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| Alfie guarding his daddies' lunch! |
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| The amazing view of the glacier |
Today we decide to go up to get near a glacier, so take a leisurely walk (the only one that day, but more of that later.....) into Chamonix and take the Montenvers Mer de Glace train. It’s not like any train I’m used to like the one I go on with Daddy Ant from Clapham, it’s funicular one, quite steep and goes up from 1000 metres on the valley floor to 1913 metres when you get off. I was glad I had my own fur coat – think our grown up’s may have got it wrong – just in usual summer stuff while everyone else was wearing winter woollies....
The Montenvers glacier is pretty impressive at 7kms long and 200 metres deep with a little cafe where the grownups had to get coffees as they took in the view. I tried to nick some of their doughnuts but Alfie as usual was more concerned with guarding his daddies’ lunch in their back pack (see pic) – he really growled at me as I tried to nick stuff from that as well – it was nearly the end of a beautiful friendship....
But after a bit of a look round and admiring the views we decide to start off on our walk over towards the Plan du Midi ski lift. We knew we couldn’t get that ski lift down though as we dogs aren’t allowed, so the plan is to walk down, sounds like fun! As usual, the walk is harder than we (well harder than Aunty Allsorts) thought. As usual, the grown up’s were pretty bad with maps – they had only gone a few hundred metres and came to a fork in path and had no idea which way to go! Luckily a group of helpful German’s with a guide (just glad it wasn’t one of their shepherds, they scare me a bit and Alfie would have barked.....) came and pointed us in the right direction. So we climbed up and up and up on another windey path, stopping lots to supposedly admire the views when in reality they (well Aunty Allsorts again....) just needed a rest! It was great fun and a bit adventurous as we edged along the mountain and scampered across the scree. We stop for a bit of lunch at the top in a forest of cairns (no beer here – not a bar or cafe to be seen) and then forge on. Down we go and thought it was all downhill from there. But yet again the maps tricked us – we go down a really steep bit, only to realise that we had to go back up the other side before we could get anywhere near the path back down to town. Aunty Allsorts was not pleased – she said it was a real disappointment to think she would be going downhill only to realise there was another steep climb in the way... I loved it though, and my tail was getting a bit tired it was wagging so much! But we plod on and eventually find the path down to town. It didn’t look too bad but when we could finally see the valley floor and Chamonix we realised just what a long way down a steep zig zag trail it was – the houses and roads down there looked smaller than toytown. It was only a kilometre down but because it was so steep the trail went back and fore ad nauseam so we must have actually walked miles. We had gone down a bit and came to a bit of a clearing with a mountain hut and a few goats and chickens. Alfie and I loved it we, could roll about in goat’s poo to our hearts content. And I managed to escape for a few minutes – I didn’t eat the chickens, but I did manage a few mouthfuls of their food – it was nice! There was a rough gravel bit there and all the grown up’s managed to slip but only silly Aunty Allsorts managed to twist her knee a bit. It was a bit of a nuisance as it slowed me down, but I did stay with her most of the time to make sure she was ok. The daddies found her a big branch to use as a walking stick to help, but we had no choice, we had to keep on going, there was no other way to get home! Then we entered the forest and carried on plodding down for miles. After a while we passed a girl walking up to the top. About an hour later she passed us again on the way down (was she really fast or were we just rather slow?) She was really nice, saw that Aunty Allsort’s was having a few problems walking down so gave her her walking sticks. She was Hungarian with no English but managed to communicate that she would wait at the bottom to get her sticks back. It was such a kind gesture and it really helped speed us up, I liked her so much for doing that I almost wanted to give her some of my Iams....
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| Me knackered..... |
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| Me - knackered again.... |
But we walked on and on and on – the odd glimpses of buildings we could see in the distance still seemed tiny. Hours later a relieved group finally reached the valley floor – what a relief that was – even Alfie and I had slowed up a bit by this stage, and I think I even glimpsed a few tears of relief in Alfie’s favourite daddy Colin’s eyes.... But as usual the grown up’s didn’t think of going straight back to the chalet for our tea, but managed to find the only cheap wine of the trip in a car park! Beers first, followed by two (yes TWO) litre carafes of the local rose and hotdogs, they were feeling no pain. It was really warm so after a big drink of water Alfie and I just snoozed under the tables and let them get on with it! But all that calorie expenditure was catching up with them so they all stopped for in town for pizza’s and yet more rose wine before going home so we could finally get out tea. I must say, Alfie and I still looked tidy, but they looked like a pack of chav’s, rather out of place in smart Chamonix. Sweat stained, pink sunburn marks and grubby, we felt really embarrassed sitting with them!
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| They drink rose, all we get is water! |
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| Alfie and I were mortified by the state of this lot! |
