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Monday / Tuesday, August 20th and 21st, 2007
As expected the rain arrived on Monday morning... well, it was more like drizzle for much of the day, but after five straight days of hiking we weren't going anywhere anyway. Ioana and Lidia, looking at a forecast of storms and heavy rain and maybe snow in the mountain passes for the next several days, decided that they would skip the last couple of days to Chamonix and head back home. We bade them, with regret, adieu.
Before they left, however, the three of us went for a walk through the Jaysinia Alpine Gardens, a hillside botanical garden with several thousand varieties of mountain plants and trees from around the world, that was founded a hundred years ago by a former shepherdess who left her flocks grazing on the hillside where the gardens now are and left to find her fortune in Paris. In this she was spectacularly successful, founding with her husband what was to become one of the largest department stores in Paris: La Samaritaine. Quite a story.
After coffee and cakes at an excellent little Confiserie, Lidia and Ioana left with Michelle, who had come to pick them up. Russell and I then spent much of the afternoon trying to resolve our various hiking boot conundrums. In my case I was looking for someone to grind out a dell in the inner soles of my new boots (the old ones' tread having been worn almost completely away, leading to a noticeable increase in the frequency of my slipping on the trails!). However, I couldn't find anyone who was able to do the job so I'll have to carry the new boots with me to Chamonix and have them done there (I hope).
Russell was looking for his (fourth?) new pair of boots. He had discarded pair #2 in Montreux because they were too flexible and as a result his feet were hurting, but pair #3, which he had worn for the past five days, were too stiff and as a result forced his gait to change in a way that has been killing his knees (and feet and the rest of his legs, to a lesser extent). He was, however and unfortunately also unsuccessful: none of the five sports stores in town had any boots of an intermediate flexibility that would fit him.
In consequence today (Tuesday) he has gone off to Chamonix (in a car amiably lent to us by the hotel owner) to see if he can find a pair there. This is actually an extremely nice thing to do on his part for me. I'll explain...
It would have been easy for him to decide not to hike to Chamonix and instead to take another few days off. For one thing, his legs are still hurting, and for another, there are probably a couple of soggy days upcoming on the way to Chamonix, and hiking in the rain is no fun. But he says that he didn't come on the H2H to skip days if he doesn't have to, and that it will be safer for me if I don't hike alone.
He is an excellent brother and an excellent hiking partner!
Sally has also gone along with him, despite the fact that it is an hour's drive in each direction and that she was really looking forward to relaxing and reading a book. Must be love. ;-)
And that brings to mind the soap-opera cliff-hanger ending of a few posts ago: the differing experiences of the H2H among the three of us. But that's a longer topic that deserves its own post....
