Luckily the electricity stayed on all night. The first van starts and chugs off just after 06:00 then the 'Hannibal Raiders' camp wakes up with tannoy and music. We loiter until nearly 11:00 then set off on the D900 towards Gap.
The road winds through gorges of grey rock speckled with broom, and alongside the Ubaye river. In places there are large rock falls and on one face a large pinnacle has cleaved away from the hillside. The river is pale blue with occasional rafters and kayaks. The gorges are hundreds of feet deep with gullies and fissures, especially noticeable from some of the hairpin bends. We park overlooking the Barrage d'Ubaye with little beaches below us.
At Espinasses we cross the river on a bridge we remember from our 2015 trip along 'route of Napoleon'. A little further on at Remollon we stop in the supermarket to get shopping and LPG. After shopping and lunch we have to wait until 14:30 for the fuel station cashier to open as the self-serve LPG has no card slot.
We skirt around Gap and start some deceptively steep and long climbs involving plenty of tight bends through beautiful wooded mountains up to 3800 ft. Later we descend to Les Claps and Luc-en-Diois where the rock face overhangs the road and tumbles below to the river. This is a centre of activity with kayaks, rafts and rock climbers and abseilers. We stop in a layby and are amazed by a six year old girl doing a 30 foot rope decsent watched over by dad at the top and mum below.
Our route emerges onto a wide flat valley floor with plenty of colourful farm land then we drive through Die [pronounced dee]. It's a busy town with large chateau and probably worth visiting. It is twinned with Wirksworth, a Derbyshire town where we once had a holiday cottage and where Ellen McArthur (famous Yachtswoman) was born. We remark that even seeing as much as we have, there's always something else to come back for.
A few miles on we find the France Passion Domaine de Jean Claude Rapsail.
We park and go for tasting. The tasting room is also a museum with two wooden presses over 350 years old and a copper filtering system circa 1910. We join the queue for tasting before we get to try a few wines and buy some cremant sparkling white and some syrah red.
Back at the van Grete does ravioli and tomato sauce for dinner.