Day 4 Elisabetta to Courmeyeur

We spent last night in the rifugio Elisabetta Soldini. The hut is in a magical location overlooking the peaceful Val Veni at the foot of a glacier. Inside the rifugio it was organized chaos, with just a couple of people checking in the eighty or so walkers who slept the night and constantly supplying them with food, wine and beer. What a hard job those guys have and they manage to stay polite and friendly through it all. The dinner was amazingly good too, we had wild mushroom risotto followed by veal with honey and mashed potato, apple cake and a glass of red wine.



The hut also had a couple of working showers - a three euro token purchasing three minutes of hot water - heaven after Bonhomme. I was tired and went to bed early but didn't get a great sleep. Our dorm was in a corridor and I mean that literally. It had a long mattress for five people and we all lined up with our heads in the corridor and our feet just under the eaves of the roof. We had people passing to go down the stairs to the bathrooms below all night. I' sure some of them were wearing clogs. For Laurence it was worse because he was about a foot longer than the mattress.

We were up and out by 7.30am and the air felt wonderful: fresh, invigorating and icy cold. In fact we saw several patches of ice by the path. I had been told that the reflections of the mountains in the Lac du Miage was spectacular and so we took a short detour only to be disappointed - the lake was no more than a puddle. Not sure why, global warming? Dry winter? In fact we had to laugh at a notice warning us to beware of tidal waves sweeping us off the banks into the lake - plop!

We returned to the main TMB route to climb steeply up past abandoned stone farm buildings and through alpine pastures to the sound of cattle placidly grazing on the lush grass and their musical bells creating a timeless scene.


All the way up the path the south face of the Mont Blanc range stretched out majestically in front of us. Impossibly huge and awe-inspiring, I knew that I didn't have the skills to take a photo that would do it justice - but that didn't stop me from trying!








The balcony walk to the Maison Veille, where we had lunch, was beautiful.




Then it was a horribly steep and dusty path down to Courmeyeur 1200m in the valley below. Thankfully, much of it was in the shade of pine-scented spruce trees, but the walk down was still hot and uncomfortable and my knees and thighs were sore and tired by the time we reach the pretty village of Dolonne with it's bright red geranium-decked stone houses and cool, narrow streets.


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Location:Courmayeur, Italy