France Gr5/55/52

Up at 5.30 and the lovely folks at the refuge de plan sec had left out an early breakfast for me.    It is a fairly repetitive routine when through hiking!  Get up, eat, down as much coffee as you can and get walking within 30 minutes of waking.  The first hour or two of […]

Another amazing day in the mountains!  Up at 5.30 for apple cake, cereal and coffee strong enough to put hairs on my chest!   A lovely walk down the valley to the refuge entre deux eaux, through a bit of snow but not much!  Then I headed up the hill traversing a series of tricky

Today was an excellent lesson in going with the flow!   So, I was planning to traverse the Crete des Gittes – a high exposed ridge – but it was covered in clouds!  So I sensibly descended to Chapieux through the most and walked into the nearest main town by road (a boring 15km).  I

So, today was a happy day!  The gr5 trail intersects with the deservedly famous TMB trail for the duration of my day.  So while I had to endure lots of sunburnt people walking slowly with heavy packs, they had conveniently left me lots of tracks to follow through the snow!!!    I walked from Les

So today was not my day!  Snow – my nemesis – almost got the better of me!  More on that later….. But first  – a beautiful start to the day in Samoens, with a beautiful river walk up to the Gorge du Tines which was stunning with the sun coming up through the trees  The

It was always going to be a long day – 46k, more than 2000m of climbing and a guide book estimate of 14.5 hours of non stop walking.  I was (overly) confident I could do it in much less.   On the bright side it was a stunning stunning day in the Alps!  Total perfection.