A July Saturday outing took us again to the Var (roughly, between Nice/Cannes [Alpes-Maritimes] and Aix-en-Provence [Bouches-du-Rhone]). The small Escarets Lake (Lac des Escarets) is in the middle of the Var, 8 km southeast of Le Cannet-des-Maures and only 1.5 km southwest of Les Plaines Roman Bridge (that we blogged a few days ago).
This lovely little lake is lost in the middle of nowhere, except a apparently barren nature reserve in the summer heat of the South of France. You can drive in to a corner of the lake, but the whole idea, really, is for a pleasant, and healthy, walk in from the road. Only a half-hour hike across level terraine, but you need plenty of water with you (only "mad dogs and Englishmen", as they say, or Beyond fanatics who take the time they have and the areas accessable in that time).
We
saw an exclusive little frog (toad, actually, but that sounds so much more ichy). Reminded us of the regional turtle that's exclusive to this area of the Var, and probably the instigation for the Turtle Village (Village des Tortues) near Gonfoaron, just a few kilometres across the hills to the southwest of here.
We found a couple of the local Crapaud calamite (Bufo calamita) toads, in pools of the small rivers feeding te Escarets Lake from the south. Our photo is a bit grainy, shot at 1600 ASA because the creature was sitting in the water, in a deep cleft of vertical rocks, and nearly black compared to the noonday sun shining at that time.
We passed another couple who had located a young toad trying to hide under a bush, far from the water. Easier to get into a photogenic position, but we had to move on to our own subject.
This is a non-watersporting lake, no boating (except a light canoe/kayak), no beaches, and definitely no hotdog stands. At one end of the lake, near the dam that created it, there is a bit of beach-style access, and a way to get a car close to the lake, for those of you too lazy to walk.
We'll get a real Beyond site page online for this lovely lake in the near future.
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