Today was the first day of a two-day trek from Villeplane to Sauze (and back tomorrow).

The start of today’s walk followed the same trail as yesterday’s, but after about 2 km the paths diverged. The whole hike today was only about 10 km but there was an amazing amount of variety packed into those kilometers.

North-facing slopes were almost like Swedish forests and meadows, with familiar flora everywhere: familiar grasses, pines, daisies, wild strawberries. But then suddenly there’s a clump of orchids, or a martagon lily growing next to the path, and it was very clear that we were not in Sweden after all.

The mountains themselves were made of unfamiliar materials. Rocky outcrops are black shale instead of granite.

South-facing slopes were like picture-book scenes of Provencal nature: sun-baked rocks with tufty carpets of low flowers in all sorts of colours. From afar some of it resembled familiar vistas from our walks in Great Britain (Scotland and Cornwall) but what looked like gorse turned out to be Spanish broom, and instead of heather there was lavender and thyme.

The warmer, south-facing areas had a lot of small lizards, but they were so quick to hide that often the only sign we saw was brief movement and maybe a rustling of fallen leaves. In the forests we often heard cuckoos calling.

Everywhere was full of butterflies, grasshoppers and crickets. And ticks. So many ticks! The rest of the family got one or two each during the whole week. I got so many I lost count – I felt like I was constantly picking them off myself, despite wearing a long sleeve top and long trousers most of the time.