Day 6 – Sion. Hiding from the sun.

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.

Day 5 – Cabane de Louvie to ?

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.

Day 4 – Verbier to Cabane de Louvie

(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.