I Would Walk 1000 Miles

Breakfast at 8am was jam and bread with a huge bowl of hot chocolate. Afterwards I walked into town to see the tourist information people who were incredibly kind, giving me a decent map and some good directions all the way to Limone Piemonte. I stopped by a mountain store to get a new water bottle, but decided against it when the owner told me there was a water source about halfway up. He lied, I discovered later. Grr.

I decided not to stay an extra night in Tende and instead pressed onwards and upwards so as to stay on schedule. After a decent lunch, I packed and set off up to Col de Tende. This is another 1km climb, but along a fair horizontal distance so not as punishing as the previous day.

I was rather heartened when I made it to the highest point (Fort Tabourde) almost an hour ahead of schedule. From there I walked to Col de Tende itself in around ninety minutes and had a quick look around the old fort there before searching for the path down the other side that was clearly marked on my map but not in real life. Eventually I found it was was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of marmots on the way down.

At Limonetto, I bore right towards my target, Limone Piemonte. Another 45 minutes later - around 8:30 - I was sat in an Irish bar, watching footie on TV, eating a delicious hamburger and using free internet. My only problem… nowhere to camp. The lights on the roads stop at the town’s edge so I couldn’t safely walk into the country.

Eventually I ended up "hiding in plain sight" in front of a building / monument / thing up a hill in front of the town. I hoisted my tent right between two upward-pointing lights. Between them and the slope of the hill I was quite well hidden from public view.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 4th, 2007 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Stage 2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.