Beuil

Beuil sits where the Tinée and Cians valleys meet, at around 1450 metres. It's higher than most of the villages we stopped at and more open, the landscape wider around it. Less dramatically perched than Roubion, but the altitude is there in the air and the light.

We weren't following a plan here. We'd been driving around, looking for spots worth stopping for, and Beuil is simply what we came across: another cute little mountain town to walk around in for a while. I kept peeking through the little gaps between the houses to look down at the landscape falling away below.

We found a hill above the village and sat on it for a while, reading (the book that weekend was This Is What It Sounds Like, by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas). The valley below was wide and quiet. That's the feeling Beuil left: openness, the village small in the middle of it, nothing around but lush green mountain country.

There was a wedding somewhere in Beuil that afternoon. For a stretch, one corner of the village was unusually lively. The rest of it stayed calm.