Europe > France > Provence > Mercantour > Watersports > Articles > Canyoning in Provence

Every boy should have a scar on his chin. Even if they have to wait until they are 35 to get one.

I was in the massif du Mercantour in Haute Provence, with a team training for an ‘adventure race’. While the sophisticates and fleshpots of our acquaintance were living it up in their villas, working on their second and third chins by over-indulging in Provencal food, we were seeing another wilder, sporting side of the region. We were spending a day ‘canyoning’, or possibly ‘canyoneering’ - the sport is so young that its name isn’t even fixed yet.

At its most basic, canyoning is following a river along its course through a gulley. You walk where you can, scramble over rocks, wade and swim through pools and in places you slide down natural flumes. At waterfalls you jump and when it gets too high for that, you abseil.

“It’s the pot-holer’s dessert,” said William, our guide. Apparently the sport was invented by cavers looking for entrances to caves and then descending canyons when they had emerged.

I wondered a bit when he chose the River ‘Amen’, but I crossed myself and set off downstream, walking, wading and scrambling, trying to stay upright on the algae-covered rocks.

“Always keep three points of contact with the ground,” shouted William.

At the first big jump, fifteen feet, he showed us how. Aim for the middle and slap the water with your hands. He watched, a mother hen, as we each lobbed off like fledglings, stomachs in our mouths and little wings outstretched.

The canyon walls closed around us. Millions of years of erosion had left layers like ice cream, with scoops carved out by ancient eddies. We squeezed through pinched gulleys and slithered from one pool to the next, among tadpoles warming themselves in the shallows.

Then the sky disappeared above and we passed into the heart of the rock. We fixed the ropes and abseiled down through the spray of the waterfalls, dropping directly into pools. When we jumped we shouted and the chambers thundered and echoed with the voices and the splash.

Next we came to a gradual slope like a millrace. As I inched my way back on the rope, my feet suddenly slipped from under me. I fell forward and my chin was the first thing to hit the ground. Ouch! Curiously my mind turned to tadpoles.

Richard, a medic in his spare time, was delighted to have someone to practise on. He raced over, fussing around me, reassuring dutifully. I was about to shout at him politely to leave me alone when I realised that I couldn’t actually speak. My jaw was too sore. Nice, clean cut as it happened. I was fixed up with a plaster from ear to ear.

But now I realised that I was in trouble. When they took the mickey I wouldn’t even be able to answer back. I was reduced to scowling and muttering, like Muttley from the Whacky Races.

Richard: “James?”

“Mmmrrrm?”

“Had a chin-ectomy, have you. To stop you partaking in silly sports?”

“Grrrr.”

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