Peïra-Cava, plateau-crest, silence, pure air
At the end of the switchbacks, the hamlet of Peïra-Cava
From the south and around Nice, where we come from, the steep climb to Peïra-Cava from Lucéram can take two competing paths on either side of a rocky outcrop.
On the GPS screen, they either appear like overcooked and sticky spaghetti, so tight there are laces.
630 m
1375 m
On one side to the east (with the Bévéra valley) and to the west (with the Vésubie valley), the journey is 12 km.
It never takes less than 20 minutes to cross it, both uphill and downhill. But for those like me who are prone to vertigo, the east route is the most impressive, the one that I will therefore avoid.
In any case, one seems to have been built before 1908 and the other a little later.
From the high exit of Lucéram to the arrival on the ridge which widens into a plateau 3 km before Peïra-Cava, the difference in altitude is 745m. We go from 630m to 1375m.
Up there, in the hamlet at 1425m, two small shops. That of a dynamic lady who offers the service of an original and charming little grocery store and also serves as a café-bar on her pleasant terrace in the input curve of town.
Sometimes she gathers there in the sun a handful of her friends from the hamlet under the red umbrellas, and giggles are rife.
The other, more like a bar, maybe also a restaurant, with sometimes original souvenirs and postcards, is at the other end of the village, more conventional and commercial, less friendly.
Peïra-Cava is therefore, at least in this season of late June 2017, little frequented, with a few permanent inhabitants.
Only seasoned cyclists, motorcyclists and one or two elderly people who walk their dog with metronomic regularity.
But also two or three ruminants mountain with a beautiful mahogany dress, escapes from the nearest "cow farm", that of Granges du Lac. They walk peacefully, without embarrassment or constraint, indifferent in their freedom so habitual as it is to them unremarkable, on the grassy sides of the road and even into the village itself.
Their escapades are well known to the inhabitants who from time to time chase them when they are also grazing. their flower beds.
On arrival too, our stubborn prejudices are immediately undone. : no, this country is not dry and mineral, but covered with superb alpine forests.
The morning dew wets the grass; but above all everything is green-blue under the tall pines and spruces.
Only the branches of larches take on this pink amber color which under a certain light gild the slopes, or else look under other less lenient skies like ailing trees afflicted with disease.
Nice lure?
Suffice to say that from here where our accommodation is located, supplies require going down to the large village of Escarène, 350m above sea level, 1 hour by car below, including the 20 minutes of switchbacks mentioned above.
Tours of the region fall into two categories.
Those that are done on site or nearby on the plateau crest or its surroundings : Authion, Calmette, Ardiha around the neighboring Turini pass to the north, or around the village.
And those of other more distant sites, one or two valleys away, then for the day.
The summer heat has not yet hit at this altitude at least.
The nights remain cool and the daytime temperature does not exceed 25 ° C under shelter, when in the valley and the rest of the country a strong heat wave.
We will thus know up to 37 ° C, persistent soon in the plain of Argens. Our low altitude plateau will then be a refuge of well-being.
The site is therefore perfectly serene and silent.
The air sucks in barely contained lungs with a kind of delight, surprised at this fresh purity. And causes a kind of discreet and exclusive euphoria.
This ridge topography offers sumptuous landscapes on both sides both to the east (below) and Italy to the north as well as to the west and even the south, with in the distance the Mediterranean can be seen through a distant low mist. To the point that we could see on a clear day after a downpour… the island of Corsica. Leave it to whoever believes it ; we will not see it ourselves anyway.
Peïra-Cava, a unique winter resort that has disappeared
2017
This hamlet now asleep with the meager population has nevertheless known its heyday, at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th.
Evidenced by two or three large old house-hotels (one keeps the name in well-worn Gothic characters "Relais monégasque"), now reconverted, or more or less abandoned pending purchaser.
1907
1935
For more than half a century until the Italian occupation of 1942, 300 to 1000 alpine hunters lived there year round.
This military site retains, even after the almost total liberation of the Alpes Maritimes in September 1944, its strategic character for the last French fights against the German troops occupying the fortifications of the neighboring Authion massif, after the departure of the Italians. The highlight is the capture of these fortifications by the French on April 12, 1945.
In any case, we owe first of all to this important military presence the first competitions. ski or toboggan. Their playful character seduces Nice civil society which then quickly seizes on it.
Already, "L'Intransigeant" of January 2, 1880 reports the experience of a skier mounted in Peïra Cava.
This population also needed a place of worship. It materializes with the construction of the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges church in 1903 (photo) to which the patron Robert de Courson contributed.
The photo already testifies to the success of the site, when we observe the elegance of the dresses at the beginning of the century.
early 20th
and those of the "boater" years in 1920.
1920
2017
Of the and shortly after date, the construction of at least three hotels which will have their reputation, and which will gradually suffer some misfortunes (change of name ...) to cease their activity later.
This is the case with the "Grand Hôtel Faraut", built almost on the side of a cliff, which boasts central heating and a garage for cars. There stop, during the "opening of April 15" perhaps around 1900, horse-drawn carriages. drawn by horses (poor horses in the terrible climb; more than one passenger had to dismount to push, luxury was deserved at that time).
around 1900
In 1911, Nice made a dynamic and modern advertisement very Art Nouveau.
The resort's reputation reached its peak in the "Roaring Twenties", that is to say in the interwar years. probably in the 1930s. We talk in the frozen magazine " Female ".
In its time, we wanted to make it a mountain resort as popular as Vichy, Aix, Contrexeville (journal of 1905), even with exaggeration a spa town. We went so far as to speak in the years 1920-30 of the " Swiss Nice ".
One reason for this: it is the military who will first begin to exploit and make known its winter assets.
It is indeed a strategic military location because of its privileged altitude location and the immediate proximity of this disputed border strip with Italy.
These are the tensions between France and Italy in the process of unification in the years 1870 to 1880 which lead here to the construction of the Crénant barracks of 1876 to 1887, that we can still be seen today (postcard from 1907).
They were then extended to other buildings in the 1935s (photo of construction-extension by the Roussel company in May 1935).
From the start, these buildings could accommodate up to 1000 men, who were initially alpine hunters (see postcard).
It is therefore precisely the establishment of this garrison that subsequently leads to the success of the ski resort.
2017
As in any city with a lasting military establishment, we come across some anecdotes specific to the context and the environment.
We thus sees from 1887 in Peïra-Cava a non-commissioned officer (adjutant to the 11th of the Line), L. Chatelain attempting to deliver a model of the famous new Lebel rifle to Italy, after having tried to do so for the Germans (in " The independent of Mascara ", n ° 373 of January 15, 1888). A traitor then.
Later, in 1932, when France built fortifications at Authion, there too a young alpine hunter of Monegasque origin and an Italian mason worker both residing in Peïra-Cava were accused of espionage for having tried to cash in on secret information about these works.
The first initiatives of winter activities and cross-country skiing competitions here, in the Authion massif, at the neighboring Turini pass to the north and at Camp d'Argent appear soon.
Victor de Cessole, scholar and humanist from an old Nice family, seasoned mountaineer, became president of the French Alpine Club of Nice in 1900 and remained so until 1932.
He wishes develop alpine tourism in the Alpes-Maritimes, which he considers marginalized. He rushes in like this in the openness of the site's existence and created the winter sports resort of Peïra-Cava at the same time, notably by organizing the first competition with alpine hunters.
The Official Journal of August 3, 1913 decrees the implementation of a convention for a public transport line directly between Nice and Peïra-Cava.
This other old photo (undated) shows in the background above the barracks today bought by the town hall, an astonishing and very imposing casino, the dimensions of which are surprising. The bets of the promoters of the time were therefore already crazy.
It is the Polish architect Adam Dettloff (Art Nouveau period), creator beautiful constructions on the Nice coast, which is the author.
But the building collapsed before being opened, along with its sources of funding. The idea was therefore very quickly abandoned.
around 1920
Besides the hotel "Bellevue-Victoria", or the hotel "des Alpes" (perhaps later became the "Relais monégasque"), according to the local iconography collected, it even seems that another hotel, the "Truchi" had its own ice rink !!
In any case until the eve of the war of 39-45, the notoriety of Peïra-Cava was well established, to the point for example that the site was part of a tourist program of the Carnival of Nice in 1936.
This is how "the Journal de Paris" quotes Peïra-Cava on August 24, 1938, and two celebrities passing by, Cécile Sorel, the actress, and Maurice Chevalier.
We also note elsewhere that Blaise Cendrars wrote a dedication (in " Dan Yack, Blaise Cendrars phonograph From Bonnefis in 1992).
People also come there, it seems, to celebrate with the means revealed by the beautiful cars of the 1920s, and the attire of the ladies when they leave the chapel, but also to enjoy the summer of its "good air. "and the many possibilities for walks, in a horse-drawn carriage or even on the back of a donkey or mule.
Yet the fall is almost brutal.
With first the departure of the military after the armistice, and in 1971 the creation of the alpine station Isola 2000 further north, even if the first chairlift in the village was inaugurated in 1963, the station declined very quickly.
So much so that the chairlift was dismantled in 1990.
And here is the return to oblivion of the village, once again a hamlet, after having shone brilliantly with local glory.
That deserved a little detour in the past.
Peïra-Cava, walk around the village
Now let's explore the immediate surroundings of the village a little, by the small road which goes obliquely from the main road, below the main houses of the village on the eastern side of the ridge. We have it leave on the right for an alley which becomes a track.
From there, bypassing a small promontory, we reach a kind of natural gazebo maybe known in the past like that of "the flat stone".
The hamlet barely emerges in the distance in its green setting. At north-east, the vast panorama is of course superb and reveals slopes with rocky adret barely covered with a level and tenacious vegetation marrying the immense tight geological strata.
Below, a narrow and vertiginous ridge of flat rocks continues towards another belvedere where we will not go, despite the path that invites it.
Suddenly, in the tall grass, a long-haired animal shudders and walks away: a barely frightened badger that flees without hurrying waddling with fluidity, then barely masked, stops and observes us.
Our first example of local wildlife, peaceful and well fed.
Under the large sparse trees, here are the tree climbing games, still closed and frozen, with in particular a bicycle on a rope which must not fail to provoke sensations.
Then after crossing the thick grass of the irregular plateau-valley, we pass close to the cows of the "cow farm", that of nomadic defectors who wander to the village.
The wide winding track leads us to the main road. We cross it to climb to the heights above the village, before reaching a ridge summit.
The opportunity along the way to pass in front of beautiful chalet-houses, one with Monegasque colors, like remote refuges rich and discreet inhabitants of the coast.
Arranged like a large shaded balcony, the path continues, passes under dark rocky masses, to reach a valley in plateau where the summer opens for all the attraction of a "tree climbing", still closed to our passage.
The course is dotted with rare already old information panels, which give some simple information, such as the dates of appearance on Earth of the tree species present here: -140 Ma for pine and spruce, -100 Ma for oak and birch, -75 Ma for beech; and for the most recent, the young ones from our forests, -13 Ma for fir and only -4.5 Ma for larch.
Others are more ecological, with striking shortcuts : "daily, a hundred-year-old beech produces 24 kg of oxygen per day; a human being consumes a little less than 1 kg".
And another also instructive: "the sandstones of Peïra-Cava came from underwater avalanches -45 Ma ago while the region was submerged under a deep sea".
Under a clear sky, a pleasant and invigorating contact before going further.
But the breath is short.