Day 6 - Valsavarenche to Rhêmes Notre Dame, 10.8 miles.

Total ascent, 1482m.
Total descent, 1284m.
Saturday, 25th July.

Up up up up up down down down down down.

Perfect profile symmetry at last, well give or take 2000 metres or so. And as walking days go this couldn't be bettered. I again slept well and was at breakfast by 7:30, but I really have had enough of crispy bread and marmalade. Luckily I was first down so ate most of the fruit yoghurt before anyone else arrived, and I also stashed some crispy bread, ham, cheese and an apple for lunch. I was quite subtle and did it in stages as the waitress came in and out, but by the time I got to the ham another guest had arrived and I think he saw me drop it in my plastic bag by the table leg. Maybe he thought I had a pet in there.

The village had been totally dead last night with one notable exception, a boys' summer camp on a field opposite the hotel. As I headed back from the restaurant at 10 o'clock for some reason I expected them to be asleep. It was an absolute riot! One of the tents seemed to have a hot tub in it, as all I could hear was screaming and loud splashes. Everyone who wasn't in the hot tub was playing football in the dark.

So after breakfast I assembled a sort of lunch in my room before leaving at 8. The summer camp was completely silent except for a man who was walking to each tent in turn and blowing an enormous horn through the entrance flap. He did it with gusto and looked incredibly self-satisfied each time. I heard no responses.

I felt really up for the walk today and realised that I now know exactly what a 1482 metre ascent and a 1284 metre descent entails. Unless following a river valley the first 600 metres would be a zigzag path up the steep, wooded valley side, leading into a hanging valley above the tree line with shallower slopes, before the final, long pull up to the col. The descent would be the same in reverse. And they are getting easier every day.

Today's walk on paper looked quite hard work but it was an absolute joy from start to finish. I also had the bonus of a long conversation with a fascinating man I crept up on during the initial ascent. I was only walking slightly faster than him so I saw him zigzagging above me for a good 20 minutes before I drew level with him. He spoke in Italian so I did my useless shruggy thing and said I spoke English but lived in Wales. Within a minute he said I sounded like I came from the north of England, maybe near Liverpool. I was a bit taken aback to be honest; I can't really recognise other languages, never mind accents of other languages. In the end it transpired that his name was Guy (he was about 60), he had studied French and English (his English was brilliant), he had travelled through Wales, he had been to Mold and he loved Caernarfon Castle! He was great company for the next hour, despite stopping continually to explain something or draw something on the ground with his walking pole. I made a terrible joke and told an anecdote about cheese, both of which he found incredibly funny, so it was a bit of a shame when he left the path to attempt a nearby 3500m peak.

Cows and the Gran Paradiso massif.

View across the second lake.

And the rest of the day was fantastic too. The best scenery of the walk, two lovely lakes and fantastic weather. Oh and a tricky bit of descent...

Glad that's out of the way!

When I got to Italy I was expecting it to be incredibly hot and it was, but when I was chatting to someone at the second hut I was surprised to find that it has been unusually warm recently. So after last night's storm it seems to be back to normal, which is a good 5 degrees lower than previously. The average temperature today was 24 and the humidity was very low, making the walk very easy. It was hot in the valley at the end but a Solero Exotik sorted that out (thank you Mrs Pearce, my dentist, for recently making that possible!).

I did have a 'moment' again today. During the descent I stopped for a drink beneath a small cliff with nobody in sight ahead or behind. I then noticed a chamois munching away on the grass near the bottom of the cliff, about 20 metres away. It didn't seem bothered and as I watched I started to notice others dotted about the cliff, quite a lot of others. Had I not stopped I'd probably have missed them completely.

I know that there are at least 10 chamois in this photo, though it's probably a bit blurry to zoom in and find them all.

I'm in a posh hotel tonight as other options had sold out when I booked, and it's very nice indeed, despite my hand-washing hanging off the balcony. The bottom floor is a bar, where I was happily drinking beer and watching football on the telly when I remembered I needed to eat. I went upstairs a floor and felt totally underdressed in the restaurant until a nice lady waitress (at least 70) managed to explain the Italian menu perfectly to me, despite only speaking Italian. Very clever!

A beauty of a mountain and some wacky farm buildings.


-- Posted from Kev's iPhone