that the van. We passed by the village of Choranche where we were to return to camp later that day. The sky was still heavy with cloud and the tops of the mountains were shrouded. I have produced this photo in monochrome, as well as colour, as it suited the overcast conditions. Given the state of the roads there were few places where we could stop, and we passed some fabulous scenes which the camera had to ignore.  Here are some of the views I did manage to capture. The gorge gave way to a broad plateau with scattered farms and after driving a circuit of roads at the top of the gorge we retraced some of our route to a small village called Rencurel. Here we stopped for lunch and a little photography. I took some infrared sh...