After grocery shopping Saturday in Sallanches and a quiet, drizzly, evening at the Aire de la Fontaigne, near Les Houches, we drove on up the Chamonix valley, bidding reluctant farewell to France and the Pays du Mont Blanc. We stopped at the Col du Forclasz, where we spent one of the more memorable evenings on the TMB in 2005. It had been a long day, starting in Champex, Switzerland, involved picking bilberries, stopping at a mountainside cafe for refreshments, a very long walk, marveling at how far Martigny was below us (a very deep canyon it sits in), another mountainside stop at Bovine, Switzerland, for more refreshments, and then, as heavy rain began falling, the stop at the campground at Col du Forclasz. A couple from Burgundy we had been leap-frogging (nyuk-nyuk-nyuk) all through the TMB helped us set up our tent and shared their hot water for our delicious freeze-dried trekker meal. The next morning--3 days' rain were forecast--we followed them and their advice, hopping a train to the French border, then a French train on down the valley, stopping at Les Houches for a motel night, then moving back to Chamonix as our base for drying out, and then continuing the trek. Kindness of strangers. We ran into them again at Praz Plan a couple days later, back on the TMB, and returned the favor, giving them all our water...they were tenting up high, and dry, and we were heading back down. Speak, Memory.
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Col du Forclasz; the campground, such as it was, is just
behind the restaurant
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Vicki by the TMB signpost at Col du
Forclasz
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The old fortress in Martigny; not one of Switzerland's
prettiest towns
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We stopped to walk through a Sunday market at Col du
Mosses...
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And drove through much charming Swiss countryside
before landing finally at a campground in Lauterbrunnen;
that's the Breithorn behind the camper
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