Sunday 29 June 2008 - An Italian Border Route (IBR) - Day 5 - The Day of the Flowers

On the Balcony Path along the Border

Plan: Fontan to Rif Allavena - 23 km, 1600 metres ascent, 8.5 hours

Actual: Noisy Camp at Fontan to Rif Allavena - 1545 metres
23 km, 1930 metres ascent, 10 hours including 2 hours breaks.

Best bit: The flowers and the well graded paths.

Actually, the whole day was the best bit.

Last night's Roquefort Pizza (and there was a great deal of Roquefort) was digested to the sound of our French neighbours partying. There were only 3 of them but their pernod made them very loud!

Another fine sunny day. A thoroughly superb day. All morning we wound our way back up to 1100 metres on wonderfully graded woodland donkey tracks.

The flowers were magnificent.

We saw our only people of the day around lunchtime at Passo Muratone - a few 4WD enthusiasts and 8 day walkers.

The morning had been a cool 25C in the trees, but the afternoon saw my thermometer rise to 38C.

Raw Heat.

A light breeze overcame the worst of that, and the well graded path, now at times vertiginous and aided by wires, saw us comfortably along our border route.

Despite the haze the views down to the remote gorges in France were superb. They almost matched the wonderful variety of flowers - today we saw many lilies and gentians as well as the usual orchids and bellflowers, etc.

There were huge banks of alpenrose as we reached our new high point for the trip - Col Vallette, 1981 metres, near the end of the day.

Allavena Refuge takes 70 people. We are here tonight with just Arne, an Austrian mountain biker who has come from the coast today, mainly on the AV dei Monti Liguri that we have been following. He is tired.

There seem to be half a dozen people running this place, which has a Faulty Towers feel to it.

The food was fine despite an impossible mountain of polenta.

Next Day
Back to Index