Doing something again for the first time after a long and painful break tastes sweet, nearly as sweet as the first kiss that you are receiving from That Special Person In Your Life after a long period of separation.
It is therefore only right and proper to treat such sweet returns to the habits and experiences from our past with respect: to do everything that we can to make this a happy moment – and one that creates happy memories, too. Which is why, to cut a long story short….
We are back to hiking!
And for our first hike after the loosening of the latest, longest and most painful lockdown in our adopted home country of France (marked by the fall of the hated 10-km-restriction for all non-essential journeys), we picked a destination that we knew would not disappoint: the Parc Naturel d’Esterel, 10 square kilometres of mountainous wilderness to the west of Cannes on the French Riviera.
This nature preserve had been on our “to-hike-list” even before the lockdown, since we knew how magnificently beautiful the Esterel is, but, to be honest, in the end we always shied away from the hassle of actually making what is (for us) a long and relatively arduous journey.
Not only does it take us two hours by train to get there, but the Esterel is also located on a poorly-served branch of the main railway route, and while outbound journeys can be easily planned and scheduled, much can go wrong on the way back.
The last time we went hiking in the Esterel, we just missed one train on our return and had to wait for nearly two hours at a railway stop where the only entertainment was a speak-your-weight machine.
This was our third trip to the red rocks of the western Riviera. After our appetite had been whetted by a short loop around the coastal town of Theoule-sur-Mer, we returned for a full-day circuit around Le Trayas, probably the gold standard for all hikes in the Esterel.
The Parc Naturel near Mandelieu, meanwhile, provides a near-perfect complement to the grand drama of Le Trayas: using the same themes and motives, but often throwing a note of gentle lyricism into the mix.
Two notes of caution for those of you who may be thinking of experiencing the Parc for themselves.
Firstly, you will need to do a good deal of walking before your actual hike begins for real.
The route from the train station of Mandelieu-La-Napoule to the Parc Naturel preserve leads you through town centre and out-of-town streets to the yacht harbour from where you must take the road on the right hand side of the large Port de la Rague entrance sign (a sharp-edged triangle). This road is identified on maps – if not on site, as much as I can say – as the “DFCI des Mineurs”.
All in all, you will need to walk for nearly an hour before you enter the Parc Naturel proper, although – in fairness – the final stretch down the DFCI is already fairly nice and gives you a good idea of what you can expect.
Secondly: the trails in the Parc are not marked or signposted, and you will find few maps or info panels along the way. So as far as orientation goes, you will pretty much need to rely on your own navigational skills. (It may be a good idea to take a phone picture of the map which is on display right behind the main entrance.)
There is more than one way to experience the Parc, but do not get carried away. The route around the external edge of the protected space is – at a rough guess – between 15 and 20 km long, which means that it appears to have been laid out more for mountain bikers (you will meet quite a few of those along the way) than for hikers.
To get back to hiking, we decided in favour of a circuit that took in various sights of the Mont Saint Martin …
… but which proved to be much shorter than we had thought, and we already found ourselves on the back-end of our loop before we had even found the time and the right place to eat our packed lunches.
In search for a beauty spot where we could enjoy our sandwiches, we then went to the other side of the DFCI road, climbing the hill in front of us near the main entrance and then turning right, back towards the coast.
This is essentially the “high road” parallel to the low road of the DFCI which had brought us to the Parc’s main entrance, but it provides a totally different experience.
The southern side of the nature preserve – from where you have just come – offers a great deal of idyllic scenery, …
… but it is over here, across the DFCI on the high road, where the landscape comes much closer to matching the drama of the Esterel further west.
On your walk back across the mountain ridge to the coastal town of Mandelieu, you will find everything that makes the Esterel so distinctive: dramatically shaped boulders, crooked trees that seem to grow straight of out barren cliffs, the “Spaghetti-Western-like” beauty of the torched terrain.
You will also understand what makes the Parc Naturel so special, just by looking at the contrast between the Parc’s savage beauty, panoramically spread out on your right hand side …
… and, on your left, the urban sprawl that has blighted the Riviera coast.
Yes, it was human beings who created that. But our species also had the sense of carving out a large chunk of the countryside and preserving it in its nearly pristine state, so that we and all the other inhabitants of suburban sprawls (on the Riviera and elsewhere) can still enjoy a taste of this landscape’s natural beauty.
And yes, and we eventually found our picnic spot, too. There were no benches or designated rest areas (in fact, we did not see any of either the whole day), but we stumbled upon a place with a better view than we had hoped to find at that stage.
One final word of advice. In order to get to the Parc, you can also – instead of taking the train – use Palm Bus line no. 22 which circulates in roughly hourly intervals between Cannes (the station forecourt) and Mandelieu-la-Napoule.
This takes a little longer than the train journey, but there is a stop right next to Mandelieu’s yacht harbour (Port de la Napoule) which should make up for that.
Enjoy getting back to hiking!
