An Alpine Amble

After spending exactly one-month doing precisely nothing since returning home from the flatlands of Holland, two weeks ago I found myself onboard a train heading for the south of France and to the Alpine village of Meribel-Mottaret to spend the week hiking in the mountains with Sacha, Colin, Lottie and Jon. And jolly good fun it was too - the snow blindness incident aside.

My previous visits to the Alps have all been in Winter for skiing holidays, but I'd always been curious as to how things looked when the snow had melted and the skiers had moved on in the Summer. So I've finally been able to answer my curiosity - and the best I can say is that there's a whole new world out there.




The white snow has a habit of hiding not only what it covers, but of obscuring distances as well. I remember being struck by the beauty of the mountains when I got off the coach on my first skiing trip, but after this week I think they really come alive in that regard in the Summer.

Meribel-Mottaret was a lovely little village at 1700m in the middle of the Trois-Vallées, between Courchevel and Val Thorens. I imagine that it would be a fantastic place to ski from, but it proved to be an equally excellent walking base too. Now, those who know me will attest that my physical fitness levels are not high, and hence, with hindsight it might have been a grand idea to get into shape before setting off. But alas, I didn't, so spent quite a lot of the week rather tired, but if there's something worth getting tired for, it's what we did. Unfortunately the weather wasn't entirely on our side, but after some pretty fantastic thunder-and-lightning displays we set off on a three-day hike from Meribel. The dissapointing thing about walking in the mountains is that while you cover only about 4-5km as the crow flies, it still takes about 8 hours owing to the irritating habit that mountains have of being just a little undulating. But then it wouldn't be any fun if it was just like walking into town. Over three days we rose up to 2900m, walked alongside a glacier, hitchiked, swam in a mountain lake, sang songs, taught Colin to speak English in both Gansta' and Chav, learnt about magical paintings, and had a snow ball fight - all without killing each other in the process.





In fact, aside from Colin's blisters, Lottie's ankle and my giving myself snow blindness (tip: always wear sunglasses in the mountains unless you want to end up wearing sunglasses even in the darkest room and feeling like you're always looking into the sun for a couple of days), things went really well. We stayed in mountain refuges, which I had visions of being places that only welcomed you if you practically fell through the door after running out of water in the dead of night. However, I was quite wrong and they were basically youth hostels at altitude which seemed to specialise in mammoth dinner portions. The second required us all to sleep on one giant bunkbed, which provided a good opportunity for Sacha to smack my forehead throughout the night and for Lottie to proclaim, to my eternal pride, that I was the only one of the group who didn't snore.

We also had a lot of fun. When you're walking for so long that a little entertainment was practically obligatory, but unfortunately I was ruled out of the best part - the swimming in the lake - by virtue of my snow blindness which turned the lake into one big mirror for the sun, but still, I could never have beaten Jon's effort to frighten the mountain goats.


Something that I'll never see in the same way again are hitchikers. We've all driven past them standing at the side of the road, and truth be told, I'd never thought anything about it. But having now been a hitchiker myself I can confidently say that there's little more dispiriting than standing by the side of a road for more than 40 minutes while countless cars, with ample space inside, drive on by. Eventually though we did get picked up, so a big thankyou to Mr. Bernard Vissoud, Savoyard wine specialist and qualified moutain guide who gave us a lift on one occasion. One very generous gentlemen squeased Lottie, Sacha and myself into a three door hatchback stuffed full of suitcases by getting his little son to ride atop one of the suitcases in the back, sandwiched up against the roof. People are apparently helpful like that in the mountains.

And that's only one of the reasons that I love them and why I can't wait to go back. There's something about the isolation that you can feel in the mountains that's incredibly refreshing, and the fact that we were in France where the boulangerie rules supreme, only made things even better. Of course, my continuing lack of language skills still grated and ensured my Englishman abroad persona survives, especially seeing as everyone else spoke French. But that didn't detract from a really great week that's convinced me to get myself into a little better shape to be able to appreciate what we did even more.

Vive la Montagne indeed.