Everyone comes to Provence for the lavender and the markets and the rosé at lunch, and so did we. But the thing that actually knocked the wind out of me was an hour east of all that, where the Verdon river has spent millennia cutting a canyon 700 meters deep through pale limestone. The water at the bottom is an unreal milky turquoise — glacial rock flour, apparently — and the first time I leaned over the railing at the Belvédère de la Dame and looked straight down, my stomach did something it hadn’t done since I was a teenager. It is, without exaggeration, one of the great landscapes of Europe, and somehow most people miss it entirely.
Driving the rims
There are two roads, one along each rim, and they are not for the faint of heart or the cheap of brakes. We drove the Route des Crêtes on the northern side, a one-way loop with fourteen belvederes, each one a small lay-by where you park, walk to a railing bolted into the cliff, and try not to think too hard about the drop. Griffon vultures — reintroduced here decades ago — wheeled below us, which tells you everything about how far down the river is.
Lia, who is braver than me about heights, hung over every railing while I held the back of her jacket like an anxious parent. The southern road, the Corniche Sublime, gives the wider postcard views and the famous Pont de l’Artuby, a bridge so high above the gorge that people pay to bungee off it. We watched one go. I declined.
Down on the water
The other way to experience the Verdon is from the bottom, which is where it stops being a view and becomes an actual adventure. At the western end, the river opens into the artificial Lac de Sainte-Croix, a vast turquoise lake where you can rent a little electric boat or a pedalo and putter up into the mouth of the gorge itself, the cliffs rising sheer on either side.
We rented a kayak instead, which was a mistake of the best kind. The water was cold enough to make Lia shriek, the current near the canyon mouth had opinions about which way we should go, and we spent a glorious incompetent hour paddling in circles under cliffs that made us feel like specks. The light bouncing off the water turns everything underneath an aquarium green. I have rarely felt smaller or happier.
The village of Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, perched against the cliffs nearby with a gold star strung on a chain between two peaks, makes the perfect base — all faience pottery shops and a stream running through the middle. We ate trout there, looking up at that mysterious star, and nobody could give us a straight answer about who hangs it or why.
Going, practically
Come in June or September to dodge the July–August crush, when the rim roads turn into slow parades. The water is warm enough to swim by late June. Bring real shoes if you want to walk the Sentier Blanc-Martel down in the gorge — it’s a serious full-day hike with tunnels and ladders, not a stroll. And fill the tank before you start; there’s nothing up on those rims but vultures and views.