Cap Canaille: sea cliffs and amazing views

We originally planned to get the bus to La Ciotat and walk back over the sea cliffs of Cap Canaille to Cassis. However, it would have been a really long day… getting to La Ciotat on what appeared to be a scheduled school bus, walking from the college to the start of the hike, and then walking uphill out of Cassis back to the campsite. Instead, I suggested to John that he drove Bertie up to the start of the ridge and we did an out and back walk. Thankfully, he agreed it made sense, so we made our way out of the town and up steep hairpin bends to the first carpark on Route des Crêtes.

When we set off there was a lot of cloud around… we’d almost forgotten what cloud looks like! I think it adds to the photos, and it also meant that it was cooler for the start of the walk. As we started the coastal path, there were people below us climbing on the high sea cliffs… I could barely stand close to the edge!

Although only 3.6 miles each way, there have been no flat sections on the hike so it’s been tough. The path has been steep, rocky and challenging in places, but the views have made it worthwhile.

We ended up walking an extra 2 kilometres to see viewpoints and find 4 geocaches. Although most of the caches were on route, one required a significant detour down a steep path and all required searching for through prickly bushes!

As we approached the communication station at the turning point, we could see the Port of La Ciotat and the bay where we snorkelled yesterday. At this point, the geocache John started searching for was 20 metres over the cliff. He tried both sides of a huge gully and couldn’t see a way down. We either had to give up or crawl down a cliff but I then thought of a third option… translate the cache page properly. This gave us some additional and very helpful information.

We had to retrace our steps a little and take a steep rocky path down the hillside below the cliffs and some interesting rock formations, then around to some caves. As the webpage said, it was perfectly safe, if a bit difficult for someone with short legs!

The first cave we found was great… it was large and had obviously been lived in because it had a proper fireplace. We couldn’t find the cache there though and started to make our way back to the top of the cliff. Luckily, John noticed a little side path which led to another, less impressive cave, and we soon found and logged the cache. Even if we hadn’t found it, the trip wouldn’t have been wasted because, without geocaching, we wouldn’t have discovered the caves far below the main coastal path.

Having scrambled back to the top, we carried on to the communication station where there were lovely, if hazy, views of the coast east towards Toulon, and back west towards Cassis, as well as the calanques we visited a couple of days ago.

By now, the clouds had mostly disappeared and it was very hot. After lunch and plenty of water we made our way back to the start… relentlessly alternating between uphill and downhill. I was very glad to see Bertie!