The Gorges of Toulourenc

On the advice of mutual friends, we go this time not far from Malaucène, with the aim of going to walk in the water directly. From what I could understand, the Gorges stretch over a very long distance. We put "Gorges de Toulourenc" on our GPS to get there, and arrived at a huge sloping parking lot. Luckily for us, there were very few cars parked there (less than 20).

Since our goal was to walk in water, and the electronic equipment is not adapted, I took care to take a "backup" garbage bag. A garbage bag you may ask? Well, it's very efficient, as long as it doesn't have any hole to put the backpack and all the stuff that must avoid water contact, like the camera for example.

We put on our water shoes (or aquashoes), and we approach the river.

The first meters of our progression are directly in the river. The bed is wide, the level is not deep at all (hardly a few centimeters), and the current is hardly perceptible. This makes the progression very simple, and at the same time very pleasant. The water is a bit cool, but you get used to it very quickly.

A few hundred meters later, the river leads to the entrance of the Gorges du Toulourenc.

We cross the natural step formed by a trunk across the river, and we are now inside the Gorges. Little by little, one step after the other, we advance, and we are more and more surrounded by rocks, which gives the sensation to be in a kind of miniature canyon (in comparison to the canyon we crossed to go to the beach of Agiofaraggo, in Crete).

The river is at most two meters wide during this part of the course. It is best to be comfortable with the water, not too claustrophobic, and not too imaginative. It is easy to get lost in your thoughts and imagine the water level suddenly rising. It is really a very surprising sensation to walk in water at this place.

On our side, we turned back when we had water at waist level. If we had been equipped with a waterproof can, for example, we could have gone further, but it was enough for us. As a small anecdote, we met a couple with a dog who was coming back the wrong way, and the dog was having a great time swimming, in the fresh air.

To sum up, it is a very nice discovery. Just bring something to keep your stuff dry because you will certainly have to swim if you want to go further than us or if the water level is higher than it was when we went there, and only go if you feel really comfortable with closed places and with water.