Travellers on the paths of time.
The Vallée des Merveilles high above Nice is a way to connect with mysterious ancient peoples who communed in the mountains.
Riding through the mountains, you are always reminded of the people who were here before you. The shepherds by the side of the road, tending their flocks as their ancestors have done for hundreds of years. The farmers and merchants who trod these tracks before they became roads, or the military that used them to defend the countryside below.
But what if you could go further back in time and touch lives far removed from your own? In the high valleys above Nice, an incredible collection of Copper Age and Bronze Age rock engravings around Mont Bégo, a 2,872-metre-tall peak, offers just such an opportunity.
Arranged around the peak like an open-air art gallery, there are around 35,000 of them, depicting mainly daggers, bulls’ heads and rectangular shapes as well as a few human-like figures. Why are they there? Nobody knows for sure. No writing existed to record their purpose, so these whisper sweet nothings across the millennia.
Mont Bégo is one of the most recognisable peaks in the Nice backcountry, and can be seen from some parts of the coast. In the summer, as moisture rises from the sea, its iron-rich rocks attract thunderstorms, so one theory is that the people that carved the rocks were part of a bull-worshipping cult that came to the mountain every summer to pray for rain and ensure fertility for the season’s crops.
Others point out that Mont Bégo stands at the crossroads of ancient tracks leading towards Piemonte, Provence, Liguria and the French Riviera. Perhaps this was where many tribes gathered each summer to exchange news and trade. A place of sanctuary, pilgrimage and celebration.
Or maybe they were simply carved by a few ancient shepherds, passing the time while their sheep grazed around them, unwittingly starting a tradition that lasted for over a thousand years.
Perhaps the engravings will never give up their secrets. But we, too, are drawn to these same high places, on foot or on two wheels. These are mountains that we also love and return to, year after year. We are all travellers on the path of time, communing with the landscape and the people who have passed through it before us.
Check out the Merveilles collection here.
