Life is what you make it, she said

"I'm bored", he said. "Life is what you make it" she said.

 

Our plan was to spend a few days in the valley of Aosta on our way back into France; maybe to get back for another day in Turin; maybe do some more walking and maybe see part of an area we do not know. But we do not understand mountainous areas and we have left spare time to cover weather limitations. So we can lift the pedal off the trip accelerator and just let the world go by. But then we need to also cover off any tendency towards boredom.

 

 

A few days ago and reluctantly, the duo left the now familiar home in Saluzzo to head for the Italian Alps above Aosta. After a very steep ascent, some very tight corners and a struggling GPS, we finally arrived at our accommodation high, high above Aosta. One reward after climbing here are the views. Simply magnificent and photographs cannot do them justice.

 

 

We were warmly welcomed by our new hosts who are the third generation running this facility. They have it down pat and several languages too. There are many walks around here but we have discovered that walks here are goat tracks (to her), next to the cliff face and rather steep. Many people (ie the duo) walk on the narrow roads. As it happens we had three, fit looking, men walkers with us for our first night here but they did seem to be not so driven as we were in the Dordogne; ie shorter walking days (finishing at 2.30pm) and later start times. And they looked to be using plenty of local roads too.

  

A visit to the Italian ski resort town of Courmeyer gave us an interesting introduction to the end of the valley. It felt like the mountains were closing in on us as we drove towards Courmeyer and we thought we would just hit Monte Bianco and that would be the end of Italy and the start of France, And by now the connecting tunnel was somewhere beneath us. We are not used to this terrain and we find it difficult to keep our footing as we stagger around looking up towards to the heavens, the glaciers, the rocks and the clouds.

 

We return home each evening to a home cooked meal at the family run hotel as this is easier for us than climbing the slopes from nearby Aosta into the late evening. By now any idea of retreating out of the valley and visiting Turin again is out of the question.

We are keen to try the new Skyway, only opened a week or so ago. But on days one and two we had to abandon the idea, as we were advised we would be in cloud. This is the cable car on the Italian side of Mont Blanc and which took 15 years to design and three years to build. Our hosts have already been up last week in perfect weather and said it was simply breathtaking. We are finding that just from the ground the mountain views around this way are outstanding.

 

On our second day in Courmeyer we just had to investigate a construction that was projecting out over the hill tops. We found it was part of a natural adventure park and team building facility which gave us some amazing views of the towns below. Abseiling across the ravines is not for this team though.

 

On our way home we stopped in at a small town, Cogne, to find it a fascinating place and the possibility of some good walking in the valley, so we returned there for our last full day. On our way we called in to see a restored Roman aquaduct-Pont D'Ael. At Cogne we finally had our mountain walk at almost three hours heading deeper into a deep valley of the Grand Paradisimo national park and hoping to get closer to the glacier, but it didn't seem to get any closer.  Wonderful.

  

That means leaving Skyway until Wednesday when we should be leaving the Alps for France. But that is the way the penny drops sometimes and we have not been bored at all.

So she was right after all. As she always is.