What comes down must go up, and having come a long way down into the valley a couple of days ago, today was the inevitable climb up the other side, which I suppose was good, because Judith was a little worried about her going downhill muscles.
Our walk this year is neatly divided into 3 groups of 3 days. So the first group was Evian to La Chapelle and now we go to Samoens in 3 days, where we will have another day off.
We had a good breakfast at our little hotel, La Jolie. La Jolie is run by a friendly Dutch family, who were obviously used to hikers and were very accommodating.
After setting off, we stopped for bread and bought some with bacon impregnated in it -a very promising concept, but not quite as delicious as one might have expected.
There was a gentle stroll along the valley bottom and then steeply up, initially through trees, and steep enough for the guidebook to use that faintly euphemistic phrase, ‘care required’. But it all seemed straightforward enough, especially as the ground was a lot less slippery than it had been a couple of days ago on the other side of the valley.
The weather was perfect today, a few clouds about, but mainly bright and sunny.
The Refuge for the night is a little way from the GR5, but tomorrow we can climb over a little col to get back on the route with the diversion just adding 15 minutes to the overall time.
Despite the height gained, this was quite a short day and it was still lunchtime when we arrived, and the tiny Refuge was bursting with people, but after lunch most of them headed down, leaving the mountains to us. There is a spectacular view taking in dozens of peaks, mainly in Switzerland.
Half way up- the view back into the Abondance valley.