Yodel-odel-odel-eh-hee hee

Buona sera tutti!

Hello from sunny Italy - in the regional capital of Aosta to be exact, after several slogging days crossing the French Jura and then the Swiss Alps. I'd like to say that it has been fun, and I suppose in a perverse kind of way, it has. It has also been painful. You cannot imagine how hard the 8000ft (2000m) climb to the top of the Grand St. Bernard Pass was. I am already editing it out of my memory: Every time I look along one of Aosta's pretty little narrow streets and see some monsterous Alp at the end of it, I have to remind myself that I was ever up there. Seems utterly incredible to me, even though it was only yesterday.

I was lucky, to be frank, because there was a weather window. It has been something of a wet summer in the Alps and hence they have had snow - yes, people, snow - most weeks. In fact, two days before I topped out they were looking rather more alpine than I might have bargained for. But once again, the Gods relented and gave me two unexpectedly perfect days: the first allowed me to climb up to the tiny and very very very Swiss, Alpenhorn at dawn, cowbells and geraniums from every windowbox village of Liddes, at some 1,300 m. Because there was no wind and the road surface was nice, the air fresh but the sun warm, it was really quite a pleasant climb. I was tired but buoyed with the prospect of what the next day would bring - the hardest day of my entire route. But the map said there was nothing worse than I had already done.

My friends, the map lied. Oh Holy Hell, it really really hurt. If I were some Bianchi clad teak limbed hero type, I suppose I would say I took it in my stride but I didn't. It took every drop of vitamin Y and yorkshire grit I possessed not to get off and push. But I didn't. Not one single pace. That is a measure of my ridiculous stubborness.

The first bit, if I am honest, though steep, was almost painless because all the pain was lost amidst the utter terror: Alpine tunnels with huge lorries are not fun, may I tell you. And these tunnels, climbing uphill, went on for several kilometres at a time. Five, if I remember correctly. I thought I had taken a wrong turning and gone into the Mont Blanc tunnel or something, but no. This was just a covered road. I was so grateful to come out the other end of it, when the heavy traffic takes the long St. Bernard Tunnel, that I thought sheer relief would carry me up the last 800m of ascent in a mere 6.5 km. It didn't last beyond the first corner.

It was Joe Simpson 'Touching the Void' stuff. I literally crawled up snow post to snow post, resting in between. The road just went on forever. It took me hours and hours, but mercifully, the Alpine winds held off, the sun shone and every single motorbike and whippet legged alpinist cyclist who passed me at least raised their hands in acknowledgement or cried 'bon courage', bravo! and any number of marvellous things to raise my spirits. A sicilian chap stopped and called out 'Piano, piano' (softly, softly) and one chap, on a racing bike, kept calling down the mountain as he whirled ever higher up one hairpin bend after another 'allez allez allez!' It didn't so much make it easier as make it possible. When I was in the last 0.85 km (oh yes, I was counting every 0.1km by then), a chap ground passed and said 'Bravo Bravo, Signorina'. And I said (in french) 'Well, I'm not there yet'. He replied: 'No, but I believe you will make it.' And I did. 2443 m or so - 8114 foot. There was snow and impossibly savage cretes and a - happiness itself - massive monastery hospice with Great St. Bernard Dogs in it! My joy was complete.

But it was the bike that was really the star, as ever. And so it continues to be. I spent about 2 hours at the top, enjoying the hospitality of the Canons and spending at least an hour discussing the merits of the petit velo with various interested parties. SJS cycles / Thorn should pay me a commission, frankly, because so many people took their details from me!

Then I set off down. Now, in a way, I had been dreading this more than the ascent, having horrible memories of the vast nothingness of the Gorges du Tarn and knowing this could be so much worse. Mum used to say 'Don't fall off a mountain' and I had very real fears of doing just that. But, secretly, I also thought it might be rather invigorating, hurtling down 2000 m at 60kph. I even set up a frame for my camera so I could film the descent for you all. I needn't have bothered.

Almost as soon as I crossed the border, the Italians, God bless them, marked the difference between themselves and the Swiss. No neat little hospital corners road this, no Tour de France col with a beautiful surface. It was little more than a gravel track. In places it WAS a gravel track. There were half finished road works all the way down to the tree line and in places the road was little more than dust. I must have burnt all the rubber from my brakes bumping over the rutted remnants of tarmac. My descent was almost as slow as my climb.

But the Italians lived up to other stereotypes too: The workmen all called out Buongiorno, and some chap grinding uphill in some flash car stopped, despite the long queue behind him, and asked me what I was doing. When I told him, despite the blaring horns, he proceeded to invite me to come and stay with him in Puglia when I passed that way. Since there was now a long snake of cars, I waved him off but thanked him. It was a wonderful gesture, though. Even when I arrived at the Hospice at St Oyen - more Canons of St. Bernard (not the ascetic chap,but another, rather more jolly type, by the way) I was adopted by first an old lady of the village, then the entire long bench table of old gents and ladies. I ended up signing a card for some parish priest who had just gone to Chad to be a missionary. They told me to sign myself Vittoria of England, so he probably thinks they had a seance for a long dead old bag of a Queen.

Since then, its been downhill all the way in the geographical sense but mercifully not in other ways. Had the whole blooming hospice practically see me off this morning - at least 30 people standing around waving at me. Then I swooped into Aosta - a mere 15 downhill kilometres - quite literally singing all the way down. My singing teacher will know which song! :0)

Aosta turns out to be pleasant, if not exciting, with lots of vestiges of the Romans and quite a lot of merchandising. If one thing I have really noticed between Switzerland and Italy it is the incredible proliferation of shops. The Italians strike me as a very commercial kind of people - in a mercantile, be busy and economically active kind of way. But it isn't commercial in the sense of giant Tesco, more in the density of small shops in every cubby hole on every street. Like a bazaar. But, as I have said earlier, what really strikes me about Aosta is that every where you look there is an Alp. It is almost terrifying how high they are.

I first saw them, quite unexpectedly, as I whizzed down from the French Jura and swung around a bend on my way to Lausanne. The weather was perfect, with hardly a cloud in the sky so every crete and cornice was visible. I confess I swore. They were absolutely enormous, filling the horizon left and right and Mont Blanc looking like a giant and slightly malevolent meringue. Yet, the next day, they were gone, until I pulled into Lausanne, and the weather cleared and I got to go on a paddle steamer like some curist from the Belle Epoque. That was a very unexpected and lovely 2 hours, soaking up the sun on the deck of the Cezanne, mountains turning from misty blue to very real and solid rock as we neared the shore. Then it was in the jaws of the mountains, and into another fabulous thunderstorm, although this time Thor and Odin and his cohorts had the good grace to wait until I had found somewhere to stay. But wow! It was fantastic - real Gotterdammerung stuff - detonations and artillary fire from peak to peak. The sky was so dark it was like night time. Glad I saw it, but glad I didn't get caught in it going up the Col.

Just briefly, I would like to share some observations about Switzerland that you might find unexpected. Firstly, it was quite cheap. Yes, really. I seemed to stay in accommodation that would not have put Patrick Swayze and 'Roadhouse' to shame. Bread was expensive, but not much else really. And I hate to tell you, it wasn't as neat as France. French roads are clear of everything - no glass, nothing. Swiss roads have glass collection mechanisms called cycle lanes. And the towns were kind of grubby and the tourist offices were disorganised - yes, really, disorganised - so maybe it is only the Bernese Oberland where they are all hospital corners and picturesque.

Now, I must go before I end up having to take out an overdraft merely to pay the bill. They have already taken my passport details, as this is the new Italian anti-terrorist law. So I can't even do a runner! I was intending to stay another day but think I will head off down the mountain and do a little more ruralising.

Oh, one more thing - no criticism of the Swiss or Italians implied - I miss France. I really really do. Maybe it is only the facility with the language (although it was French Switzerland), but I think it is just the French. Sigh.

Vx

PS: Don't miss their keyboards though. In Italy, they believe in QWERTY like the rest of the world. Marvellous race.

Ciao!!!

Vx

The Definition of Chaleur

Those of you who have followed my previous wanderings through France know that I rather like Burgundy and am less than enamoured of Champagne. Here, in one day (yesterday, actually) is the perfect illustration why.

Yesterday morning, I left Langres, in Champagne, where I had been staying in a little hotel in the Citadel. My bill was somewhat more exorbitant than I usually tolerate, but after 230km in two days, I had refused to go back down the ridiculously steep hill to find somewhere cheap. Anyway, I was appalled to note that, for the first time in 6000+ km; the first time in France, as a matter of fact, I had been charged a whopping 8E to put my bike - yes, my bike - against a wall in their closed courtyard. Naturally, (because I can be really quite stroppy, you know), I protested. The lady kindly agreed to cut the bill in half. Oh, so only been ripped off to the tune of 4E then. Great. Welcome to Champagne.

An hour later, I crossed the watershed of the Marne. I know it sounds fanciful but something happens here. I noticed it before, when I went to Cluny and crossed into the Maconnais. The sky seems higher, the light more glassy and brilliant. The silhouettes of buildings seem sharper, as if they had been outlined in ink. And for the first time this trip, the sun shone with southern intensity rather than weakly through grizzling or threatening skies.

Oh, it was gorgeous. I wish you could all have been there, because it was the perfect illustration of why I do these trips. I cycled through wide pastures, once again grazed by lumbering white cattle, and passed in and out of scented forests, which encircled the low hills. There were grating crickets and dancing butterflies and buzzards soared the thermals, their high pitched mews rendering a ravishing solitude to this corner of France. I was back in the paradise of small things: the fields of gold sunflowers their faces turned southwards and strips of ripening corn. Then I noticed that there were no longer spires in the tiny villages, but strange little bell-shaped clochers tiled in coloured and glazed patterns - the toits bourguigone. I had, at last, crossed into the former Free County of Burgundy; once part of the Holy Roman Empire and latterly, Spain.

After days of comparitive isolation in the wheat fields and vineyards, suddenly there were waving tractor drivers and cars tooting their horns. I arrived in Gray and asked someone for help finding my chambre d'hote and they whipped out their iphone equivalent and spent 15 minutes trying to help me out. When that didn't work, he went to ask in a cafe and between us we found a plan of the town. So Benoit (for that is his name) proceeded to copy a little map of where I needed to go. And thus, after and exchange of photos; the obligatory 'Bon continuation', I cycled off to the Rue de Hussards.

Now, since I found my chambre d'hote (which was, incidentally, gorgeous) you might think that the story ends there. But, you reckon without knowing the Comtois idea of chaleur. Who should pop around a couple of hours later but Benoit, to give me the photo he had taken of me for my blog. Amazing. As I said before: what a country and what a people. I will never grow tired of being in France.

To cap it all, I then spent a fantastic evening with mine hosts, Eric and Benedictine. I was forced (well, not much force involved actually) to sample various wines of the region: a great white from the Jura; another fabulous blanc sec from Savoie and a truly epic Cotes de Beaune red. We had a four course meal for 10E (the wine alone must have cost more), and chatted into the night about the problems of the French economy, why Nikolas Sarkozy has a Napoleon complex, and where I might stay in the next stages of my route. Not content with simply giving me ideas, my hosts even called somewhere to check availability in Besancon. I thought nothing could equal the chaleur of Patrick and the marchands of Semur en Auxois, but it seems I had reckoned without Burgundy's imperial sister over the Saone. Nothing, it seems is too much trouble for the Comtois. No wonder the Flemish say that to eat well; drink well and laugh a lot is to live like a Burgundian. I simply love it here.