It is kinda fun that each time we leave a campsite, what eventuates is us looking over a map saying “Where to now?”!

Gosh, we are so close to Italy!! On this particular morning we decided, just because it would be kinda fun, we would head to Torino and have lunch in Italy. I could almost smell the freshly made pasta!!!

The problem was we didn’t factor in the French Alps which is not a section of the country that you can just bomb straight through. With a list of places like Mount Blanc and Chamonix you can’t help but want to see what all the fuss is about. Another last minute decision (by last minute I’m talking mid route on our way to cross the border) and we ended up spending a little time investigating this awesome landscape.

Once again words seem quite inadequate when trying to describe this place and I will probably end up going into clichés. This area took us by surprise, I am not sure what were expecting, maybe that the awesome mountains are only Switzerland?? – but that is crazy!! We got an eye full of colossal peaks and glaciers. Epic drop and climbs. Everything is on such an epic scale that my eyes often had trouble trying to adjust to the correct focus on the scale which was so massive yet so close you felt you could touch it.

Out first introduction to the Alps was very fitting. Driving through rolling hills and green countryside we popped into a tunnel called the ‘Le Chat’ which was close to 2 km long. I even remarked, “I wonder what the view is like on the other side”. We quickly popped out into daylight again and those colossal peaks hit us both smack bang in the face. “Whoa!!” Both Duncan and exclaimed at exactly the same time. This view was far too good to drive past. A very well placed restaurant provided us the opportunity to get a beer and take it all in.

Our campsite for the night was in Bourg d’Osians. Set in a valley with peaks scratching the sky all around you. No joke, I had to be careful going to the toilet because my eyes kept flying upward toward the peaks all around me and not on the path where I was walking!!

After getting ourselves settled into our campsite Duncan and I started to notice that there was something odd, very odd…. a lot of Lycra…..bikes….. Dutch…… we started to feel very out of place and over dressed in our campsite. Almost all of the campers (except for us two Aussies from Canberra and one French couple) in this massive campsite, were Dutch bike riders! What was going on – are we still in France or did we cross into some weird Dutch principality where Lycra was the national dress?? A little subtle investigating led us to the discovery that in two days time the Alps D’Huez, a huge Dutch bike race, was being held on one the mountain passes. This is a very popular bike race in the Netherlands with over 4000 participating and screened live on TV. They have it in the French Alps because they don’t have any mountains in the Netherlands – makes sense in a strange kinda of way.

We had a nice night watching the men’s final of the French Roland Garros in France – albeit with a whole heap of Dutch 😉

Next morning was trekking time!! A four hour trek up to a lake (Lac Lauvitel) It was a good trek up the mountain and a little hard at times but you just had to turn around as the view was spectacular at every stage. I would say that our highlight was to reach the top and to see the lake which was glacier fed… however, I have a suspicion that Duncan’s highlight was meeting the local population of marmots which lived by the lake. I lost Duncan for about 20 minutes and when he re-emerged from the rocks he proudly showed me his new album of around 20 shots of marmots. “Ahhh, Bless”.

To top off a wonderful day in the great outdoors we found the best picnic spot so far. Setting up our camp stove we had dinner right below the mountain we just walked up, beside the glacier fed river (which we used to cook our pasta) for a wonderful dinner of pasta and wine. Good times!!

Polishing off the bottle of vino between us, we thought we weren’t done with the great outdoor just yet. After a recommendation from the friendly tourist bureau lady of a leisurely drive through the mountains we decided we had just enough days light to give it a go.

Leisurely drive my arse! What started out as a nice windy climb up the mountains ended as a one lane track with no barricades and a sheer drop 1000 meters to the bottom.

I don’t know what it was… I am not normally such a sap when it comes to heights… but I was hella freaked out… maybe it was the half a bottle of wine that I drank at dinner, or maybe the half bottle that Duncan (the driver, who had his life in my hands) had drunk, maybe it was the strange dream I had the night before of falling off a mountain.. Most likely all of the above… I was petrified!!! I could not lift my hand from the handle. I was white knuckled and doing a weird panting hyperventilating thing. Duncan was feeling a little safer on the inside lane where he could not see the sheer drop that I was privileged to – the car wheels were on the edge of the road!!! All I could see was a colossal drop below me. “Oh, oh, oh god, It is really high, really, really high” Then it got worse. The road amazingly got narrower, barely a car width – a glorified goat track! Right angle turns around mountain pinnacles which gave the impression that the road just….disappeared… The map said there was a town at the end of the road…what if there was a car coming the other way??? Would we have to travel 10 km in reverse, with a sheer drop, no barricades and a road that was doing a good impression of a slinky… we were not going to make it!!! Then it started getting dark on the road from hell. With no possibility to turn around. We were committed. If I could lift my hand from the Jesus handle I would have held Duncan’s hand so that as we plummeted off the side of the mountain in our car we could “woohooo” it Thelma and Louise style. After 40 minutes of defying gravity, like a mirage in the half light, a section on the inside of the road created by a rock fall appeared, just big enough and safe enough to turn around. We never did get to see the town at the end of the road. But I am pretty sure if we kept going in the dark we would have never seen it anyway!!!

What was annoying was back at the campsite and having a beer at the bar to cool our nerves, we ran into the campsite receptionist. “How crazy is that mountain road??” said the Aussies… After a couple of blinks, the guy looked at us and replied “not so many mountains down that road” (what the ????!!!!!!) – suppose you haven’t done a mountain pass until you have done it Alps style… you will never hear me complain about Brown Mountain again!!!!
The next day we packed up our tent and said “Afscheid” to the Dutch and resumed our plan to get a passport stamp for Italy. Not before getting up to 2060 meters above sea level and having lunch at the highest point!!! 7 degrees and a chill factor of about -3!!! I didn’t mind telling Duncan that Canberra was slightly warmer with 9 degrees J

Getting to the Italian border through the mountain crossing was a little epic as the border is on the other side of the mountain range (the range of course being the original natural border), but compared with the day before it was nothing!!! Oh, we got, so, so, very close to getting into Italy!!! So close that we spoke to Italian border officials in a scramble of French, English and Italian at the Italian border. But alas, it was not meant to be… From the lovely Italian guard (who was kinda a cute with his Italian accent) we found out that a massive rock fall had occurred two days prior and completely buried the road just after the border. Rocks as large as 10 cubic meters had fallen, and even bigger ones were teetering on the edge. “There is-a a small-a mountain pass-a that you can-a cross which starts-a back down-a the valley” (so sorry Dino for brutalising the Italian accent 😉 ) – Mountain pass? Small? – nope, no way, not in a million years! – did that yesterday and almost died. Italy would have to be another trip.

Instead we made camp in a damp, chilly French campsite (with cold water showers – urghhh!!) which sat at the foot of the Italian Alps. So, close, so very close!!! Where to next?