The Sentier naturaliste de Toine is a nature discovery loop starting from the village of Les Salles-sur-Verdon, on the shores of Lake Sainte-Croix. Nineteen numbered stations introduce the flora and fauna of the area — oaks, pine grove, reed bed, lake birds, lichens, junipers, a truffle orchard — along a route that skirts the forest and then the lake shore, with a memorial point about the old village swallowed up when the lake was filled.
Verified on 29 August 2026 with the Lacs et Gorges du Verdon intercommunal tourist office, and by direct analysis of the trail’s official GPX track.
The essentials
| Distance | 2.5 km (tourist office) — 2.83 km measured on the official GPX track |
| Elevation gain | 58 m cumulative (calculated on the GPX track — not published by the tourist office) |
| Duration | 1h30 |
| Difficulty | Easy |
| Type | Loop |
| Start / finish | Village of Les Salles-sur-Verdon (trail welcome sign) |
| Waymarking | Yellow |
The truth about the numbers
Two distance measurements circulate for this same trail, and we have not forced them to match.
| Measurement | Distance | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Official announced distance (reference retained for display) | 2.5 km | Lacs et Gorges du Verdon intercommunal tourist office |
| Distance recalculated on the official GPX track | 2.83 km | Official GPX track (apidae-tourisme.com), 114 recorded points, point-to-point calculation |
The gap (about 330 m, or +13%) may come from rounding by the tourist office, from an update of the route on the ground after the GPX was recorded (dated 30 March 2023), or simply from a difference in measuring method. We found no published explanation and do not decide between them — both values remain visible. The elevation gain (58 m cumulative, low point at 478 m, high point at 514 m), for its part, is published by no official source: it is our own calculation on the same GPX track, to be taken as an estimate and not as data from the manager.
The route
The trail starts from the welcome sign, slightly overlooking the village, and first crosses a pine grove (Scots pines, holm oaks and downy oaks) where signs point out the birds typical of the undergrowth. The route then descends to a reed bed on the edge of the former bed of the Verdon, with stations devoted to ferns and shoreline shrubs.
The second half of the loop follows the shores of Lake Sainte-Croix, where the signs focus on lake birds, lichens and mosses, then climbs back through more open scrubland (Spanish broom, nettle trees, junipers) that includes a station devoted to a local truffle orchard, before closing the loop through a last wooded stretch (maples, thorny shrubs) up to the village.
The route also passes a memorial to the old village, submerged in the 1970s when Lake Sainte-Croix was filled — the present village of Les Salles-sur-Verdon was entirely rebuilt on its current promontory on that occasion.
- Start / finish: village of Les Salles-sur-Verdon, closed loop.
- Waymarking: yellow, nineteen numbered stations (numbering from the field sheet with a few minor inconsistencies — two stations share the number 9, station 12 is missing from the list — without consequence for following the trail, which remains waymarked throughout).
- Audience: family route, dogs welcome on a lead, free access.
- GPX: downloadable official track from the tourist office.
Do not confuse
Three distinct routes share all or part of the village’s name, without being the same route. “Vers Les Salles” is a 3 km trail (about 1h) that starts from Aiguines, not from Les Salles-sur-Verdon: it arrives there, it does not start there. The “Circuit découverte des Salles-sur-Verdon” is a heritage route in the village centre — Sainte-Anne church, memorial to the old village, exhibition “Un site, une histoire” — downloadable as a PDF from the tourist office, but devoted to history, not nature. The Sentier de Toine is the only one of the three to offer a genuine nature trail outside the village centre.
What is still missing
We would rather say so: the gap between the official distance (2.5 km) and our calculation on the GPX track (2.83 km) remains unexplained, and the displayed elevation gain (58 m) is an estimate derived from that same track, never published by the tourist office itself — to be treated as an order of magnitude, not a certified measurement. Nor did we find an official difficulty rating: “Easy” is our reading of the profile and of the “family with children” classification in the source fact-sheet, not a category displayed as such by the tourist office.
Sources
Data verified on 2026-08-29: Lacs et Gorges du Verdon intercommunal tourist office (trail fact-sheet, village page, village discovery circuit, “Vers Les Salles”), official GPX track (apidae-tourisme.com). Distance and elevation gain of the track calculated directly by us from the 114 GPX points. No data invented: a missing field is flagged as such.