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Friday, Sept 14th, 2007
A long climb today up to the 2683m Col de Sautron, followed by an equally long descent back into France to the village of Larche. It was foggy in the morning, windy and somewhat chilly at midday (at the pass), but sunny and warm as we went down. Christine's blistered heels gave her problems again, unfortunately, but everyone else seemed to be fine (or, in Russell's case, as fine as his knee gets).
The landscape in the meantime has become very dry and dusty, unusually so, according to our host in Larche, who said that there has been no rain here for three months. Good for us, since it means that these last few high passes are snow-free, but bad for the environment, agriculture and forestry. We haven't seen any signs of fire, however.
It has been a strange summer in Europe: exceptionally cool and wet in the north and west (with floods from time to time throughout the summer), and exceptionally hot and dry in the south and east (with horrendous fires, particularly in Greece and Italy). Not an optimal one for the H2H, to be sure, but also not tragic. I suspect that when I go back to tot up the bad weather days for the hike as a whole, I'll find that they were about what I had estimated they would be while planning.
Sort of an end-of-of-the-world place, Larche: almost 100k from the nearest train station (at least in France), it nevertheless has a fair amount of visitors due to the fact that nearby is one of the lowest non-tunnel roads into Italy -- under 2000m.
Our hotel rooms were basic, but once again the people were very nice and kind. Russell spoke to them once we arrived to arrange a birthday cake for me, and in just a couple of hours they put together a very good meringue and ice-cream concoction. I was not expecting it, so it was a nice surprise and we had a merry dinner.
This was also Christine's last day on the hike. She was with us for 8 stages -- one of the largest number done by a guest hiker -- and she held up much better than I had feared after seeing her struggle (knees / blisters) for the first few days. Her humour and good humour were also very welcome, and we will be sorry to see her go tomorrow morning. However, we'll see her again for a couple of days in Monaco, so it wasn't a final goodbye.
Tomorrow is the last big pass of the H2H -- and the weather is supposed to be perfect. Excellent....
