Last year we decided to walk the Traverse of the Alps, from Thonon on Lake Geneva to the Mediterranean coast at Nice, 420 miles across the high Alps, mainly in France but crossing into Switzerland for part of the walk and hugging the French/Italian border in places.
The walk is part of the much-longer GR5 Trail which starts on the Hook of Holland, but the Alps section is considered to be one of the most spectacular long-distance hikes of Europe, a description which we would totally endorse.
We had originally planned to walk the Tour of Mont Blanc, but my husband felt that this might be too strenuous for me so we opted instead for the ‘Traverse’, and the motto for this is….never, ever listen to your husband.
Mont Blanc from Col d'Anterne
We decided to do the walk in two parts, the first 200 miles to Modane in the Vanoise National Park in June and then returning in September to tackle the second part from where we left off, the theory being that we would avoid the hottest time in the Alps of July and August. This theory also proved to be slightly wrong as it was very warm for both parts of our trip but with little wet weather to speak of we consider ourselves very lucky as in total we were walking for 30 days, mostly at heights between 1400 and 2400 metres.
We booked all of our accommodation prior to setting off, a mix of hotels, guest houses, as well as a sprinkling of mountain huts, the latter all with basic washing and dormitory facilities, and, as we were to discover, an incredible range of excellent food, produced from goodness knows where. Read the rest of this entry »
