French Alps Pt1

Saturday 18th July was another huge day of driving. We left Ambres before 8am and didn’t arrive in Briancon until 4.30pm. Briancon was the start and end point for our 8 days of hiking (7 days plus 1 rest day) in the Queyras. It was apparently an important border town and is the highest town (presumably of a certain size) in France at 1300 metres.

In Briancon Julia introduced us to the Genepi berry that is grown in the Alps and is used to make a liqueur. We tried some on Saturday night and I liked it. It is sweet and buttery and reminds me of Schnapps. We also bought some saucisson with Genepi that was very nice. During the hike we discovered a genepi beer that was very sweet.

Briancon Fort

Genepi Beer - green but nice

The hiking was magnificent. The high snow capped peaks and rustic old villages are truly awesome for someone who hasn’t grown up with easy access to them. We were also amazed by the number and variety of flowers in bloom all over the hills and through the villages. See the blog entry of 28 July 2009.

Before starting the hike we took a train from Briancon to Mont Dauphin Station and then walked uphill for 45 minutes to Fort Mont Dauphin. This is a strange little town that Louis XIV had built when the French/Italian border was further west than it is now. It is a UNESCO heritage site. The fort and the buildings were designed by Vauban who was a reputed architect of fortifications.

View up valley from Mt Dauphin

All our hiking accommodation included dinner and breakfast and is called ‘’demi-pension’’ in France. We had our first excellent dinner in Mont Dauphin. We had a lamb and eggplant stew with couscous followed by chocolate mousse and crème brulee. The crème brulee was the best I’ve tasted. The dinners have been simple, hearty and delicious everywhere. Breakfasts on the other hand have been under whelming. A Dutch couple we met hiking in Corsica asked us whether we are really sure that we want to spend so much time in a country that only serves up bread and jam for breakfast. It was a good question but if you can get to a patisserie, breakfast here can still be wonderful.

Day 1 - Ceillac to St Veran
We were up early in order to get a small bus from Mont Dauphin Station to Ceillac. The bus wound its way up to Ceillac at an altitude of 1639 metres. The trip was hair raising as the road was tiny and there were sheer drops off one side of the road.

Us as we start – note the Church behind Dale on left

Most of the day’s walk was spent climbing up to the Col (means a pass) des Estronques (2651 Metres) before descending into a valley and then climbing back up to the village of St Veran at 2020 meters. Along the way we began to see some marmots, which are very cute large brown rodents that have a shrill whistle to warn one another of approaching danger (hikers).

Looking back down to Ceillac – note same church as that tiny spire

Us at the Col

Julia as Little Eadie Beale

We all managed the day’s walk with relative ease although Dale decided that he would buy some walking poles in St Veran to help take some weight off his knees on the steep descents. Julia sensibly had brought her poles from Australia. Dale’s decision turned out to be excellent a couple of days later for unforeseen reasons.

It was great arriving at a gite or refuge each day and being able to have a shower and get a drink and a hearty meal. Dinner in St Veran was sausages in a bed of lentils.

We had a lovely chat with the proprietor who told us that he’d never had any other Australians stay at the gite. I find this very difficult to believe but almost all of the other guests did seem to be French. It seemed to us that the Queyras Park is not that frequently visited by international visitors although we did meet some Dutch, Belgian and Swiss people along the way.

We also asked the proprietor what had happened in the tour that day but he said that he doesn’t watch it because they all use drugs. Julia had read an interesting article in Le Monde saying that 60% of French people assume that a stage winner has taken performance enhancing drugs.

Zoom in on St Veran from the col des Estronques

Our gite at St Veran - lots of beautiful slate roofs

Day 2 – St.Veran to Refuge Agnel
When we set off in the morning we were greeted by marmots scurrying and chirping everywhere. It was all very beautiful as we took a new path, above St Veran, that provided brilliant views of St.Veran and the valley below.

A marmot - too cute to be a rodent really

We spent most of the day walking uphill. Along the way we went over the highest col on any Grand Randonee route (non variant) in France – namely the col de Chamoussiere. Before reaching this col we went over the pic de Caramantran that stands at 3025 metres. This was the highest point we reached on the walk and Dale and I think that this is the highest altitude we’ve ever hiked to. Altitude sickness is a risk above 3000 metres but the extra 25 metres didn’t seem to affect us. We also think that the highest place we’ve spent a night was at Refuge Agnel at 2580 metres. Apologies for all the banging on about the altitudes but we really did get obsessed with them. Remembering that much of our mountain hiking has been around the Victorian alps and the highest we’ve got to is 1922 metres (if my memory serves me correctly) at Mt Feathertop and that Mt Kosciusko’s altitude is 2200-2300 metres.

View back down the valley we’d walked from St Veran

View from col de Chamoussiere into Italy

We started to get some good views of the other Alpine mountains as we crossed the col de Chamoussiere. We also encountered our first tricky descent from the Col to the Refuge because we had to negotiate our way over quite a lot of loose rock and stone.

The descent into the valley and Refuge Agnel

View of refuge Agnel and behind it the col we passed over

At dinner we sat next to some Walloons, which gave us our first good opportunity to practice our French. Practicing our French turned out to be an unexpected bonus on the hike.

Sunset

Although I’m getting better at coping with dorm accommodation, Refuge Agnel was my least favourite. We were in room with 2 platforms, one above the other, and 3 people slept on each platform. We were on the top platform and the room was pitch black. However we were sharing our dorm with 3 lovely people (2 women and a man) from Marseilles and we shared with them again the following night at Refuge Viso. We all got to speak a lot of French because – we couldn’t believe it – we actually spoke better French than they spoke English. On the second night they taught us to play a card game called Tarot. Go ahead and google it Anthony you’ll find it fascinating.

Day 3 – Refuge Agnel to Refuge Viso
This was the first of our 2 really long hiking days. We left Refuge Agnel at 7.35 am and arrived at Refuge Viso a little after 4 pm. We walked 17 kms and in total ascended 1,200m and descended 1,300m. Within the first half an hour we crossed over col Agnel, which is the border between France and Italy and has featured in the Tour de France in recent years, and spent a large part of the day in Italy. For a long time we had stunning close up views of Monte Viso, which is 3842 metres high and is the highest mountain in the Queyras.

Border at Col Agnel

View into Italy down the valley we descended

After descending steeply into Italy we walked through the beautiful Valley de Soustra with its old barns and herds of cows before starting a long gruelling ascent to the Paso Losato where Monte Viso came into view.

Steep valley walls we traversed as we switched valleys

View down valley we ascended

Mighty Mt Viso at 3,842m

Views down valley in Italy

Unfortunately a storm started to roll in just as we started to eat lunch at Paso Losato. We abandoned lunch, threw on our parkas and started our descent. The storm fortunately didn’t gather too much strength and after about 45 minutes we came across a magnificent herd of 4 bouquetins and an individual chamois nearby. The Bouquetins are apparently very shy and are rarely seen. Everyone has been very impressed that we saw them. We dawdled for quite a long time getting as close as possible to them and admiring their beautiful ribbed horns.

A bouquetin

A chamois

Having thoroughly enjoyed communing with ‘’les animeaux sauvage’’ we rounded a corner to discover much of our remaining descent covered with snow. This was pretty frightening for me but Dale handed me one of his life saving walking poles and Julia gave me some invaluable advice about sticking my heels into the snow first and off we went. It was slow and exhausting going and Dale had a pretty hard fall on some rocks, scraping the skin behind his knees quite badly. (ex) Nurse Julia managed to clean it up in crystal clear mountain waters as soon as we reached a lake close to the Refuge. Having made it through the snow the path became disgusting muddy loose stones and rock that was just as difficult to negotiate as the snow. That night at Refuge Viso I also bought myself some walking poles and they proved their worth a few days later when we had to do more snow walking.

David does it tough in the snow and scree

The descent to Refuge Viso (as indicated by arrow)

Refuge Viso cannot be reached by car. It is lovely and clean and modern. All electricity is provided by solar power and you have to carry a lot of your rubbish out. It is only possible to have hot showers between 5 pm and 9 pm. There were only 2 showers between about 30 people so the queues were pretty long. I was in the queue between a couple, whose teenage daughter was already in one of the showers. I couldn’t understand everything that was being said but the girl’s father was attempting to get her to hurry up with no apparent impact, as the queue grew longer. His wife was looking on amused and when the daughter did finally emerge, I did understand her barking at her father that he was not helping and was just stressing her out.

I’ve already said that we shared a dorm with our Marseillaise roomies from Refuge Agnel and we also had dinner with them at Refuge Viso. One of the ladies told us that she had started taking English lessons after work so we agreed to give her some English practice after she helped us with our French. This was quite funny because she couldn’t understand anything I said. Julia picked up that I was using some pretty complex English tenses. She simplified what I had said and the lady understood. I think this is funny because I presume that this is the problem I have understanding people in French and here I was inflicting the same confusion on someone just starting to learn English.

Refuge Viso with views of Mt Viso beyond

Days 4 and 5 – Refuge Viso to L’Eschalp and rest day in L’Eschalp
When we awoke on Thursday morning we were confronted with some very strong winds. The weather forecast indicated that winds could be in the vicinity of 90-100 kms per hour at altitudes above 3000 metres. We had planned to walk over Col Selliere (2800 metres) and the walking guide also indicated that the descent into Italy would be very difficult and technical. After throwing the options around we decided to abandon that walk and to head straight down the valley to L’Eschalp, which only took us 3 hours and 15 minutes. We had also planned a rest day there for the following day so we ended up with a bonus half day rest day.

Chamelion cows

Julia had decided on having our rest day in L’Eschalp because of the rave reviews about the Gite d’etap there, called ‘’7 degrees Est’’ and it lived up to its reputation.

Marvellous Gite 7 Degrees Est

We spent most of our time out on the terrace in front of the reception and dining area. While sitting around the terrace we got talking to a guy from Paris who had worked for HP and AXA. He was travelling with his family and family friends from Switzerland. Although he spoke excellent English he said he was happy to talk to us in French and he very kindly translated into English whenever it was clear that we weren’t following. He had a couple of very funny stories about a former CEO of HP that I won’t repeat for fear of breaching defamation laws. He talked a lot and seemed to enjoy having a captive audience but he was quite entertaining and it was very good French listening practice for us.

While hanging around the clothes line (hahaha) Dale got talking to a lady who lives just outside Paris. She and her husband were a lovely couple and we sat with them at dinner that evening. There was a very funny exchange between the lady and her husband when she and Dale returned to the terrace and she exclaimed to her husband how fantastic it was that we were travelling in France for 6 months. He looked at her and us and said but I’m on leave for 12 months, to which she responded ‘’oui, mais tu est vieux” (yes, but you’re old). In fact he was probably only 10 years older than me. He got her back later on during dinner when Dale asked her what her hobbies were. He very bravely jumped in and said ‘’faire de ménage” (housework).
French people seem to be fascinated with Australians eating kangaroo. I think this is an indication of their general obsession with food. When we started in on this discussion over dinner the guy made a comment about how strange it was that we would be eating our national emblem. He had seemingly forgotten that the rooster (le coq) is France’s national emblem. We quickly pointed this out to him and he roared with laughter agreeing that the French certainly eat lots of chicken.

We also met a Swiss German couple who had ridden their mountain bikes from Geneva. They were riding 50-100 kms per day up and down mountains. They looked exhausted!
The cooking was a tour de force at the 7 degrees est. It is all done by the lady who is the owner. She and her husband are quite young and they seem to do everything between them. They both look after reception and serve drinks and snacks on the terrace while cooking and doing chores. A few of the culinary highlights were:
• A beautiful tartiflette of potato, crème fraiche, bacon and cheese for main course.
• Tarte myrtille (blueberry tart) for dessert. This was full of lots of luscious ripe blueberries but was so rich that I couldn’t finish my serving (Ed – Mmm more for me).
• Foie de vole terrine for entree – vole is some sort of fowl.
• Turkey curry. Not terribly spicy but a beautiful ‘’melange’’ (mixture) including raisins.

On our rest day we walked up to a nearby village called Ristola for a look around. I don’t think I’ve commented on the fact that the Queyras region is very famous for its sundials. We read that there are over 100 painted onto the sides of buildings in a dozen or so villages. They are more works of art than sundials. It is actually a little difficult to tell the time from them because the region seems to be closer to the Italian time zone (GMT+2) than the French time zone (GMT+1) and then you have to adjust for daylight savings. Anyway, there is a beautiful sundial on the side of the church in Ristola. It is a painting of a Bouquetin, the animal that we had seen on our walk from Refuge Agnel to Refuge Viso.

We also discovered a nice craft shop and another purchase was made. As we had no room to transport this item in our day packs, elaborate arrangements had to be made to transport it to the final town (Soulier) on our hike. I.e. Madame le proprietresse would get her friend to drop the package to her friend in Soulier who would know who to give it to at the gite we would be staying in. Fortunately this all worked out although there turned out to be 2 gites in Soulier and predictably it was left at the wrong one.

David’s favourite sundial – at Ristola

Dales’s favourite sundial – at St Veran

Still to come: French Alps Pt 2 (if you found it exhausting reading this entry, try walking it!)