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.