13ish km. 1250m descent. No idea about step count ‘cos I forgot the silly pedometer 2850m up a mountain, an appropriate parting of ways methinks, and a fair excuse for why I need a new one to finish the GCC

A reasonable night’s sleep at the Cabane, great place to be. We were nearly the last ones to leave shortly after 8..

The steep descent from the Cabane was still steep the morning after, the bit with the stream running over the smooth rocks was as interesting as the rope and chain assisted sections. Still hugely faster going down when rested than up when shattered..

We paused at the edge of the morraine section to take a photo or two hundred of the reflection of the morning’s sun on the mountains in a small meltwater lake. The icebergs had noticably melted from last night and another one had calved off the snowfield the path traversed.

Looking down at the glacier was made even more impressive by the size of the people we met last night going out to play on it (yet another father dougal moment)

After a quick pause at Parking du Glacier for a brief reality check to make sure that we had indeed managed that climb yesterday, we made short work of the flat walk up to the Barrage. Its cafe seemed ideal to pause in for a cuppa, especially with its combination of sheep skins and picnic chairs.

The postbus emerged from the road tunnel like a roaring, err, bus. A Chinese student stepped off it that Paul met a few days prior so he joined us for a chat. He was mostly taking photos on a 1960s medium format, very impressive, tho I suspect it would be first up against the wall when he wanted to downsize his 20kg pack!

We saw a few more british numberplates, including one minibus, which can’t have been too fun a drive. There was some very odd bugling going on at the barrage, which seemed to disturb everybody equally.

After briefly checking that yes it was a long way down off the side of the dam, we motored along the stream down the valley. We eventually found a butterfly infested piece of shade to see what the Cabane’s team had left in our picnic. A doorstop of a sandwich, couple of chokky bars, an apple and a slightly muddy carrot, it turned out. Om nom nom.

Thus fuelled we powered off downhill some more, a long steady descent that was mostly sheltered by the valley walls or trees. We were asked how far to the barrage a couple of times by day trippers, we must have looked like we knew what we were doing or something..

Without much more ado, Bendolla and then Grimentz hoved into view, the end was in sight! A few things looked different, but the old village still looks as photogenic as ever. And finally Hotel Moiry, doing a busy lunchtime service on their terrace and our home for the next 4 nights.

Perfect time to notice just how much sun I’ve caught in odd places, find a salt lick to compensate for how white some of my gear has got and doze on the balcony. Not in that order. Zzzz.

Unexpectedly the pizzeria was closed, so we had some fancy salads with wild flowers and a major cheese fix (on toast, I hasten to add)

2040m of up, 520m down. just over 20km of along.

eeish. How did we survive that one? great end to a tough day.

It was our hardest day so far, longer and more challenging than even the approach to Louvie, tho less technical. I credit Paul’s stash of Haribo winegums for keeping my mind working on that last scramble.. We compared our route to Kev’s and his estimation was low, even taking into account our bus hop from Les Hauderes to La Forclaz. We measured it with string to even out the kinks and had us giggling in disbelief.

We managed our early start, leaving the hotel bang on 730, including a detour to take on water from the village fountain that should have been plenty to catch the 739 bus up the hill slightly. Or it would have been if it was a Saturday so we’d missed the 728 bus by a couple of mins after misreading the timetable. Oopsy do. Rather than sit around for a couple of hours, we walked back up the valley to Les Hauderes in ideal cool, fresh conditions. The 4km took us about an hour so we had a bit of a wait in Les H.

Joined the popular postbus up the valley as far as La Forclaz, the morning was made by 2 Australians struggling a bit and wanting a return to ‘as far as you go’.

Our chosen route zig zagged upwards very nicely through a couple of hamlets and forests, it added miles to the flat distance but was hugely more satisfying than barging directly up the side like everyone else was. There wasn’t much in the time either.

The final slog from 2580 to Col Du Tsate was seriously unpleasant, the crow soaring overhead on the thermals might as well have been a vulture. It probably took us an hour to do the last 300m scramble up to a well earned lunch just before 2pm.

We met a British couple, she ran a trekking business and was seeing about gluing some of days together, with a goal of C-Z in 11 days. E.g. pulling Cab de Prafleuri through to Les Hauderes in one 11 hr day. It was interesting to see how light the professionals travelled (and how fast they walked!)

The descent into Val de Moiry was much easier than the way up, there was even evidence of people sledging down in the snow! We were rewarded with a growing view of the Lake, the Glacier and the surrounding mountains, not to mention playing the ’spot the hut’ game on the far side of the valley.

Paused at the busy Parking du Glacier for a tea and a cereal bar before focussing our depleted self preservation instincts on the climb upwards. The Buvette (drinks and snacks vendor) had a couple of signs up. The first was ‘we sell ice creams’. The second was ‘we’re sorry, we can’t sell ice creams because an avalanche took out our generator’.

The last leg was only another 1hr 25 sign time, how hard can it be?

…

The route was a steady 100m climb up to a ridge of glacial morraine, easy underfoot until then. If you’re not happy with striding edge, I’d advise against looking down there, a couple of bits were quite narrow, though we didn’t notice it at the time.

It finished with a seasonal snow field traverse, a bit of a scramble and a steep zigzag path to get us up the last 300m to a tremendously welcome sight, the Cabane and its only just opened, copper clad, extension. The view from there over the glacier is just breathtaking, which is one of the reasons that half the wall is window.

Being right at the head of the valley means you’re surrounded by mountains, the horizon is overhead and all jaggedy and interesting.

Long and varied day with many successes and a lot of pain, not sure why this triumph ended on a huge high rather than the low of last time, perhaps only being exhausted rather than ill helped.

Nowhere in uk could we have done that, 2.5 snowdons maybe?

really good evening at the cabane, good crowd to chat to. Mountaintime def in obeyance: Dinner at 7. Breakfast 6 till half 7 with most of it gone when we surfaced at 7. Every bench full, a good craic on. Met one army bloke from north of catterick, training to be mountain instructor, a scary level of fitness and ability in that crowd, military scale of brewing up

Met another london bloke who seemed to be doing shuttle runs between chamonix and zermatt!

13ish km, 700m down. 18k steps

Plans on an early start sabotaged by the best night’s sleep for a while, Grand Hotel Kurhaus is worth coming back to. Good spread for breakfast too, tho still full of last night’s dinner.

Arolla was busy, a few groups coming and going with coaches standing by. Resisted the call of the hiking kit shop, settled for reading about the Guided trips up to the glacier, fun but the kit list was extensive.

Straightforward day’s walking down the valley to Evolene, a village big enough to get its own bypass. Slightly overcast and wonderfully cool air led to a deceptively swift pace whilst we watched the mountains drift by.

We paused to poke around the stream a bit, tho it was quite fast flowing so care, or long legs, were required to cross it. Which led us straight back across on the next bridge down, one of the morning’s less useful sections of path. I bowed to temptation and made with the Sudafed, lets see if the over the counter version messes less with my mind than the common or garden Active. Half an hour later, my nose eased and I became somewhat hard of thinking. Grr.

We saw evidence of an ultimate fitness route, there were some obstacle course style contraptions every now and again, accompanied by signs (sponsored by Zurich) inviting the hypothetical reader to do things like 30 pull ups on a pair of rings. Owch.

We’re not quite sure how the Pension at Lac Bleu exploits the Belgians (part of its signage), but its fishing pond and multilingual signs seemed a little contrived for my taste. Judging back the cars milling around, it attracted the Dutch effectively too.

Paul picked us a picnic from Arolla’s shop which we munched next to the river between Les Hauderes and Evolene, about a mile from where the cheese was made. Yum. Tho my backpack smells of cheese a bit now.. The camp sites were doing a solid trade and we saw quite a few groups of climbers setting up around the valley walls.

Plenty of butterflies on the way, tho they scattered as soon as we’d unlimbered the cameras.Evolene is a fairly large village, big co-op on the end, many hotels and restaurants on the main street and a whole bunch of nooks and crannies between the traditional buildings.

Hotel Hermitage is easy to find on the main street, they speak good English and were quite happy when we rocked up about 2ish. A quick boule of citron sorbet from the village, an unexpected by most welcome punnet of juicy strawberries and lying back on the balcony has done wonders to restore me. Crossing fingers that an unblocked nose is NOT an invitation to bleed again, must not get complacent.

Staring up at the valley wall in disbelief at what we’re planning for tomorrow, the newly extended Cabane de Moiry via Col du Tsate. As far up as 2900 metres. Twice. Heard a few more English voices today, though we’re very much still the minority amongst the tourists.

Apparently i missed fireworks and a thunderstorm last night, so I slept better than I thought. Today’s the last day off, back to walking again for us after this.

Not much to report on, apart from a few fun shops in Sion, wine tasting w/ tapas and the biggest cheese counter I’ve seen in a long while. First port of call was dumping our bags at the station whilst we had a tour of the ski resort at Nendaz on our way to rescue Paul’s poles from the cafe at Siriez. Nendaz looked bigger than Verbier, could be where the smart money goes, esp as they’re connected by cable cars.

Back to Sion for a sandwich for lunch before heading up Val d’Herens to tonight’s destination. 3 days roasting in the valley was plenty for me, I’m most glad to get back up again. Air fresher and temperature nearer sane.

Paused to change in Les Hauderes, just outside the dodgy hotel we stayed in in 2003. Doesn’t seem to have changed much, neither does its bar that we monopolised.

Arolla looks like I remebered it, but Grand Hotel Kurhaus is very, well, grand! Old in the right places and new in others, it sports wifi, proper leather sofas in one of the lounges with proper 10′ ceilings, a good library, extracts from 100 year old guest books and an old wooden globe. I’ve always wanted to try spinning one of those! It’s aged better than Hotel Weishorn, tho that could be to do with its pricing strategy. In any event, I’m visibly lowering the tone of the living room in my rumbled walking shirt and trousers, sniffing away to my phone.

The valley walls are remarkably severe, even for the alps, but the view across to the mountains between us and Grimentz is splendid.Val d’Herens seems very popular with Belgians and the Dutch. Les Hauderes was nearly crawling with Dutch Scouts and every third car sported a B or NL, with a few UK plates thrown in for good measure.

Proper wood fires add to the ambience and the 4 course dinner was great, if a touch large.

Started the day by blowing my nose. Not normally that noteworthy but the heat meant it took me 3 hours to get it to stop bleeding, not impressed – no brekky for me.

Chilled, planned and booked the next hotels until it was kicking out time, when we decamped to a cafe for a bit. Mmm, ice tea. We needn’t have bothered booking online for the somewhat cheaper Hotel Elite, turns out its not manned until the evening. It’s a basic but clean 2*. Lift big enough for one person or 2 bags. Ensuites straight out of Langwith D block. Not as good as the other 2*s we’ve been staying in, but hey, cheaper is cheaper and it gives me a chance to catch up with my typing and listen to the chavs and bikers make loud noises outside.

Ventured out into the 35c heat about 5ish to go poke around the old town a bit and head up to the church on top of the hill. Quite a bit of rehearsing was going on in the music college buildings. Took a few fun photos and wilted a lot in the heat, tho it was beautifully cool inside the church. Couldn’t resist getting a sorbet to walk back to the Hotel with, whereupon I added another verb to the list of things that makes my nose bleed..

Dinner was good, but the evening was dominated by the world cup final, a great many people thronging the central street watching the match on as many big screens that the cafes could wire up. The serving crew had their work cut out to keep the drinks flowing, but the proceedings were very civilised. Some snack food provided by a chap with a paella pan and a gazebo, or another cafe serving as much raclette as they could manage.

It’s down to a more sane 25C now, still too hot to sleep with the double glazing shut. A shame because my window opens over aforementioned street full of people cruising in either chav mobiles, or cars so new and shiny I had to ask Paul what they were. Means I don’t need to watch the game on my room’s little telly, I get all the highlights roared in from the town.

8ish km, 1200m of down. That was 12k steps tho the day’s step total was somewhat higher..

Despite a number of learning points and high points, I decided yesterday was too much. This is supposed to be a holiday and I was only remembering the bad bits instead of the good bits. No idea why my body was failing so miserably with altitude, manflu, nose bleeds, sun and so on but it was definatly not cashing the cheques my ego was writing.

My decision to avoid the high (and best bits) having been taken, Paul and I shook hands to meet in Evolene in 3 nights time and we headed off in opposite directions. My story takes me in the easiest way back to civilisation and public transport, about 1000m of straight down.

I set off early to help avoid a lot of the day’s heat, but the path down to Fionnay was hard. Narrow, rocky, steep with some patches sheer enough to need chains on both sides (Still don’t look down dot com). The flies kicked off when I got back into the treeline and I started to pass a fair number of people heading up, they must have either been annoyingly fit or set off at 6. Or both.

A few clearings had a lot of vegetation in, walking through them resulted in a cloud of butterflies, very pretty but far too fast to take a photo of them. The views down the valley towards Le Chable were good, but the Mauvoisin barrage dominated proceedings up the valley. I entertained a few thought of heading that way to go explore a little, I had the time to use after all.

A rustle in the undergrowth to my left heralded a marmot’s tail running away, but it ran straight up a rock and froze, watching me take a photo or two of it posing. Yay!

Got to Fionnay after about an hour and a half, 50% slower than sign time. That and looking up at the opposing valley lead me to wonder why I thought that was going to be a good way to finish a long day’s walk from Cabane Col de Mille. Rule 1 again..The postbus ran up this valley only a couple of times a day, so I was faced with a 2 hour wait in Fionnay. The lack of busses also put paid to dam exploration, with nowhere definite sorted yet for that night, low risk is good.

The next major village and stop, Lourtier, was 1hr40 sign time further down the valley, so walking seemed a more interesting option than lurking in a car park.This path was long but fairly steadily downhill and dodged in and out of trees to help avoid the sun. Eee it were hot. The path was much more direct than the road, though it included a few road sections as well as the often seen footpath cutting across doglegs. Most of those road sections were extremely dug up, perils included piles of plastic pipes, trenches, spoil heaps, new road surface and the odd JCB. Judging by the tracks, somebody had been over there on a bike and had some fun jumping stuff.

I got to Lourtier after about an hour, so I shredded sign time, at the expense of some dignity. Drip drip etc. I passed the postbus heading up the valley and had about an hour to rest in the centre of the village outside the shop. The architecture was really fun to look at, any number of odd bits and pieces were put in between the houses.

I cooled off eventually and munched the picnic I’d carried down from the cabane whilst watching the world go by. It was a narrow street, I wondered how the coaches got through it. Turns out: carefully.

The bus took me on a good tour of Val d’Bagnes, was fun to see the change in building styles from wood to stone to concrete as the settlements got bigger. Swapped to the train at Le Chable and watched the world go by some more.

Apart from watching the vines growing on the hillside terraces, I saw a museum of st. Bernard dogs from the train on the outskirts of Martigny. I’d picked up a leaflet about it, but it was miles away from the station so I didn’t even try going, I suspect I’d more than a tot from his barrel to revive me after a couple of miles in that heat.

I poked around Martigny for just a few minutes before giving in to enuii and headed for Sion. Just missed the fun of catching a TGV there so settled for taking photos of the vines and fruit trees that plastered the centre of the wide valley from a Regio-Alp train.

Got to Sion and my mood dropped again. What was I doing here? It’s ridiculously hot, the buildings aren’t welcoming and I’m the only one in sight with a backpack. I dripped and stomped my way to the tourist information, to find it had closed half an hour ago. This was 1pm on a Saturday. Thankfully they’d put hotel listings in the window so I dripped off in search of a couple within budget. Missed them, but found a Best Western who didn’t automatically say there was no room at the Inn for a hugely unimpressed backpacker.

Not cheap, but hey, desperation.Made myself presentable and availed myself extensively of the inclusive wifi and my mood had lifted again. Sion is the county town of Valais and its twin hill forts and historic old town combine well with a huge number of top vinyards to make for a fun tourist experience.

A plan was formed, I started to text Paul to let him know what I was up to when he rang to say his day hadn’t gone to plan, and could I please ring the Cabanes for him to say he wasn’t coming. I’ll let him tell his own story, but oh boy was that not a fun day’s walk. For those reading this who know what I’m talking about, it was his Snowdon Moment.

I bagged him a room where I was staying and then set off to go play tourist and take a lot of photos.

The Valais history museum was really good, a post unto itself, and the town was quite pretty, even when taking a thunderstorm to the face.. I chatted to a friendly couple from Worcester who had just left the weekly recital from the circa 1300 pipe organ that was here, apparently just the 1 manual and well known in the organing world. Oh well, maybe next week. I had to make do with somebody playing the piano with the window open in the old town.

Speaking of which, Sion’s old town is very picturesque. Its main street is one huge bridge over the river, with some wavy engraving on the cobbles to symbolise it. The architecture and the various slopes, nooks and crannies were great, just my sort of building. A bit like York or Chester, but better.

Dinner was a reasonable Italian, salad, pasta and I let myself have a 3/8 bottle of good Fendant instead of the usual cold busting drugs. Mmmmm.

(take 3, stoopid buggy prerelease software)
12km, 700m up, 700m down. Steps: 13.4k indicated, at least 29k actual.

Lazy start with Breakfast at 8. everything just seemed to take forever this morning for some reason. After a brief disagreement with the credit card machine (signatures seem so retro) we bid farewell to Hotel Ermitage and got on our merry way.

Well, as far as La Poste anyway where a helpful postmaster helped send about 1kg of Paul’s stuff on to Grimentz.

Dinner last night was a properly thin and crispy Pizza au 4 Saisons ate on the terrace, looking down the valley. We were hiding under a parasol, but there was free suncream for those braving the evening sun.

Once we’d got up the hill from Verbier, the first leg of the walk was nice and easy. A relatively flat track that let us get a couple of km under our belts and at least keep up with sign time.

However, we had to eventually turn onto a narrow path that seemed barely adequate to walk along, so imagine our surprise when a group of mountain bikers came along on a day trip from Martigny.Have I mentioned how hot it was yet?

After a bit of map reading to make sure we weren’t affected by a signed path closure, we turned off uphill at Le Mintset on what the map suggested finished with A Hard Bit before Col Termin.

We quickly learned why the maps have different labels for the Walking Paths and the Mountain Routes. Challenging slopes, slightly dodgy ‘where’s the path going now?!’ navigation, chains to hang onto when reading from the book of ‘no really, don’t look down’, steep scree traverses, steeper snow field traverses and other such peril.

I found the scree boulder fields to be mostly fine underfoot, benefits of long legs I guess, but I casually leant against a rock, which promptly fell away in my hand. Oopsy doo.

The snow, on the other hand, was more annoying. It was nice and cool on my hands and feet, but very slushy and slippery. Definately a case of maintaining 3 points of contact at all times, leaning into a stride led to your boot moving unexpectedly.

Speaking of being allowed a little bit of peril, there was one section clearly signed ‘rockfalls, stopping is forbidden’, it contained a couple of scree traverses and some snow and this is where we caught up to another couple of walkers who were less certain underfoot. I was mostly looking up nervously, but was still glad that I didn’t see the cause of a thunderbolt-like rumble or 2 behind me once we were safely across..

.We met a lone chap walking the other way, he was across the snow and scree without breaking a stride, we figured it was mostly technique with a twist of wanting to be across as quickly as possible.

The final slog of up was properly steep, esp in that heat. I didn’t have much of a sense of deja vu when we got to Col Termin, despite having walked much of that route in 2003. Good view of Grand Combin and back towards Bovine though.

I did pause a few times to take more photos of some of the alpine flowers, I love how a plant so small can throw out flowers that good. I wonder what the names are and whether they’d grow in Yorkshire.

We were warned of some late snows up high in the sheltered passes, including above Grimentz.A quick bite of snackage at the Col and we started down, down, down (and rebound) to lose the 400m to Lac de Louvie, a dammed lake in a natural hanging valley. The whole basin was very picturesque, handy to take our minds (if not our eyes) off the dodgy path and steep descent.

Reasonably well developed valley, including a few stone storm shelters, one labelled in French ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here’. Not sure where the wood came from for the ashes of a campfire, we’re way above the tree line here.The Cabane was a most welcome sight, the guardians showed us around whilst we tried to un-zombify ourselves.

Paul was back to himself after recovering quickly, but I was starting to struggle. Rehydrating from the lovely cold water was nice enough, but the sun and lack of lunch had drained my IQ solidly. It wasn’t helped when my nose kicked off again from the altitude either. Not a good couple of hours.

The Cabane was privately owned and run well, very impressive facilities. Only 10ish people booked in for the night so we only had to share the dorm with 2 others. The shower was generous, 4 doses of 30seconds each. Nicely hot and I remembered the lessons from Prafleuri last time so was done before the first 30secs were up.

I didn’t unzombify until I’d got outside dinner, soup and plenty of lasagne with refreshing water melon for afters. Dinner kept the guardians busy, a couple of groups of young fit types ‘popped up from the valley’ for food and chat. This seemed impressive at the time, doubly so after I’d done that descent.

We shared a table with a couple from near Martigny who knew the area pretty well, but only spoke enough English to go on holiday. It was fun practicing my French to find out what’s good to do in the area that isn’t mountains. Learnt about the famous Chemin de Vignoble (vinyard path) and a couple of good organisations to look up on the web, as well as the Bisses of Valais; a collection of mid height walks along waterways. They reinforced Paul’s good opinion of Sion too.

Last night was enjoyable tho, a swift stroll by the lake after a positively riotous evening meal sharing a table with 2 British couples. A doctor was singing Nellie the Elephant to illustrate proper CPR technique, that song is forever tainted now..

Our modes varied slightly because I’m on holiday, rather than a mission, so I took the bus, train and cable car along the valley instead.

I got chatting to a couple of guys from North Carolina, they were roughly following Kev’s C-Z route, but with a couple of approximations made by the company they contracted with to handle all the arrangements. I thought 31 C was 10 degrees too hot to do anything, they thought it was pleasantly cool. Different idea of normal I guess.

It was more than a bit novel to be the expert French speaker in the group! Their idea of the cable car up from La Chable was a pleasant finish, only a couple of Francs more than the bus. Then i promptly got us lost leaving the telecabane station.

My mission for the day was finding us somewhere reasonable to stay, it’s still quiet – medium season in Verbier so I had the pick of 2 or 3 places within budget. So I’m typing this from my private balcony over looking le place centrale over the third ice tea of the day. Holiday much?

much of the town is under construction, lots of big lorries and cement mixers feeding the many hungry big cranes.
Found a family pharmacy for a throat spray and joy of joys, they stocked Fisherman’s Friends and the kindly man spoke great English, tho I amused what I’m guessing was their daughter with my broken french and glee at finding yeehar strength mint tablets.

I perplexed half the town’s sports and shoe shops looking for size 50 insoles, mostly not available until ski season, tho I did fine a pair of size 50 boots on sale. “Le Cinqante?!” *surprise and bafflement*

I also finished devouring the novel I brought along for the ride, so that’ll get posted home in a bit, dead weight ftl.

tomorrow is the start of the real mountain leg of the holiday, the point of the exercise as it were. Up to 2600m at Col Terman and sleeping at 2200m at Lac de Louvie. Up close and personal with the mountains. Could be interesting or it could be seriously annoying if the promised thunderstorm hits.

I can’t promise much phone signal until Grimentz in a week’s time, but I’ve ceased being surprised where Swisscom put cells..

These pedometers from the GCC are utter rubbish, there’s no way I averaged paces that big over that terrain, or even when ministry of silly walking down a road. I’ll keep quoting them for comedy value, but the GCC website is going to get something closer to reality, 40cm paces on flat going down to 20 for up and down.

Anyway, after treating ourselves to a lie in after yesterday’s pain, we started off straight uphill, thankfully through the shade of forest. My uphill mode is slow and ploddy, so was soon overtaken by a few people doing the TMB backwards, including a british father and son team with whom we chatted for a bit.

It was further uphill than we remembered, stepping over rocks and tree roots wasn’t a patch on yesterday’s morning, tho perhaps more realistic of what’s to come. The sun shone very strong today, which led to many photographic pauses on the way up. We were treated to some good views down the hazy valleys to Verbier and Martigny, ignoring that 2hours on a post bus would see us to Grimentz and what’s this about spending 10days walking there?

We emerged from the climb at the gate overlooking the Alpage Bovine, which has come on a bit since we were last there. A gratuitous pause for a great light lunch of cheese and sausage meant we left the high point of 1975m about midday.The descent towards Champex was, err, challenging. Steep, rocky and / or rooty ground and the scorching sun meant we made slow progress. At least we didn’t have to go up it though like many TMBers, nor did we see how on earth we managed to get lost when we were last here.The final stretch through the valley was slightly uphill, but on good tracks or roads. It was hot enough for Paul to leave a boot print in the tar, but also too hot for me to be bothered to take a photo.

A fortuitous water trough in Champex en Haut meant restocking our platypusses with gorgeous cold fresh water for the final few km to Pension en Plein Air, which has also changed a bit. The rooms are still the same, but the bank of internet PCs are now a big flat telly, sofas and a pool table.

Arriving at 3 gave us plenty of time to wash stuff before the place fills up later on.Following on from rule #1, tomorrow’s route is moving from Cabane col de Mille to Verbier, neatly avoiding a heowge ascent that wasn’t looking so clever any more.

Also means we can visit shops for posting stuff and aquiring man-flu busting Swiss Pharmaceuticals and something to help with the interesting collection of blisters and bruises I’m accumulating. Apparently hiking boot insoles are s’posed to be replaced more frequently than never every 7 years, who knew?

Up bright and early for a 7am breakfast, bid our farewells to Belle Vue and headed onwards and upwards.

About 1000m up, 800m down, 15km along, 23k steps.

We couldn’t have asked for a better morning (well, I could have done without the sore throat, heralding a bout of man flu 2 alpine holidays in a row >.<). The morning's climb was hard but steady, we even managed to beat sign time to Col de Balme by 20mins, on a 3hr15 route. 7km, 8k steps, 900m of up. A good morning.s work.