Roubion

Roubion was the base for the weekend. Two nights on the ridge gave us something a quick stop doesn't: time to watch the same place change. Morning light from the east, the heat of the afternoon on the stone, the cool that arrives with the evening.

The weather moves through this valley fast. We saw the village in clear sun and under cloud, and each time it looked like a different place.

We'd come from Nice, which was starting to fill with early summer tourists. Roubion has maybe a hundred permanent residents and no real reason for passing visitors to stop. That made the contrast sharp. A small hotel, a home-cooked dinner, the altitude already cooling things down by the time we sat down to eat.

In the evening the village empties out. The stone holds the heat for a while but eventually the temperature drops and you feel the altitude.

What we didn't expect was the sound. No cars go into Roubion. The passages are stone and pedestrian only. In that quiet the walls carry everything. At some point in the evening a few locals gathered just around the corner. You couldn't see them but you could hear the conversation, the laughter, the scrape of a chair. Those narrow passages that seem empty in the afternoon have their own life after dark.