Friday, June 13, 2008

Views from down in the village

The tiny village of Choranche is located about 3 km down from Gamone. I say "down from", but the difference in altitude between the two places is primarily of a psychological kind. The village is located at the bottom of a gigantic bowl, surrounded by cliffs, whereas Gamone seems to be higher in that it is located on grassy slopes above the Bourne River.

At the top of this blog window, there's a picture of the Cournouze mountain, located above the commune of Châtelus, on the other side of the Bourne. This same stone peninsula, jutting out from the Vercors plateau, has a quite different shape and appearance when you're looking up at it from down in the village of Choranche:

The cliffs above the village, towards Presles to the north (which I always think of as the direction of Paris), are vast and ominous:

To the east (which I think of as the direction of Italy), the village seems to be separated from the Vercors by the following gigantic wall of stone:

For me, the panorama from Gamone is "gentler" than views from the village, but this is no doubt a biased outlook, since Gamone is my home place, whereas the village is a relatively alien territory.

I'm always amazed by the fact that, in a mountainous environment, the aerial perspectives change continually whenever you modify—even slightly—your location on the ground.

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