France - walking (updated)

For Dominic and I while Garth is doing his course from the 10th-17th September we want to do some high altitude walking possibly including some via Ferrata (iron way).  After a bit more research on the web and in contact with a few operators, we found a number of options for doing one or more via Ferrata possibly in conjunction with some other activities such as mountain hiking.  We haven't yet settled on one yet but the idea will be similar to the Tuscany segment - choose a base and do activities from there.  A couple of possibilities so far are:

• The Mercantour National Park area.  One operator is Space Between and while non of their packages are suitable date-wise they can organise gite accomodation in Berthemont les Bains at a reasonable price.
• Not too far away from the Mercantour NP is Puget-Theniers (90km from Nice) which would be a good place to use as a focal point.  Apart from a Naturist Campsite (oo lala) there is hotel accomodation at Annon about 22km away.
• I came across this web page providing lots of links for Provence-Cote d'Azur.  Following the links one can get to individual towns of interest - such as Pugets-Theniers - see what hotels are available and if they are available for the required dates.  Hotels can also be booked through the site but this may only apply to those which are connected to an online booking service.

If these turn out to be non-starters I am sure we can find something else - such as using one of the larger towns as a base and organising our daily activities from there.

Tuscany - more detail

For Tuscany we have pretty much settled on the idea of staying at one place and doing day trips by bicycle or car to places of interest.  The two such places on the list currently are:

• Hotel Prategiano in Montieri, Tuscany - about 50 km west of Siena.
• Pie di Costa in Montaione, Tuscany (more information on Montaione) - about 50km WSW of Florence and 60 km NW of Siena.

Hotel Prategiano has reasonable rates.  I won't publish them here as the quote is between the hotel and us.  They also have bicycle hire available at about 25 euro/day.

 Pie di Costa is an 'Agriturismo' place which has several apartments for rental so the basis for this is different to the Hotel Prategiano.  Since the apartments are self-catering we would have to make a choice between eating in some days or driving to a restaurant or trattoria for dinner.  They also don't have bicycles for hire but we can get those delivered to the farm through here.

Also I have been giving some thought to what I want to see in Tuscany:

• Florence
• Siena
• Lucca and Pisa
• Pienza and Montepulciano
• San Gimignano

There are bound to be others but those are my 'musts'.

France ideas

For the French cycling segment we are pretty much agreed on the 'self-guided tour' option somewhere in the Bordeaux region.  This has a number of advantages:

• Documented itinerary
• Pre-booked accomodation and some meals
• Baggage transfers daily
• Bicycles supplied
• Lower cost than a guided tour

There are a wide variety of options available for cycling in this area of France. In the regions that we are interested in, the following operators have suitable tours:

• Belle France
• Discover France
• Bike Rentals Plus