GR52 — La Grande Traversée des Alpes

[ Day 1 ] — [ Day 2 ] — [ Day 3 ] — [ Day 4 ] — [ Day 5 ] — [ Day 6 ] — [ Day 7 ] — [ Day 8 ] — [ Day 9 ] — [ Day 10 ] — [ Day 11 ] — [ Day 12 ] — [ Day 13 ]

Day One — Easyjet-Peasy

After rising at 5am for a break­fast of corn­flakes and the oblig­at­ory fan­ny­ing about check­ing bags, pass­port, money, map etc. we made it from Sut­ton to Lon­don in record time (less than two hours!) to dis­cover that we were in fact too early to check in. Our plane was delayed by about an hour, which caused us mod­er­ate strife, but there was just enough time to leg it from the train sta­tion to the worlds smal­lest, and yet best stocked super­mar­ket for the camp­ing essen­tials: Camp­ing Gaz, Pasta, and … erm … well that’s it really. After safely installing in a hotel in Gap (pre­ceded by a train jour­ney through which I slept com­pletely) we are now safely repack­ing our ruck­sacks in the cheap-and-cheerful cream and pink hotel room. The joys of backpacking!

Day Two — Why did no one warn me about the mountains?

We rose at six, after indul­ging in a French game show in which just over half the games involved the con­test­ants, in pyja­mas, run­ning away from a ram­pa­ging bull (no really…). Only two were actu­ally gored though, so it was all good, clean fam­ily fun. From bed to break­fast, and with the baguette theft com­pet­ently accom­plished we had our lunch too. Well, if they’re going to charge €72 for a room, then they surely can’t begrudge us a couple of french loaves! A few hours , a bor­ing coach jour­ney and an extor­tion­ate taxi jour­ney later, and we were optim­ist­ic­ally set­ting foot on the trail. Little did I know the world of pain that I was entering.

There is a curi­ous phe­nom­ena within our guide book: where it cheer­fully states a three of four hun­dred metre height gain, it actu­ally means that you drop a couple of hun­dred first, then climb double, mean­ing that where we should have climbed about 900m, we climbed well over 1200m, and prob­ably more like 1500m. Shane took this in his rather rapid stride, whereas I climbed at approx­im­ately the speed of a beached whale. No, I lie, mar­gin­ally slower than a beached whale. And I didn’t even make sooth­ing whale noises. Add this to the usual first day sun­burn, and you begin to see my agony. And then I got cramp. In my legs. In both my legs. Why must I be blessed with an uncanny sus­cept­ib­il­ity to cramp?

On the other hand, the moun­tains are spec­tac­u­lar, and I took some great pho­tos. The land­scape is incred­ibly rocky and bar­ren, and then in seconds you des­cend in to lush green mead­ows. Why do the french have it all? The food, the wine, the moun­tains, the beaches. Even the atti­tude, although seem­ingly arrog­ant, at least means that they enjoy them­selves. They don’t have the music though, we have the music. And I took the fact that ‘Stand By Me’ (the sig­na­ture tune to another unfor­get­table trip) was play­ing on the radio in the taxi to be a good sign. If it was, that means tomor­row will have to be bloody fantastic!

Day Three — Blisters!

Yes, it happened, we both got blisters. Des­pite the fact that I’ve worn these walk­ing boots for nearly three years and never had a prob­lem, even on a pre­vi­ous alpine exped, on the second day of the longest, most ardu­ous walk I’ve ever attemp­ted, I have blisters. Added to this, I very nearly got blisters on my hips from my monu­ment­ally uncom­fort­able back­pack. I think it’s adjus­ted for someone a foot taller than me, but there are so many buckles and straps that I wouldn’t know where to start.

Yes­ter­day ended with pasta, and thus today began. Yes, we did eat dry pasta for break­fast. I intend to live entirely off bread, pasta and chocol­ate until we arrive in Menton, and since we had no bread, and had eaten all our chocol­ate (the worlds most deli­cious chocol­ate orange cake — more later), pasta was the only option. Whereas last night was €72 for bed and break­fast, this was €20 for a pitch, a €6 phone card, and an entire chocol­ate orange cake. It turned out that a slice meant a quarter, so four slices went a long way. We ate half imme­di­ately, and half at the day’s high point, shortly after being over­taken by three gnarly look­ing french­men who seem to be walk­ing the same route. The other nutri­tional high­light of the day had to be the pizza. Pizza? Where did you buy pizza? I hear you ask. Well, in a small vil­lage that we passed through, it turned out that there was noth­ing but a church, a few houses, and a pizzeria (and no, I don’t know why!), so we had a pizza, and wel­come it was too.

Shortly after that, another climb, where we were over­taken again by the same group of french­men (we were con­fused too) and then down (far too much down) to St. Etienne de Tinée, where we dined upon yet more pasta, and met Josh, the friendly cyc­list from Lough­bor­ough, with whom we whiled away the hours chat­ting until the late bed time of about nine. Today wasn’t nearly as bad as yes­ter­day (thank­fully), and tomor­row prom­ises to be even shorter. Hur­rah for relax­ing strolls through green mead­ows with pre­vi­ously unheard of num­bers of crick­ets. Shame we ate all the cake though…

Day Four — Log­ging and ‘les tortues’

Today we had the inev­it­able get­ting lost. We walked about an extra three miles because of it, and had to climb straight up a couple of hun­dred metres to get back on track. Then dis­aster struck. Appar­ently, the sec­tion of the GR5 between St. Etienne and Roya is closed for log­ging between June and Novem­ber. We made a fair effort, but after five or six hours walk­ing, we gave up and went back down to Auron, then returned to St. Etienne where we were mer­ci­lessly mocked by the afore­men­tioned friendly cyc­list. How­ever after a slap up din­ner of pasta and a few Leffes, the world seemed alright again. It turned out that we were only about an hour and a half’s walk from Roya at the top of our climb, but at least this way we’re safe, slightly less kackered, and we get the beers in.

Day Five — The ‘Rest’ Day

The plan for today was to recover from yesterday’s seven hour beast­ing, with a bit of gentle, bag­less walk­ing with Josh, who decided to stay for another night since he now had our com­pany. In real­ity how­ever, ridicu­lously fit cyc­lists will be ridicu­lously fit, and our gentle walk turned out to be a 1400 metre climb to the highest peak we’d yet reached, and run­ning back down. It was amaz­ing fun though. It star­ted rain­ing at the top, which wor­ried us a bit, as we weren’t really pre­pared for wet weather, but we sheltered in a hut, then a moun­tain refuge, and the weather turned again to glor­i­ous sun­shine. Our little rest also allowed us to dis­cover an aban­doned mine of some kind, or at least a cave with a rail­way in it. All very intriguing, espe­cially as it seemed to run under­neath a lake. As I men­tioned, we ran down, a leg bash­ing for all, so we decided to splash out on saus­ages for tea (or at least as close as the french come to saus­ages), which were con­sumed with glee all round. We ate pasta too of course. Early to bed though — we have to be up early to catch a bus around the log­ging to another town on the route. At least our mis­hap means that we got a great day’s walk­ing, and we man­aged to get Josh’s email, so he can send us some pho­tos. Hope­fully it’ll be plain sail­ing from now on, but some­how I doubt it, as we thought that this was the easy bit!

Day Six — Back On Track

Today was the recov­ery of thursday’s log­ging dis­aster. We arose at the ungodly hour of six, rap­idly packed up, and grabbed some ‘pain au chocol­ate before catch­ing the bus to St. Suaver de Tinée and walk­ing to St. Dal­mas de Valdeblore. Today really was an easy day. We arrived in St. Dal­mas by four and we passed through a beau­ti­ful moun­tain town called Rim­plas. We even stopped to talk to friendly french pen­sion­ers. When we pitched our tent, we were next to a brother and sis­ter who have already been walk­ing for fif­teen days. And we thought we were tired! I have to go to sleep now though (before eight!) because we’re get­ting up at four tomor­row to start a seven and a half hour day of walk­ing (that’s seven and a half hours without breaks) up into the moun­tains. We won’t be back in a town, or even a vil­lage, for four days. It’s excit­ing and daunt­ing at the same time, espe­cially as I’m already tired, and the first four hours are stead­ily uphill. Our bags will be heav­ier too, because we have to carry a few day’s worth of pasta. Josh will prob­ably be in Nice by now, hav­ing rid­den at some dis­grace­ful speed along the 90km long, entirely down­hill road he was tak­ing this morning.

I’m told that then next few days are the most beau­ti­ful part of our walk, but on the other hand, on one of the days we walk through some­thing that roughly trans­lates as ‘The Pass of The Devil’, so it’s no cake­walk. I’m sure it’ll be fine though, as long as I stop writ­ing and get some sleep!

Day Seven — The Long Haul

We walked for quite a long time today. In fact, even if you take out all the breaks we walked for eleven hours solid. Ridicu­lous I know, but we had our reas­ons (well, reason: the place we wanted to stay was too expens­ive). We climbed 2100m too. We got to where we planned to stop on our longest planned day of walk­ing, and then walked on for another three hours. Uphill. For­tu­nately, by this point we had both reached the stage where all phys­ical activ­ity was an exer­cise in mind over mat­ter, and it only hurt when we finally stopped. It hurt a lot. Did i men­tion that we got up at four am? Four! We’re sleep­ing in beds tonight though, so there’s at least some­thing to look for­ward to. I would write about some of the mar­vel­lous sights we saw, but right now I feel like I’m about to die, or at least lose my legs, so until tomor­row, gentle reader, farewell!

Day Eight — Madonna in the Window

Today was a chance for a slight recov­ery, as we had cut about two hours off the planned jour­ney by adding to yesterday’s ori­ginal dis­tance. By recover, I mean to say there were six or seven hours walk­ing instead of eight or nine. We set off at about half seven after a break­fast of chocol­ate and we were off, walk­ing accross a rather sketchy scree. We soon enough reached a beau­ti­ful lake, with a couple of wild horses by it. It bode well for the rest of the day, but then we saw it: a climb to our first col, that star­ted steeply and became steeper at the top. It was, suf­fice to say, very hard work, but unlike yes­ter­day, it was hard work for only a short period of time. We reached the top and it was straight back down again to a large refuge and church in a place called ‘Madone de Fen­estre’. Why it is called this I don’t know, but they had some lovely chocol­ate tarte.

We then con­tin­ued to walk through the heat of mid­day to what was mys­ter­i­ously marked on the map as ‘hard part of hik­ing trail’. Read ‘No path here’. What we saw was just an immense boulder field, which, after much ankle strain, took us to another little lake with a fant­astic view for miles between two moun­tains (per­haps the win­dow?) and some ‘Chamoix’ deer. And even an iccle baby deer. How sweet. This was fol­lowed by a steep ascent up a scree, and a steeper des­cent down an even more treach­er­ous boulder field which brought us to Refuge Nice. Here, we camped by a lake, and after a friendly Ex-Pat geordie had bought us a beer, we cooked our pasta and retired to our wonky tent. And then, did it rain…

Day Nine — In Cloud Nine

It had rained all the pre­vi­ous night, and it was most cer­tainly rain­ing this morn­ing when we had to cram a sod­den tent into a dry-sack and start walk­ing. The Gore-Tex was res­ol­utely on today, even if it did make me far too hot, and before we knew what was hap­pen­ing we were walk­ing in the clouds.

There was more ‘hard’ path today, and we real­ised whilst freez­ing on top of a windy, rainy, col inside a cloud why the group of french walk­ers just behind us had stopped just over the col, rather than actu­ally on top of it, com­pletely exposed to the ele­ments. So our day in ‘The Val­ley of Won­ders’ was to be marred by cloud and rain. It did brighten up slightly as we entered the val­ley, but I can’t help but feel that some of the ‘won­der’ was lost in fog.

The mist did add a strangely atmo­spheric feel to the moun­tains though, espe­cially on the higher cols, and some of the lakes looked like they were pulled straight out of a Sci-Fi B-movie. The Refuge de mer­veilles really was won­der­ful though, and we camped in the moun­tains amidst some stun­ning scenerey. Unfor­tu­nately though, we have run out of Gaz. I’m sure we’ll man­age, and tomor­row really is a short day to our final stop away from the towns. I’m look­ing for­ward to a shower though. A hot shower.

Day Ten — From Won­ders to The Devil

We decided to eat break­fast in the refuge this morn­ing, and it turned out that break­fast means hot chocol­ate, but­ter, jam and enough bread to kill any­one but a raven­ous hiker. It was a good decision as we’re run­ning out of our stale bread. Eat­ing someone else’s stale bread is clearly prefer­able! We even man­aged to dry the tent a little. The day was unre­mark­able as far as mis­haps or dif­fi­culties go, but the views were truly amaz­ing. From the ‘Pas du Diable’ (Pass of the Devil), today’s high point, we could see not only the moun­tains, but all the way to the sea where we will even­tu­ally fin­ish. Unfor­tu­nately, I don’t think that pho­tos can cap­ture the beauty of the scenery, but I took a few any­way (I’ve taken over three hun­dred in total, I’ve run out of room on my little memory cards).

Because today was so short and down hill, we took it fairly easy with a nice ‘steady’ pace and fre­quent, long breaks. Even at this gentle canter we made it to the gite we’re stay­ing at by three. We couldn’t camp tonight, so some­where to sleep incurred the highest costs since the pre­lim­in­ary travel and hotel. At least it includes bed and break­fast, pos­sibly a packed lunch and maybe even a lift back to the GR52 (we had to go an hour off route for some­where to stay). And it was only €34, which isn’t too bad.

Since we arrived I’ve spent a very relax­ing few hours hav­ing a shower, play­ing ‘Slam’, the legendary card game of speed, reac­tions and dex­ter­ity, and a few ima­gin­ary card games with a four year old girl to relax in between the intense com­pet­i­tion, and now I’m writ­ing this. Not for much longer though, as din­ner is in forty minutes and I want to read some of my scin­til­lat­ing book on lit­er­ary the­ory. Adieu.

Day Eleven — The Moun­tains (Of Cake)

Within the last twenty four hours I have eaten so much as to be pos­it­ively unnerv­ing. Begin­ning with last night’s din­ner at the hotel, our first full mean for about a week, includ­ing an unusual egonion/cream dish (recipe on the site!) and copi­ous amounts of ice cream, onto the this morning’s break­fast of pastries, jam, bread and hot chocol­ate, a large ham sand­wich, half a loaf of bread, a huge pile of pasta, a slice of chocol­ate cake, a slice of almond cake, a pain au chocol­ate and a pizza. The ‘Walk­ers Tar­iff’ at the hotel included a lift by van back to the GR52, cut­ting a one hour walk off route, mean­ing that we arrived in Sospel by about half past two to find everything closed for lunch, got to the camp­site, washed everything, and then to relax­ing. The other walk­ers we befriended even bought us some cake from the patis­serie as they saw us eat­ing pasta as they left (the almond cake, if you’re inter­ested), which means we’ll def­in­itely have to buy them a drink in Menton.

We’re going straight to Menton tomor­row, as Cas­tel­lar has only a hotel, which would be too explens­ive, and we’ll stay either at the camp­site or the youth hostel depend­ing on the price. Our walk is nearly over, and sadly I think that by the end I will just about be as fit as I should have been to even attempt it. Even more sadly, I’ve lost the belt for my shorts, which now keep fall­ing down, and my socks still aren’t dry, nor are my box­ers. I have what I am wear­ing now, but the wet socks are more com­fort­able (and the wet box­ers more clean!). I hope they’re dry in the morn­ing, because it’s quite a long walk tomor­row. Oh well, c’est la vie, or, as I have now learnt — veut faire avec!

Day Twelve — The Grand Finale

We did it! We actu­ally fin­ished. The views were truly spec­tac­u­lar, I hope the pho­tos do them even vague justice. Our first action was to slump at the nearest café, and then off for a paddle, which turned into a swim, des­pite not hav­ing any swim­ming trunks. It meant that my clothes were wet, but it had to be done really. The sea is so warm and flat. It turned out, how­ever, that the only camp­site is up a huge hill (about one hun­dred and fifty to two hun­dred metres of steps!); added to this, we were told upon arrival that it was full. Luck­ily our friendly hik­ing (and, in a new twist to the tale, mod­er­ately aggress­ive) french­men came to our res­cue, basic­ally by shout­ing at the recep­tion­ist until she let us stay on one of the many blatantly not full plots. After this, we des­cen­ded from the heights to for­age. Well, at least to find a cheap italian res­taur­ant, where you got lasagne or a pizza as a starter. Mad­ness, but a good kind of mad­ness! Full of lasagne, pizza, steak and chocol­ate mouse, we remoun­ted the camp­ing peak and I shall now promptly fall asleep after a some­what strenu­ous but very sat­is­fy­ing day.

Day Thir­teen — Beach Bums

After a fond farewell to our french com­padres, dur­ing which, amongst other things, I was invited both to stay in Paris, and to go climb­ing in Fon­tain­bleu (who­ever said the French weren’t friendly is very wrong), we des­cen­ded from the heights once more, determ­ined not to return until the even­ing. Shane did in fact return to the camp­site. It took him two hours (with an ice cream break). This made us even more determ­ined not to go back dur­ing the day. There really isn’t much to report though, as we spent all day lying on the beach, and cooked on the beach in the even­ing (Des Oeufs à la Trippe, of course!). We did dis­cover the worlds best ice cream shop though. It’s priced by weight and you make your own! After a bottle of Rosé, we walked through the old town, watched some very enthu­si­astic Ukulele play­ing and returned to sleep. Not as excit­ing as the walk­ing, but cer­tainly a wel­come respite!

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