Fotografi a Le gole del Verdon e Moustiers

The Verdon is a full day and it needs a car. The river has cut 700 metres down through white limestone over 25 kilometres, and the two rim roads are the shoot: the Route des Crêtes (D23), a one-way loop out of La Palud-sur-Verdon with fourteen belvederes strung along it, and the Corniche Sublime on the southern side. Stop at the railings, put the couple on the rock and let the canyon do the rest — the gorge runs east to west, so the walls light unevenly and the best hours are the first two after sunrise and the last two before sunset, when one wall glows and the other goes blue. Midday is flat, hot and full of cars. At the western end the river opens into the Lac de Sainte-Croix, an artificial lake whose glacial-flour turquoise is genuinely that colour, and the Pont du Galetas crosses the mouth of the canyon: from the bridge you look straight up the gorge, and from the beach below electric boats and pedalos go in under the cliffs. It is the busiest thirty metres in the Verdon in August — get there at eight. Moustiers-Sainte-Marie is the base, a village of pale stone and faience workshops wedged into a notch in the cliff, with the chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Beauvoir up 262 steps above it and a gilded star hanging on a chain strung across the ravine, a tradition the village has kept for centuries. Down on the canyon floor, the Sentier Blanc-Martel runs from the Couloir Samson below Point Sublime to the Chalet de la Maline — around 15 kilometres, ladders, two unlit tunnels and a real half-day, so it suits an adventurous couple and nobody in a dress. Best months: May, June and September, when the water is up and the crowds are not; the Route des Crêtes closes in winter and after snow, worth checking before you set out.