The
mist continued down into the valley in Italy, it was 5pm and felt
like rush hour traffic even though it was Saturday. We headed east to
Chatillon and turned up the valley toward Breuil where we hoped the
new day would bring clear skies and a view of the Matterhorn. We
stopped lower down where it would be warmer for the night. Faint
hopes have foiled many a fine heart... The day dawned cloudy and cold
but still we toiled up the fairly steep valley (in the car of course)
and sat for a while in a carpark in Breuil hoping the cloud/mist
would clear but no such luck. We had had our chance to see the mighty
peak and it wasn't going to give another.
Back
along the roads we had come on and up and over the 2188mtr Little St
Bernard pass or the Colle del Piccolo St Bernardo, which also took us
up into the cold clouds, at the top of which the border into France
in this instance just the signs giving the country name and the road
speeds (always helpful).
The
road took 32km to wind down from the pass into the first valley in
France and we had some great views on the way once we descended below
the cloud/mist. One different thing about this pass was that the
barriers beside the road were made of wood, strange because there
were no trees growing anywhere. We were surrounded by mountains and
empty ski fields. A couple of times we went under chairlifts going up
to the winter slopes. There was another closed St Bernard dog museum
at La Rosiere a ski village high up still but this time there were
two large St Bernard dogs in a kennel there to say hello to. Stopped
for the night somewhere before Aime and carried on the next morning
turning left at Lechere onto another pass called Col de la Madeleine.
This was a cool road obviously dedicated to cyclists as there were
milestones with incline % and distance to next village etc for them.
The countryside was beautiful with valleys full of yellow, green and
red trees and villages perched on steep hillsides. At one of these,
Celliers, we found the road painted with greetings from cyclists from
all over the world including one Kiwi one. More dry skifields
surrounded us as we climbed up to the pass this time at 2000mtrs.
Our
next pass Col du Glandon at 1924mtrs was as picturesque with the
mountains being much rockier and barren. On the way down we passed a
couple of huge earth dams with hydro-electic power stations. We
headed to Vizelle and on down to Gap, clouds were hanging lazily
around the bottom of the mountains it being clear both below and
above them, quite surreal. To see our photos http://cjb.pascoe.net.nz/ (click on or copy and paste into browser)
