Refuge de la Balme to Landry

Now that we have reached civilisation I have had a chance to add photos to the entries for the previous 4 days.

We had soup followed by beef stew (although thankfully without the polenta) followed by cheese for the 3rd night running. When at home we don’t normally add much extra salt to food, but all 3 of us discovered in ourselves a craving for salt and added it to the soup.

There were 7 of us in a small dormitory, which resulted in an interesting unspoken argument about whether or not the window should be open. The unspoken compromise was that it was left open a crack, which arguably wasn’t enough to counter the effect of all those socks.

Today we left the Beaufortaine region and entered the Tarantaise. The Beaufortaine is beautiful and fairly remote, and not scarred by skiing development. It also produces very fine cheese, which I imagine is very expensive in Britain, but is a staple of the mountain diet.

Today we went down and down and down, leaving a high mountain world, though forest, pasture (with dozens of grasshoppers springing away with every step) and then though orchards and little mountain villages.

As time went on and we got lower, so the temperature rose. Now we are at a campsite in a place called Landry. We have stayed here twice before, but this time we are not in a tent but in one of the chalets. In the past my impression of people in the chalets was that they came out wearing bright white dressing gowns and fluffy pink slippers. I’m not sure we are going to achieve that but we’ll do our best.

Partly because we’ve been walking for 5 days and partly because it was a condition of booking, we are going to be here for 3 nights so plenty of time to recover.

Early in the morning, an easy path leads away from the more rugged paths and pointy mountains of the Beaufortaine.

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