More achey than breaky, thankfully.

Today was rather full-on. I still have no idea of the distance we walked as all the guidebooks Delphine has (indeed all the signs) are marked in hours and minutes, not kilometres. Suffice to say it was somewher between “a lot” and “a hell of a lot”, or so it seemed.

Worth every step though. Early on we stopped at a gîte for a Coke and a coffee where the owner took pity on us silly fools and gave us a box of matches as well. We chowed down on jam sandwiches and set off (uphill – it always seems to be uphill) and into the woods.

There’s not a lot to really write about today. We had lunch by a fast-flowing river in the bright sunshine while a French family splashed each other with freezing water. Clambered up mountain tracks. Sat with our feet in a lake until they went numb.

We even walked into Italy quite briefly. A small mountain pass with abandoned guardhouses on it from during the war. I assume to keep the French in rather than the Italians out judging by the side of the border they’re on. While up there we saw chamois, marmots and some birds I didn’t recognise. The marmots would let us get within maybe 20m of them, while we could get twice as close to the chamois before they scampered off up the seemingly vertical rock faces.

We reached another refuge / gîte around 7pm and had a beer before using their kitchen to cook up some spag bol. As we settled down later on, we could hear a group of kids downhill singing the same song over and over and over. I was tempted to go and kick them or steal their food or something but sleep deprived me of the opportunity.

The first proper day of our hike went well, though it was flipping hot. There are places to get water as you hike but often they’re few and far between. We found one after about 45 minutes but the trickle from the tap was so slow that a snail coughing in the next village would divert it’s flow.

Being a gentleman I let Delphine set the pace and go first. Also I could point and giggle each time she lost her footing. Which was usually about three seconds before I did the same thing.

We passed one refuge / shack near where we’d planned to stop for the night and were rapidly told that the area was “full” but one busybody man attempting to be polite. The fact that we were in the countryside on public land didn’t seem to be a fact he’d grasped but we decided we didn’t want to be near anyone like that anyway and that we’d just sneak down at 4am and steal their orange juice (we didn’t – we slept in).

Nearby we found a nice area with some steady rocks for us to light up the gas burner and cook dinner – ravioli. Yum! This was when we found that Delphine had picked up the wrong matchbox at home and we had only two matches on us. Uh-oh. Thankfully the first worked and we still had a spare. We cooked, washed, packed and headed uphill to the next flat area we could find… which was inundated with flies and mosquitoes making it nigh on impossible to concentrate on my Harry Potter novel as I spent longer squashing the damn things than reading.

We slept from darkness till slightly after dawn, woken only by the sound of wild pigs snuffling near the tent. At which point we waited for them to try and steal our luggage, but fortunately they must have had better quality stuff as they left it alone.

Which is probably very bad French, but that’s the standard I’m at.

Best laid plans and all that. Delphine had arranged a gîte (hostel in the mountains) for us to stay at in a place called Saint Dalmas. I thought it was called Sandalmass until I saw a sign. Oops. It’s around two hours from Nice on the bus and from where we would begin a 3-day hiking trek in the mountains. Lovely.

Thing is we found out at the last minute that the bus only goes as far as Saint Dalmas if you catch it at 8am and we were going to get the 17:00 one. Ah. Always adaptable, we dug out maps and checked the route from St Martin Vesubie. It seemed straighforward enough if a little steep so we decided that would be the plan – go as far as the bus would take us and walk from there. The alternative would be to cancel the gîte and get the early bus the next morning.

We did a quick shop (I needed more cola bottles) and we jumped on the psycho coach from hell for 90 minutes of rollercoaster fun and games. I swear the ride from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang in Laos wasn’t so rough. And the driver wasn’t as mental as the French one we had today. Amazingly we survived unscathed and disembarked at St Martin. A man and his son (carrying boules sets – how French!) pointed us in the direction of the hiking trail with a friendly “good luck” and a muttered “better you than me”.

As we set off, things were very Disney. A little squirrel even kept pace with us along a wall, stopping every metre or two as if to say “come on, come on – your friend who’s fallen down the well is this way!” This didn’t last. Within half an hour we were enacting scenes from a reality documentary about joining the Paras. Legs ached, sweat dribbled everywhere, gasps turned to aging hacking coughs and we started to wonder what we’d let ourselved in for. Insects, sweat and gravelly 1:2 gradient hills while carrying two rucksacks totalling around 30% of your bodyweight are not something an untrained computer nerd should be tackling.

Somehow we made it up to a glorious little lake at the foot of what is seasonally a ski run. Here we hopped hiking trails to another one and the route now was more steeply downhill. The gîte was just at the bottom of the trail next to an old church as we entered Saint Dalmas. A few people were sat in the kitchen as we arrived and a soppy labrador rolled on its back and refused to move out of our way until we tickled him.

There was one pub restaurant open nearby where we had pizza, ice cream and a lovely cold beer. I’ve noticed something in a lot of places now – France, Romania, Spain, Hungary… – people can take their dogs seemingly anywhere, while this isn’t “allowed” in the UK where the poot creatures have to stay outside. In Spain I saw people with their dogs in supermarkets. I mean, why not? Banning them is like assuming that every dog isn’t housetrained.

Strange how dogs have been barred from everywhere indoors in the UK for as long as I can remember but we’ve only recently banned smoking in public places. Nice to see we’ve got our priorities right again.

Anyway, it was about 11pm by the time we finished dinner and we were both wrecked. Two very comfortable bunks with our names on awaited and I wanted to get a chapter of Harry Potter read before I zonked out completely.

This household and hospitality is just what I needed after the recent whistlestop tour around Europe:

Late lies in.

Shopping for camping gear – I now have a nice new stove and scary gas bottles.

Swimming in the sea – while attempting not to ogle all the nice topless women. And grimace at the not-so-nice ones.

We went to see the new Harry Potter film which I enjoyed and my copy of the book arrived from the UK (thank you Gosia – as if your hospitality in Poland hadn’t been enough!) the morning after I found somewhere on the internet to download it from.

There’s a possiblity that I may have sneaked a KFC in there somewhere but it may be a rumour. On the whole I’ve eaten well, healthily and heartily courtesy of my kind hosts. I do need to wolf down some calories and put some pounds on. I’ve recently moved my belt down another notch. I’ll be a skeleton by the time I get home at this rate, though a skeleton with a fine bum.

I’ve made good use of the internet here to plug the Walk. Fingers crossed that one of the radio stations or newspapers I contacted is remotely interested.

Finally we landed in Nice and a ragged, exasperated cheer went up. Everyone filed off, ignoring the staff again and we rattled through the baggage collection. Delphine was there to meet me and it was nice to see a smiling face for the first time in far too many hours. The last time I’d seen her was in Darwin a few months previous. Time flies!

With little further ado, we drove back to her parents’ flat where I pretended I could understand French. I dropped my stuff, had a shower and we went for a walk along the Promenade Anglais to see the sights. The beach here is all pebbly which makes for uncomfortable walking, but great noises as the sea moves back and forth across it.

Despite the heat, we walked west to a hill atop which is a waterfall and a good view of a harbour with too many posh yachts in it. We wandered around an “Israeli” (read “Jewish”) cemetary with some touching monuments including a bowl made from the fat of human bodies retrieved from Auschwitz (if I read the plaque correctly). Grisly, but a reminder and it’s in the right place.

Back downhill in town we tried a local speciality for lunch – socca. This is essentially a type of doughy pancake and is rather filling if a little plain. Expect to pay 2 Euro or thereabouts for a plateful. After a quick shop in a supermarket for drinks and fizzy cola bottles we walked back along the promenade to the flat where I flaked out for about 5 hours. It’s a good job the French eat quite late in an evening as it meant I didn’t miss dinner.

During the meal, we watched a 1973 Carry-On style French comedy set during the war. It’s incredible how some stuff just doesn’t need to be translated to be understood. We chatted as much as I was able with Delphine and her father being the only two real bilinguals at the table.

I then overused Delphine’s internet before collapsing in bed. Despite the nap earlier I was still dead beat.