Crest dates way back in history, at one point in time it was a walled city, the Keep, or La Tour de Crest is all that remains of the walls and castle after Louis XIII ordered to have it all demolished. The Tour was kept after it was argued that it could be used as a prison.

La Tour has 900 years of history and was used as a prison for 300 years. It is really hard to get our Australian heads around numbers like that. It was used as a prison for longer than Australia has been settled by white man!

Around the town it is not hard to find buildings that are dated the 14th and 15th century. A lot are looking their age though.

We also visited one of the first churches built in Crest, it was built by Franciscan monks in the XII century. There are 124 steps leading up to the church, 95 are carved directly into the stone, as is the handrail. The stairs were built at the end of the Middle Ages.

We quite enjoyed our time walking around Crest and would probably have spent more time if it hadn't been so hot, 38°

A couple of days later, using a tourist map of the area we went off exploring again to see what treasures we could find.

We arrived at a village called Pont-en-Royans, another very old village. The main tourist attraction here are the 'suspended houses'. These are a row of houses built along a gorge overhanging the Bourne river in the XVII century.

Here we witnessed young men jumping off a 15m high ledge into the river, crazy. There were also a lot of people in the river escaping the heat. The houses were quite special and interesting to see and read about. The rest of the village was typical of this part of France, with narrow streets and stairs leading up even narrower alleys to homes built up the steep hills.

On the way back to camp we made our own route following our map and found some more amazing roads with incredible views into deep valleys below us.

The weather once again played a big part on the last couple of days in our campground. Just for fun we had to deal with another storm, this time it came complete with thunder, wind and hail stones. The bike didn't fall over this time, but we did have water flowing under our tent!

All in all though, we really enjoyed this part of France, tomorrow we are heading north again, back to Dole again before heading back in to Switzerland to visit a friend.