Little known Queyras nature park promises blue-green lakes, mountain views, pretty villages and plenty of cheese – but almost no crowds
The baguette was fresh from the boulangerie that morning, a perfect fusion of airy lightness and crackled crust. The cheese – a nutty, golden gruyère – we’d bought from Pierre: we hadn’t expected to hike past a human, let alone a fromagerie, in the teeny hillside hamlet of Rouet, and it had taken a while to rouse the cheesemaker from within his thick farmhouse walls. But thankfully we’d persevered. Because now we were resting in a valley of pine and pasture with the finest sandwich we’d ever eaten. Just two ingredients. Three, if you counted the mountain air.
As lunches go, it was deliciously simple. But then, so was this trip, plainly called “Hiking in the French Alps” on the website. The name had struck me as so unimaginative I was perversely intrigued; now it seemed that Macs Adventure – organisers of this self-guided walk in the Queyras region – were just being admirably to the point.
