Are Verdon Gorge guided tours worth the money?

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This is a guide to help you to decide whether to take a guided tour of the Gorges du Verdon, or Verdon Gorge.

If you’ve found this page – and, hey, welcome to the site – you’re probably already considering it. You perhaps know a little about the River Verdon and the 25km-long gorge between limestone hills which it flows through on the way to Lac de Sainte-Croix, the shimmering turquoise reservoir that is for most of the year the final stop on these trips, but want to find a bit more detail on what your day out will involve.

This guide will cover what we saw when we booked a guided tour in May this year, the logistics, the pros and cons of booking a guided tour compared to venturing out on your own, and the things we’d look for when choosing a tour provider for a day in the Verdon Gorge.

For context, we booked with Happy Riviera Travel who offer direct bookings through their website and are also listed on Get Your Guide and Viator. We can't say how it compares to other providers over another – we’ve only done one tour, so we simply don't know for sure – but I hope this detail helps you understand the experience that our guide is based on.

Our choice was based on the reviews mentioning that the guide, Mario, drove safely on the winding mountain roads and was warm and engaging, as well as the simple fact it was available on a convenient date for us. We found most tour operators advertised similar itineraries to the one we booked, so most of the information below should be relevant even if you book elsewhere.

If you like the sound of the tour we took after reading this post, you can book it on Viator below.

A shorter version of this piece is included in our guide to Nice, which we’d be delighted if you were to read later. This extended guide has been written to help anyone who'd prefer a bit more detail before deciding whether to book a tour.

Cost and time

It’s worth quickly running through the cost of the tours and how much time you can expect them to last. A quick scan of some tour booking apps shows that prices are between £95 and £135 per person (US$127 - US$180, or EUR 111 – EUR 158) to join a group tour, where you’ll likely be sharing a car with several people you don’t know, or somewhere between £700 and £800 for a private tour. In May, we paid just over £135 each for our Verdon Gorge experience. This is more than we would usually spend but, since we don’t drive, a tour was our only option for visiting this beautiful region.

Pickup time was at 8am in Nice, and hotel pickup was available on request. Sadly, Liz trusted me with sorting the booking and I failed to realise this fact, so we instead met at a meeting point by Le Méridien hotel on Promenade des Anglais… before heading straight to our hotel to pick up another member of the group who happened to be staying there. C’est la vie (or ‘c’est le boyfriend who doesn’t read his messages properly’, if you listen to editor Liz). We were all dropped off at our own hotels on the way back.

Tours are typically advertised as lasting between eight and 10 hours. I’d expect your trip to be on the top end of that time range and, with the benefit of experience, I’d be wary of booking with anyone promising shorter. A direct drive from Nice to Lac Sainte-Croix takes around two hours and 15 minutes. It doesn’t take an expert mathematician to work out that an eight-hour tour would leave you just three-and-a-half hours for stops and detours to other destinations on your itinerary.

We’d recommend that you don’t make any fixed plans for when you’re due to come back (such as dinner reservations) as the tours can sometimes overrun. We’d also recommend packing some snacks to keep you going on the longer sections of the drive, such as the journey back to Nice in the evening.

While 10 hours is a long time, particularly as much of it will be spent in the car, those extra two hours will make a big difference to how much you get to enjoy the places you’re going to see. 

The places you’ll visit on a Verdon Gorge tour

Grasse

After leaving Nice, our first tour destination was the home of French perfumes, Grasse. A small town around 40 minutes outside of Nice, it’s home to three well-known perfumers: Galimard, Fragonard and Molinard. Some tours may take you to one of these factories, but others including the one we booked do not.

Instead, we were taken through some of the streets of the old town – all of which are interesting and pretty, but not quite as beautiful to us as those we had seen earlier on our holiday in Menton and Èze – and on to Grasse Cathedral.

Living in Western Europe and therefore spoiled by seeing some incredible churches without having to travel too far – Notre Dame de Paris, the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, the Sistine Chapel – it’s maybe unsurprising that Grasse Cathedral wasn’t that interesting to me. It’s a somewhat foreboding building, very dark inside, and showing its age in places. 

For those who’ve seen fewer big European churches, it’s possible you may really appreciate it. Certainly, the couple from Alabama in our tour group seemed to enjoy their brief look inside the church. It has paintings by the Flemish master Rubens, and more artwork and carvings that I’m sure could be quite moving to those with a religious connection to them or anyone seeing that style of artwork for the first time.

From the church, it was straight back to the car. We spent around 40 minutes in Grasse in total, which in truth is time I wish had been saved for longer in Castellane.

Castellane

My goodness, did I love Castellane.

An hour’s drive from Grasse, in the pre-Alps, Castellane is a small and historic village at the beginning of the Verdon Gorge. A former Roman settlement with a busy traditional market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, it is the perfect place to stretch your legs and start to take in the scenery that you’ll be enjoying on the way to Lac de Sainte-Croix.

It has a couple of nice bakeries for you to buy lunch from, on the days the farmers market isn’t running, with just enough vegetarian choices to keep this writer content.

The River Verdon flows alongside the edge of the village, crystal clear and safe enough that it’s possible to canoe or kayak down it. If you were to stay longer in Castellane, you can also do similar activities at the nearby Lake Castillon.

Unfortunately, you won’t have enough time to be quite so active on your guided tour., Liz and I had just enough time to stroll through the quiet medieval streets of the village, snap a few pictures, and quickly eat our patisseries before heading back to the car.

Panoramas

It’s then another hour of driving to your next stop in Moustiers Sainte-Marie.

Fortunately for us, it was a drive punctuated by stops at several roadside panoramic viewpoints at which you can gaze up at the pre-Alpine and distant Alpine peaks, and stare down into the icy-looking river water far below you in the depths of the gorge.

Two such viewpoints stood out to me enough to make a note of them: the Belvédère de la Carelle and the Belvédère de la Dent de l’Aire. You can click the links to pinpoint these viewpoints on Google Maps and see a few more pictures, or you can keep the views a bit more of a mystery until you visit for yourself.

At the viewpoints, you are very likely to spot vultures hunting inside the canyon walls and swooping overhead on their hunt for prey. It was the first time I’ve seen a sight like it, and I’m itching to get back to the Alps to see more of them, as well as the other birds of prey – various eagles and hawks – that live at higher altitudes. If you live somewhere where such wildlife is common, perhaps you won’t be as blown away as I was. Still, I’d doubt anyone who sees the views of the mountains, the river, and the gloriously clear blue skies for miles around wouldn’t appreciate these stops.

Moustiers Sainte-Marie

Before getting to Lac de Sainte-Croix, we had one more stop to make at the small and in places very crowded village of Moustiers Sainte-Marie.

There are a lot of cafés, restaurants and tourist-focused shops, some of which sell modern-day recreations of the village’s renowned 17^th-century pottery, but there aren’t quite enough to handle the mass of visitors at peak times. If you want to find a quieter area, like you can see in the picture above, you'll need to wander a little bit out of the village centre.

Based on our brief stay, I’d recommend using your time to see the Chapelle Notre-Dame de Beauvoir, about 20 minutes climb up a long flight of stairs. If that’s not possible for any reason – either due to time, mobility, or any other concern – then perhaps consider getting a takeaway coffee or soft drink and camping up somewhere in the village with views of the surrounding areas.

The countryside around the village is beautiful, with olive trees, cypress trees and luscious greenery for miles around. Had we visited at a quieter time of day, with a bit of peace and quiet in which to take in the views, I’m sure I’d have enjoyed the visit much more.

Liz, not a fan of crowds herself but more of a glass-half-full type than me, would tell you she enjoyed the brief stop in Moustiers Sainte-Marie despite how many people there are. I suspect more people would share her opinion than mine.

Lac de Sainte-Croix

Your guided tour will most likely finish at Lac de Sainte-Croix. Here, you will have chance to take a pedal boat or kayak out onto the man-made reservoir and take in the turquoise waters up close. With around 45 minutes on the water, you can go quite far into the canyon, as we did, or enjoy a gentle boat trip around some of the middle of the lake.

Though I have already gleefully written about this in our guide to Nice, it would be irresponsible not to repeat that Lac de Sainte-Croix is the only place that Liz or I have seen a Samoyed sailing on the back of a pedal boat. Here is the proof.

You may be wondering if you can swim in this beautiful clear blue water. Officially, you can swim in the lake, but not inside the gorge itself as the water there can get dangerously cold. There is a beach with lifeguards next to the Pont du Galetas (the bridge at the end of gorge) which is a popular spot for a dip, or you can swim directly from your boat out on the lake. The pedalos are equipped with small ladders to help you get in and out.

Just know that the water in the lake can be cold, that the lake is shallow at the edges but very deep not far from the shore, and even on a sunny day the wind can be quite strong so that cold water could feel even colder should you decide to take the risk.

Any time spent on, or looking out at, Lac de Sainte-Croix is time well spent. For us, visiting in May, it was a lovely place to end the day. Should you visit between late June and July, you may have one final stop.

Lavender fields

You will only be taken to see the lavender fields when they’re in bloom, for a short few weeks from June to July. When exactly the fields will burst into vibrant purple will depend slightly on the conditions in the year you visit.

As we didn’t visit the fields, we’d suggest you read this tourism information guide to find out a little more about the area and the best places to see lavender on your French travels.

To book a tour or drive to the Gorge yourself

Why you might want to do it yourself

Taking a guided tour means sacrificing the chance to decide how long to stay at the various stops you make along the way, or to venture off the beaten track a little.

I don’t drive; nor does Liz. If we did, and if we were staying in France for a couple of weeks or more, we would lean towards driving to the Verdon Gorge and the surrounding areas if we were choosing between a guided tour or going by ourselves in future. 

We enjoy travelling at a fairly slow pace. We’d have loved to have more time to relax in Castellane and to see Moustiers Sainte-Marie before or after all the tour groups go through the town. We’d perhaps spend a night or two in Castellane, hiking in the local area, kayaking on the lake or on the River Verdon, before moving on to Moustiers-Sainte Marie early in the morning, driving down to Lac Sainte-Croix to pass a long afternoon with a picnic and a trip round the lake on a pedal boat, before driving back to Nice in the evening.

If that feels like cheating, and you want to know what we’d do with just one day, we’d still probably pick the self-guided approach. Knowing what we know now, we’d skip Grasse – a nice town, just overshadowed by the even better ones on the tour – and use the time we saved to spend a little more time in Castellane and at the panoramic viewpoints throughout the Verdon Gorge. 

Why a guided tour might be better

Knowing us and our lack of timekeeping, there is a chance that we would have spent so long admiring Castellane that we wouldn’t have left ourselves enough time to fully enjoy Moustiers Sainte-Marie or Lac de Sainte-Croix before the boat rental places closed for the day. A tour guide knows how to keep track of the time better than we do.

Driving on unfamiliar mountain roads might make a tiring day even more fatiguing for you and may be made more stressful by the amount of motorcyclists we saw speeding down the narrow winding roads around the gorge itself.

It is nice to sit back and relax in a cosy vehicle driven by someone who knows the roads and the behaviour of other drivers, and to be able to hear about the history of the places you visit from someone who knows them like the back of their hand.

Depending on how social an animal you are, you might also enjoy getting to meet some of the other guests on your tour. I’m a bit of an introvert, but I still enjoyed getting to know the others on our trip: an amateur marathon runner from Arizona, a French-Canadian civil servant, and the older Alabaman couple I mentioned before. Part of the fun of travel for me is meeting people I don’t get to meet back home.

Even if you’re not particularly outgoing, conversations tend to happen naturally when you’re spending several hours in a car together.

How to decide who to book with

If you’ve decided a guided tour is the right way to go, there’s a few things I’d look for in the reviews to help you pick the best experience for you.

One, as I mentioned earlier, is time. We would aim to pick someone who offers a 10-hour trip rather than an eight-hour trip, as eight hours just isn’t enough time to be able to enjoy everything that the Verdon Gorge has to offer.

I would also look at reviews that mention the quality of the car and the driver. The mountain roads are twisty and, occasionally, quite narrow. You probably do not want to be stuck with someone who drives like they’re competing in a Niçoise leg of the World Rally Championship.

You also might enjoy the long drives from place to place more if you have a car with decent leg room and, as we had on our tour, a vehicle with big windows to allow you to take in more of the views on the journey. The panoramic window built into the car’s roof came into its own when driving through the gorge itself as it let us look up at the steep rock faces above us.

I’d also look into what people are saying about the itinerary in the reviews. Is your stop at Grasse all going to take place at a perfumery? Is none of it going to be about the perfumes? Will you have enough time to explore Castellane, are boats on Lac de Sainte-Croix included? As most tour operators provide a similar summary of their day’s itinerary, it’s only by checking the reviews that you start to see some differences.

Again, the link to the tour we went with is below since it's the one we can personally recommend, but take some time to think about which provider would work best for you.

Final thoughts

Our guided tour of the Verdon Gorge wasn’t cheap, but it was worth the money.

Sure, Liz and I would like to be able to do our own tour of the Verdon Gorge in future, spending longer in Castellane and having a bit more time at some of the roadside viewpoints. But that just shows you how much we enjoyed getting to see those places. Without a car, a guided tour is for now the only practical option for us.

If you can’t drive, if it feels like it might be too difficult on the bendy mountain roads, or if you just want to experience the Verdon Gorge with a knowledgeable person with you to answer your questions, a guided tour will be a great experience for most travellers.

If you take a little time to find the right tour provider, you’ll be rewarded with a wonderful day out.