Rest day

Maybe it's only when something is taken away, even for a short while, that it's appreciated, things like a clean bed of my own and a hot shower. The first thing I did in the hotel was to run a bath and wash my hair. The second thing was to flop on the bed and sleep! Bliss!

Today has been a lazy day and given us time to take stock both of our equipment and of our various aches and pains.

I think that we had pretty well packed the right gear. I debated in Chamonix whether to bring a spare pair of socks or a pair of gloves. I chose the socks thinking that if we had a really wet day I would be glad of dry socks and the temperatures had been up in the 30s, so who needs gloves. Wrong! My hands were freezing on the Col du Four and socks made poor substitutes for gloves and although Laurence laughed at me, they were better than nothing! So gloves were on my shopping list. Laurence bought a couple of T-shirts, but then he is a bit of a shop-a-holic, not sure who he gets that from!

In terms of aches and pains my feet are in really good shape and I put most of that down to taping up my heels with micro pore on day one of the walk and using socks with separate toes under my wool walking socks. I hadn't found any problems going up the hills, provided I paced myself, but after the steep downhill sections on the Col du Four and down into Courmeyeur my thighs felt pretty sore and the the descent into Courmeyeur also got my knees. I'm not sure what exercises I could have done to better prepare me for going down hill - I need to look that up when I get home for the next time. It could be my lack of technique as much as anything, growing up in Boston (Lincolnshire) I didn't get much practice on hills!

Well the alarm is set for tomorrow and I am looking forward to another excellent breakfast in the hotel before we head off to hills once more!


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Location:Hotel Berthold, Courmeyeur