Tour du Mont Blanc 4

It is late November now, and we walked round Mont Blanc in August. So obviously, after all this time I don’t remember the daily goings-on. But, by a stroke of genius, we did some voice recordings at the time!

For the second day of the walk, we got up very early and had a socially distanced buffet breakfast in the hotel - until the other guests arrived and the distancing got much harder and involved queues. We walked to the Bellevue telepherique, stopping at the boulangerie to get two baguettes - which ended up being too much food. In fact, a bunch of young alpinistes in the cable car on their way to the top of Mont Blanc made fun of how hungry we must have been, carrying two baguettes.

Once we’d left the cable car, and with the alpinistes off in a tram further up, we were on our own to start this day’s walk. It was nice and quiet and I had a wee on the path. We first had to cross a wobbly Himalayan-style suspension bridge across the outlet of the Bionnassay glacier. We then climbed up high to Col de Tricot at 2,120 m, our first big mountain pass. (Col Brevent on the previous day doesn’t count as it was hardly a big climb from the cable car top station.) It was sunny and hot again, but not too bad this high up. It was a steep descent down on the other side, and at the bottom, we put our feet in a stream, watching some holiday-makers who had come up for the day or were staying in chalets in the valley. Then another short climb, where apparently I was grumpy again (uphill makes me grumpy), another chalet, where we had coffee in bowls and listened to the cow bells. And after a few more long hours going downhill we arrived in the village of Les Contamines, where we refilled our water bottles from a trickly fountain which needed three of its four spouts blocked for enough water to come out of the fourth. I was tired! But Les Contamines was not to be the end of the day. No, it wasn’t, and I silently, or not so silently, cursed our travel organisers, because why the hell wasn’t Les Contamines the end of the day?

We still had to cross the village, walk a mile or two to Notre Dame de La Gorge, across a Roman bridge, along a Roman road and up another mountain before we reached Refuge Nant Borrant. This was an old style refuge, where we were to wear face masks at all times inside except when eating, but where we were also put in a dorm with six other people who decided to close the window at night to ensure maximum stuffiness and germ-sharing. There were three showers, three toilets and 2 sinks for 35 people. But the food was very good.

Mr W’s highlight of the day was, he says, seeing me smile. For the first time in days.

Now, I don’t remember smiling!