To the Mediterranean on GR52A - Cuneo to Menton

Cuneo

Aosta 7 - 12 July

Samoens to Aosta

Sunday 1 July - Samoens

Awoke to low cloud and  a dense fog with less than fifty metres visibility. Rather like diving. The fog was left behind as I walked down the mountain with a very pleasant quartet from Amsterdam - Maarten Endt, sons Menno and Matthijs and friend Wiete. Maarten set a good pace and proved a good conversationalist. I asked Menno how it was the Dutch were so proficient in English. He answered in one word, " Subtitles." Foreign programmes on Dutch tv are not dubbed as in France, but subtitled. Nice to walk in company if only for a couple of hours. Foolishly abandoned them at a refuge on the outskirts of Samoens and took a hotel room in the centre of town. As usual the weather turned to shiite as soon as I finished walking.  Fifth day in the Alps. A bit of snow between me and the next stage. I decided to stay a few days in the hope of an improvement in the weather. I found a bar with Belgian beer and contemplate my next move. My new runners, well hardly new now, were not designed for snow. Suddenly found myself completely exhausted. After a couple of glasses of wine and a long bath I collapsed into bed without eating.

Monday 2 July - Samoens 
Weather still shiite and forecast was the same. I decided to stay until the weather improved and devote myself to eating, drinking and sleeping. Samoens is a small resort entirely dependent on tourists, popular with the British. It was hardly crowded but the streets had the usual dismal atmosphere of a holiday in the rain. Disconsolate figures trudging up and down the streets under umbrellas, windowshopping. Rain stopped long enough for a decent sunset.

It seemed there was snow on the track to the south. I considered my footwear and decided I would have to get something more suitable.

Tuesday 3 July - Samoens
Day turns out fine after a poor start. Accompanied Maarten and his boys for half an hour and then turned back.I wished I'd been better organised and was walking with them. Bought some more suitable shoes, heavy tread, supposedly waterproof. More to carry but a suburban flatearth nerd must take the mountains seriously. Weather forecast was moderate for Wednesday, shiite thereafter. I booked accommodation at refuges through until Sunday

Wednesday 4 July  - Refuge Alfred Wills
Up from 703m at Samoens to 1800m at Collet d'Anterne. It was a dramatic and satisfying walk but I am finding it more and more difficult to describe walks without repetition. Basically they're up or down or up and down. There might be a little flat bit at the beginning, middle or end but not so as you'd notice. The guide books have handy little diagrams to indicate steepness of the terrain. They look like cardiographs. The path crisscrossed a motorable road for a while.

Cascade de la Saulfaz 1450m

I stopped for a beer at the end of the motorable part. Then it was very steep through national park. I met a few skimpily dressed speed hikers on their way down. I was passed by two polite and friendly boys with fishing rods sticking out of their packs. The path was steep and rocky and strewn with what looked like horse dung. I reached the Collet - that means little col - after about six hours. The valley below looked like Iceland - windswept, more rock than grass, huge red- and brown- streaked cliffs to what I guessed was the west. And there were donkeys, being led down to the refuge with packs on their backs. I could hear marmots- little animals like rock wallabies - whistling alarm calls but too far away to photograph.

The refuge was welcoming but stark, especially in the overcast light. A few small chalets, one toilet for guests, no showers. Upstairs dormitory was the loft space over the kitchen and dining room. Beer was very reasonably priced considering everything has to be brought in by donkey or helicopter. I shared a dinner table with a friendly American family who had sensibly brought their own guide. I wished I could have afforded one. She told me there was very little snow - " Only a hundred metres or so." I kicked myself for wasting money and weight on those shoes in Samoens. The manager of the refuge advised me to leave at six   since Chamonix was 8 hours away and "bad weather" was forecast for the afternoon. Bad weather was already with us, I thought, the rain only stopping to make room for hail.

Refuge Alfred Wills

Thursday 5 July - Chamonix
I had no trouble getting up early, what with the snoring of my companions and a certain amount of trepidation  regarding today's walk. Which was pusillanimous of me since several of the other walkers looked older and weightier than me and I judged the American boy to be about ten. I was up at 5 to cloud but no rain. Breakfast was left out for me, a thermos of luke warm water to make tea, some stale bread. I forced down as much as I could. The climb out of the valley to the lake was not as bad as it had looked the night before but began with a hair-raising joke of a bridge. There were two tents pitched by the lake, one I assumed was housing the boys I'd met yesterday.

Marmots

Lac d'Anterne

Stepping stones

From the lake it was a scramble up to the Col d'Anterne at 2300m. Then the snow began. This didn't look too bad. I slithered carefully over it in my runners and picked my way over a stream. My feet were moderately wet but not cold. Further uphill was a much larger patch of snow. I decided to put on my new shoes. If my body was to be found down a ravine, at least no one could say I had not worn sensible shoes. I wished I'd put on clean underwear.

After the col was a fairly extensive period of downhill walking, which I resented because I knew I was going to have to make it all up again to get over the next col.

Hair raised

After several more hair-raisers (to me) I saw above me a line of people inching their way over a snow-covered ledge. At least that's how it looked to me. They were probably dancing with joy. I am not going up there, I thought bravely. And I wasn't. This was the path to the summit, of easy access, according to the guide book. After another scramble over rock and snow I found myself on the col proper, 2257m, looking down at the cable car station at Planpraz. It was far below, but definitely all downhill. I'd been walking for nearly eight hours by which time, according to one signpost, I should have been in Chamonix. But that was alright with me. I wasn't too proud to abandon the path after eight hours and take the cable car. In fact, I was proud to take the cable car. I walked down the steep path with a Swedish couple. Of course it started to rain and since there was little wind I got out Brolly II. The Swedes had clearly not seen such technology before and gave cries of admiration as they struggled into their waterproofs. I had a beer in the cafe at the station, surrounded by glum-looking climbers (at least that's what I assumed them to be by their ropes and ice-axes). My brief experience of climbers leads me to believe they spend as much time gazing at mountains as actually climbing them. Rather like surfers and the sea, I suppose. And me too, I suppose, having spent as much time looking at maps as actually using them.

Sommet d'acces facile, le Brevent

I found a cheap room ten minutes walk from the centre of Chamonix which proved to be a pretty but characterless ski resort. Numerous shops selling hiking gear, the streets filled with people wearing it. I couldn't wait to leave. I never even took a photo.


Friday 6 July - Aosta

I planned to make an early start south but awoke to rain and went back to sleep. I woke up and thought, "Italy!" Found a coach at the train station and left for Aosta, changing coaches at Courmayeur.

Mont Blanc tunnel

The other side of Mont Blanc was sunny and dry and Aosta proved to be a delight. By good luck I found the nicest room I've had the whole trip in a little courtyard appartment building at the end of Via St Anselm. Plain wooden floors and furniture, window overlooking the Piazza Arco d'Augusto.

And that explains the name - Aosta is a corruption of Augustus, in whose honour the arch was built in 27BC. It was a walled town, quite a lot of the original walls remaining. I put my socks to soak in the bidet and went off to explore. There were a fair number of tourists but almost all Italian, from Milan or Turin I supposed. I found myself at the Museo Archeologico where there was an exhibition devoted to Vassily Kandinsky. The three women at the reception were delighted to see me and persuaded me to buy a ticket to another exhibition at reduced price, works of Giorgio Chiroco. I love the atmosphere of art galleries, regardless of what's on show. And anyway I loved the Kandinsky exhibition. I seemed to be the only one there apart from the security guards and one middle-aged woman who also turned out to be a security guard. All this for me, I thought. And I picked up a couple of new isms (or ismos as we say in Italy) for my collection - geometrismo and orientalismo.

La mia pittura è come un pezzo di ghiaccio entro cui brucia una fiamma. Or, Ma peinture est comme un morceau de glace dans lequel brule une flamme. (My painting is like a piece of ice in which a flame is burning.) What a man!

The buildings are roofed with slate but the tiles are huge - two inches thick and a foot and a half wide.

I slept as late as I could on Saturday and spent an hour or so exchanging English and Italian lessons with my hostess, Sara, a charming friendly David Bowie lookalike. I wandered down to the market and couldn't resist a huge roast pork sandwich for elevenses. I've got to eat more. In Australia I'm used to hiking with lots of nuts and dried fruit but those are hard to find here, anywhere I've been for that matter. Chocolate, however is a great substitute. Dark and milk have the same calorific value but dark has a greater proportion of fat to sugar. So force down that chocolate, boy.

In the afternoon I took a bus to Cogne, billed in the Lonely Planet guide as "a dreamy little town" and gateway to some of the walks in the Western Alps. I found another pretty but anonymous resort with nothing  but us tourists and of course more shops selling boots. Could have been Chamonix or Samoens. I took a cable car up a mountain with the intention of doing a hike but after half an hour got bored and came down for a beer. Give me Aosta anytime.

On Sunday I woke up with a mild dose of flu and used that as an excuse to do nothing much once again. Sara directed me to an internet cafe where I spent a few hours updating this blog. And that's what I intend to do with the next few days until it's time to meet Owen in Cuneo.