Chamonix To Zermatt

The Haute Route

The Real Journey Begins

August 8th 1994

Tuesday morning and our resolve to complete this walk was restored. We had only lost one day and we could still reach Zermatt in the time we had available. So an early breakfast, boots on, packs on and out into the fresh alpine air. We left The Belvedere at 07:30, it was a cool and clear morning, the sun had not yet penetrated the depths of the valley and in the shade there was frost on the ground, but this was it! This felt like the real thing. At last we were on our way to Zermatt. 

The village of La Tour behind us, we headed for the Col De Balme

Our objective for today was to walk up to the Col De Balme at 7,163 feet, cross the border and then down to the Swiss village of Trient where we would spend the night, a total distance of ten miles. Not the longest or the highest walk on the route, but certainly challenging enough for this early stage in our acclimatisation. Leaving the village of Argentiere behind us we climbed steeply through the woods and up to the village of La Tour where a large queue was forming outside the cable car station. For the most part they looked like walkers, but really, there’s more to it than just looking the part. Our path zig zagged up the mountainside, mostly under the cable car and we watched as people were taken effortlessly up to the Col De Balme, not once wishing we had taken the easy option (well maybe once). The views back down the valley were magnificent. As we climbed higher and higher, the views became wider and wider. The sun was shining on the snow capped peaks of Mont Blanc, Aiguille Rouge, Aiguille du Midi, Grand Montets and Verte. Grand Jorasses, Drus, and the Glacier La Tour, all looking magnificent.

The Col De Balme and Chalet Refuge 

After four hours of walking we approached the Chalet Refuge Col De Balme which sits a few metres over the otherwise unmarked Franco-Swiss border. It is known locally as ‘The Dragon Lady Refuge’, apparently due to the delightful disposition of the landlady. Regardless of this fact, the refuge was busy with people who had come up on the cable car for lunch before making the ‘arduous’ journey all the way back down in the cable car. We stopped for lunch, sandwiches which I will describe only because of their remarkable qualities. Irene had salami and I had ham, just to ensure that the quality was consistent. Rustic French bread can be a chewing challenge at the best of times. This was the best of times and it was the worst of times, because if the bread was a chewing challenge, then the contents were a masticating marathon. Even the Alpine Coughs looked at it with great suspicion. Still chewing, we left the col behind us to make the steep descent towards Trient. From the open mountainside we descended into the forest, a pattern that was to become very familiar to us over the coming days and weeks. We came across a couple in the forest who were scrutinising a book that looked very familiar to us, it was Andrew Harper’s Tour of Mont Blanc, another long distance trek that runs alongside our trek for a few days. The ‘TMB’ is a very popular walk and we met many people who were enjoying it’s undoubted delights.

As we approached the valley bottom we could see the Glacier de Trient and the Fenetre D’arpette up to our right and the village of Trient down the valley to our left. The Fenetre is a narrow cleft in a rocky wall high (8,661 feet) above the Glacier de Trient and it is one of the options for tomorrows walk. We could see that the path up was across rough scree and looked very steep. Much as we would like to have taken this option, we felt that such a challenge could be a little early in the walk for us. We were still measuring how well we could do against the daily rigour of constant walking and climbing. So we decided to take the easier option known as ‘The Bovine Route’, no, not the easy option, there are no easy options this side of Zermatt, it was the easier option and even that is debatable.

It is one of the strange anomalies of walking that when you are walking down a steep mountainside and you can see the flat valley bottom, you start to long for the easy stroll that it surely must be. You start to fantasise about the joy and ease of walking on the level, but by the time you get there it has gone. Your legs are tired to the point where just walking in a straight line becomes an effort and that respite that you had longed for doesn’t materialise. You are knackered and just want to stop, sit down and have a beer. Which is precisely what we did when we checked into the Cafe Moret. One beer became two and inevitably two became three as we reflected on our day and felt very pleased to have the first full days walking under our belts. Trient is only very small with a population of less than 200 and a limited number of beds available for visitors. Apart from the Cafe Moret there was the Hotel du Glacier which appeared to be closed. A couple of young lads form Wigan arrived soon after us but were turned away as Cafe Moret was full. We saw them wandering back and forth through the village and eventually leave, it probably pays to book ahead if you are staying in Trient. By eight thirty we had dined, explored the village (three times), wandered around the churchyard and sat for a  while on the bench outside the church. That’s all there is to do in Trient, so we retired to our room to plan our walk for the next day. 

Glacier de Trient with the Fenetre visible as an indent in the ridge.

 

Trient in the valley bottom and the Col De Forclaz above.

 Chamonix To Zermatt

Part 2:- The Journey down to The French Alps

Friday 5th August 1994

The fifth of August had been long awaited, it was the day of our departure for our ‘big adventure’. Together with my wife Irene, we were setting off to walk The Haute Route. There is only a short window of opportunity to do this walk without the risk of deep snow. The passes are mostly over 7,000 feet and in some cases almost up to 10,000 feet. It is essential to leave it late in the season to let the previous winter’s snow melt away, but to leave it much later would risk the fall of new snow. So sometime during the last three weeks of August is the optimum time for this walk.

The first part of the plan had already been rearranged. We had decided to travel down to Chamonix by train and get to use the brand new Eurotunnel which was going to open in May. The project ran slightly behind and although the tunnel was officially opened on the 6th May in a strange and disjointed ceremony involving The Queen and President Mitterand, it wasn’t open for passenger services until October of that year. With our train tickets already booked we decided to do it anyway and cross the channel by sea from Folkestone. We finished work on the Friday evening and donned our walking gear, picked up our rucksacks and walked up to the station, excited by what lay ahead of us. We were travelling down to London on the overnight sleeper. The slightly counter intuitive part of this was that to go south, first we had to go north, up to Carlisle, to get onto the sleeper train. There was much uncertainty about this part of the plan, there had been a series of one day rail strikes that threatened to make a mess of our immediate itinerary. But here we were at last, climbing onto the train, ready to relax and be whisked down to Euston. Trouble is, you don’t sleep much when you are being whisked! By 06:30 the train was swaying from side to side as it moved from one line to another on it’s final approach to Euston station.

We crossed London to Victoria station where we had an hour to wait for our connection to Folkestone, but instead of sitting and waiting, we headed out for a walk around Victoria. The train down to Folkestone was one of Network Southeast’s most authentic, capturing in one carriage the whole ethos of underfunding and neglect of one of our most fundamental industries. It’s filthy seats and littered isles did nothing to add to our comfort as the train lurched and creaked it’s way to the coast. Ironically, after a sleepless night on the ‘sleeper’, we slept most of the way down to Folkestone, nodding our way through the hop fields and orchards of Kent. We took the Seacat to Boulogne, just to add to all that was different about this adventure. I found it quite a strange experience, amusing even. It was like a large airport lounge on twin hulls, skimming across the sea, like a waiting room on water, not at all like the ferries.

As we entered the harbour at Boulogne-Sur-Mer it was clear to see that it is the largest fishing port in France. Employing some 7,000 of it’s inhabitants in the fishing industry the port plays a major role in the city’s economy. In Roman times it was the main crossing point to Britain and even today, the traveller has many options for crossing the channel from Boulogne to England. SNCF adopted responsibility for our safe onward passage from Boulogne to Paris and in just short of three hours we arrived at Gare du Nord. Tiredness was setting in, it was late on Saturday afternoon, a hot and sticky August afternoon on the Paris metro. No seats available and a 30 pound pack, feeling hungry and tired. We had been travelling for almost 24 hours now and I was beginning to feel like I needed to stop still for a while. But with 350 miles ahead of us, we boarded the TGV at Gare de Lyon, destination Geneva, where we had a room booked for the night.

The TGV did offer some respite, it was comfortable, air conditioned and as smooth a journey as anyone could imagine. As we slid silently out of the station and through the suburbs of Paris, past Orly airport and out into the French countryside, the train effortlessly glided up to 200 mph. We passed over hills and around carefully engineered bends, through the valley of The Seine and down towards Burgundy. The landscape began to change from wheat fields to vineyards as our progress south continued. On the seat behind us there was a little girl travelling with her Mum, three year old Sonia talked non stop and persisted in calling the train a TVG and every time her Mum corrected her. After a few hours even Mum was getting it wrong! But Sonia’s non stop chatter kept us entertained for a while and in a little over three hours we were pulling into Geneva station.

It was now after nine o’clock on Saturday evening, but all that was left for us to do now was find the Hotel St Gervais which we had booked two weeks prior to our journey. We had been travelling almost non stop for 27 hours and the fact that we had arrived in Geneva wasn’t going to stop us! We set out to find the hotel following street after street, returning to the station every 20 minutes to have another look at the map before we eventually found the hotel. It was remarkably convenient for the station, that was precisely why I booked it! but in true back packer style, we spurned the convenience and took an hour to find it. Tired, hungry and completely disorientated, we stumbled into the Hotel St Gervais. Although we were hungry, after a succession of ‘railway sandwiches’ food had lost it’s appeal. It was hard to think of food being something pleasurable anymore. So we abandoned thoughts of a meal and consumed a liquid supper. Ahh, Pression on a hot summer’s night really does take some beating….. even at £2.80 per pint! £2.80 seemed enormously extortionate, at that time, beer in the UK was less than half the price. Little did we know then that we would soon catch up to those prices.

It’s a strange phenomenon, but usually when we are on holiday Irene sees someone that she is almost certain she recognises. On this occasion it was Jimmy Knapp who, as leader of the train drivers union had been on the television news a lot in recent weeks. I was tempted to blame the beer, but as the tall, bald Scotsman came into the bar it became apparent that on this occasion it really was Jimmy Knapp. We found out later that he was in Geneva for an international railways conference. Irene told him that we had travelled all the way from the north of England to Geneva by train and asked if he had come by train. We anticipated his answer, surely he would use the railways. His answer rather wrong footed us as after a brief but thoughtful pause, he looked at us both and said ”Here on holiday are ye?”. Why don’t Railtrack want to negotiate with this man?

Sunday morning and the Paul Simon song Slip Sliding Away and particularly the line “….on the last leg of a journey we started a long time ago”, was running through my head. The last leg of this particular journey would be onto a train once more, around Lake Geneva to Martigny and then from there a mountain railway over to Chamonix, ready to start our Grande Aventure. “Last leg” also took on another meaning for me. I had twisted my knee six weeks before the walk and thrown the whole trip into doubt, but lots of rest and lots of physiotherapy had just about got me going again. What that had done though, was to stop us from walking and build up our stamina, ready for some of the huge days that lay ahead. I left our hotel room and edged sideways and slowly down the stairs. With all the sitting on trains my knee had stiffened and my cartaleges were very tender. As I edged down to breakfast I kept my thoughts to myself, but secretly I was thinking “there’s no way I can do this”, “I will make a start and see what I can do, but no way can I walk 175 miles over Alpine passes with a gammy knee!”.

So, things hadn’t got off to the best of starts, but strange though it may seem, we were having a  great time. We could not have known at this point, on a beautiful Sunday morning in Geneva, that things were about to take a dramatic turn for the worse.

In the light of the morning we could almost see the station from the pavement outside the hotel where we sat eating breakfast. We were refreshed and full of optimism and unlike the night before, we did the trip from hotel to station at the first attempt, taking us no more than five minutes. Now we had the very real pleasure of a trip with Swissrail, a very admirable organisation. I never fail to be impressed by their punctuality, courtesy, comfort and the sheer spread of their service. They appear to touch almost every community in this very mountainous country. They are the proof that railways can work and work extremely well. The high speed train gently swished along the northern shores of Lake Geneva, the mountain views increasing in height and intensity with each passing mile. Soon after we left Lake Geneva behind, we arrived at Martigny, where we changed to a mountain railway that takes us over the mountains and into France. There is a station on the border that has the rather grand title of Vallorcine Gare International. I was expecting a station of international importance, but Vallorcine Gare was a tiny little place in the mountains with no staff and certainly no passport control or border guards. From here the train bounced and lurched it’s way down the line, through countless unlit tunnels, crossing both footpaths and bridges. The railway was constructed in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the rough, mountainous terrain made me wonder about the difficulties and conditions that the engineers must have encountered.

We started to think about the walk, which we intended to start that afternoon. The walk starts from Chamonix and the first section goes up the valley to Argentiere where we would be stopping on the first night of our trek. The train we were on was due to pass through Argentiere on it’s way down to Chamonix, so we decided to get off the train there and leave our packs at the hotel before continuing down to Chamonix. This would give us the opportunity to complete the first section unencumbered by our rather large rucksacks. It made sense to give us the chance to get our stiff limbs working again after such a longtime on various trains. It seemed a longtime since we got onto the train in Carlisle and we were keen to get started on this epic walk we had been planning and looking forward to for so long. We checked into The Belvedere, a hostel more than a hotel. We booked a room that was really for four people and agreed to pay for the extra places just to give ourselves some privacy. We were glad that we had done, because when we were taken to the room it was quite small and had a double bunk bed! It was a bit like a four poster with an upper deck. It was while we were amusing ourselves over the concept of a double bunk bed that an awful realisation hit me with such force. It was one of those distressing moments when nothing makes sense anymore, when your head suddenly starts to spin as you realise that the only explanation is disastrous! Our excitement, our high spirits, our expectations and anticipation, all plunged headlong into a black hole. Somewhere on the train journey between Vallorcine and Argentiere I had been relieved of my wallet. Money, credit cards, phone card, all gone. I didn’t know if it had been stollen in one of those unlit tunnels, or if I had simply lost it, but whatever the reason, when I got off the train in Argentiere, I still had my passport, but my Visa had continued down the line with my American Express.

My immediate thoughts were that the holiday is now over, there was no way we could continue, even if we wanted too. We still had our return railway tickets and just enough in travellers cheques to get us home, which is where I wanted to be right now. I don’t know what hurt most, was it the fact that our long held plans would now come to nothing, or was it the thought that another human being would do this to me. I think it was the latter and I tried to convince myself that the wallet had been lost and not stollen, but when we did get home my card statement showed that my card had been used to buy railway tickets in Chamonix that afternoon before I managed to stop the cards. It was so difficult to pick ourselves up and form new plans about what we could do. We couldn’t get our heads around what had happened, never mind think about what to do next. I just wanted to go home.

Eventually we started to think straight again and we realised that the train would reach Chamonix and then make the return journey, stopping in Argentiere on it’s way back up to Vallorcine. So we headed over to the station with the idea of jumping on the train when it stopped briefly, for a quick look around the carriage for my ‘lost’ wallet. We talked to the woman in charge at the station and she made every effort to help us, she was brilliant, making phone calls to other stations on the line to see if anything had been handed in. She took details of what had been ‘lost’ and when. When the train came in she helped us search the carriage, surely it would be there, undetected, just lying there on the floor, just maybe, all fat and full of money, just waiting for me to reclaim it. I so much wanted it to be so and that this nightmare could end here and now and we could resume the walk, the excitement and fun and lose this feeling that people can be so unkind. Not a cat in hell’s chance is the phrase that comes to mind and maybe Irene has nine lives too, because by the time Irene left the train, the train had already left the station! Well not entirely, but in her diligence to search until the wallet was found, she really cut it fine. The train was picking up speed along the platform as Irene appeared in the doorway. “Attention! Attention!” cried the guard, but Irene’s attention was firmly fixed on achieving a soft landing on a fast disappearing platform. A broken leg, or even a twisted ankle at this stage and any reviving thoughts of the walk continuing would be well and truly squashed. But Nicole, the station manager, who seemed to have made a personal crusade out of our plight, was on hand and she caught Irene as she leapt from the moving train. British Rail have a lot to learn about total customer service and maybe Jimmy Knapp could……. no, forget it.

Any thoughts of retrieving the wallet were now diminishing and damage limitation came to mind. I cancelled the cards and the card company requested that we report the incident to the local police, after all, we would need a crime report number for any insurance claim. So we took the train down to Chamonix to visit the local Gendarmerie. The police were not at all interested, no eye contact, minimal expression, no sympathy, no empathy, just apathy. The officer filled out the necessary forms and gave us the insurance document. Other than that he just made us feel like the necessary statistic that we undoubtedly were, but just a little bit more visible compassion would have been very welcome at that point. Maybe it’s hard to display compassion when you are carrying a gun.

The Mer De Glace, high in the Chamonix Valley.

It’s surprising what a good meal and a good night’s sleep can do. It was Sunday evening and we hadn’t really had a proper meal since Friday and a good sleep in our double bunks, found us facing Monday morning feeling much more like fighting back. Most of the money for the holiday was in my bank account and we also had a few travellers cheques. I began to think that if I could transfer the money from my account to Irene’s we could still pull this off. Bare in mind that these were the days of old fashioned banking, long before the days of the internet and managing your account online. International links between banks was not something available to mere current account holders like me. So how could I achieve this?

Over breakfast I began to hatch a plan. I wondered if I could ring my branch of the TSB in Kendal, would they transfer my money into Irene’s account? I don’t even know their phone number. What if I ring the office at work, I wonder if I could get someone to find me that phone number? It was worth a try. I rang the office and asked for the Kendal TSB phone number, an unusual request that needed some fairly lengthy explanation. I didn’t have much cash left for the international call from a phone box, but tried not to sound anxious and hurried because I desperately needed that phone number. Eventually I got the number, we were getting somewhere at last! Now I had to make a make or break call. I had one chance to get this right, it is something that would never happen now in this world of security questions and passwords and probably shouldn’t really have happened then. Can you imagine ringing your bank and asking them to empty one account into another? I thought about the odds of making this happen and put it at no more than 20%, it seemed a slim chance that they would do this with no security, I could be anyone asking them to do this. I have never felt so nervous about making a phone call in my life, my heart was pounding as I opened the door on the phone box, lifted the receiver and started to dial. The phone rang and my heart beat louder. “Hello, TSB Kendal, James speaking” (not his real name). That was my first lucky break. On the Friday, before we set off on our travels, I had been into the TSB and James was the person behind the counter who served me. We had a brief, but bright and friendly conversation while he arranged my travellers cheques and he wished me a good holiday as I left. “Hi James, I don’t know if you remember me, I was in the bank on Friday….” He did remember and when I explained the situation he was very sympathetic and with out further questioning, he transferred the whole of my account balance into Irene’s account. I walked out of that phone box by the station in Argentiere and into the bright, warm, alpine sunshine. Julie Andrews was singing “The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Music”, I swear it’s true!

We were ecstatic and immediately set off walking down the valley, along the Petit Balcon-Sud to Chamonix to complete the first section of the walk. We arrived in Chamonix at lunchtime and turned around immediately to do the walk back up the valley along the Petit Balcon-Nord. I think with the excitement of getting back on track we had got carried away and did twice as much walking as we needed to. Worse still, the return up to Argentiere was uphill, we didn’t have nearly enough to drink with us and we weren’t yet acclimatised. The afternoon sun can be very hot in the Chamonix Valley and we arrived back in Argentiere, tired, hot and dehydrated, but still incredibly relieved to be free to continue out walk and by now, desperate to make progress and leave the Chamonix valley behind us. Tomorrow we would do that and walk the next section of The Haut Route over into Switzerland, but not before one last little surprise. Just when we thought we would be leaving the valley with only bad memories, we were proved wrong. As we sat in the restaurant that evening, the clouds lifted and played with the setting sun around the summit of Mont Blanc and  the surrounding Aiguilles. First the clouds and then the snow turned pink in the glow of the setting sun. An Alpenglow is a brief, magical moment that never fails to lift the spirits and is always a privilege to see.

 

                                                      An Alpenglow on Mont Blanc

 Chamonix to Zermatt

 A day by day serialisation of an epic trek in The Alps

The prelude, setting the scene.

Walking has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Not just walking to the shops, or walking to work. Not just walking as a means of getting about. No, walking for the sheer pleasure of it. Walking as a means of discovery, finding out about the landscape that surrounds us, about nature and the world we live in. Walking as a way of finding out how we react to that landscape and all that it contains, a way of understanding who we are and where we fit in.

I can still remember the first time I walked into a mountain landscape. Walking from the village of Coniston where I live, up to the Coppermines Valley. There is a point on that short walk where the steep climb stops and the ground levels out. It is the point where many millions of years ago a glacier must have paused for a while before continuing it’s slow, downward path, sculpting the valley as it went. At this point the bowl of the mountain valley opens out and swallows you up, into a world of rocks, cascades, waterfalls, crags and boulders. A world of excitement and adventure and at the same time a world of calm, solitude and beauty. As a five year old I could not have articulated what I saw, but I undoubtedly got the wow factor. I felt it then and I feel it now, everytime I walk over the brow of that hill, into the mountains, it gets a hold of me and I know that I am back in my rightful element. It is like passing through an invisible door, into my world, a world where I have always been at home, the comfort is immense and the awe and wonder of that place never leaves me.

Coppermine's Valley and Coniston Old Man

From that first experience I wanted to see more. I wanted to go back there time and time again, each time going a little further exploring a little more in what seemed an unending wilderness of untouched beauty. The thrill of having the freedom to roam, unhindered by roads, hedges and fences, in a wild mountain landscape. Crossing cold, clear streams of bright, fresh water. Watching for buzzards and ravens soaring above and foxes, hares and stoats on the ground. The warm sunshine and the constant sound of the skylark in summer. I couldn’t get enough of it, which must have been something of a pain for my long suffering Dad. Having worked hard all week and only having Sunday where he could maybe have some rest, I would be restless to get out as soon as the sun came up. I was still too young to venture into these places on my own and early on a Sunday morning, with the village seemingly still asleep, my Dad and I ventured into the hills, where he showed me all the significant places to look out for. The various mine shafts to look out for, where it was best to cross a stream, where the birds nest were and how to recognise signs of different animals. Slowly but most surely, my understanding and most importantly, my respect for the world around me grew, until I was deemed responsible enough to venture into these places on my own.

Now that I had been granted the freedom of the mountains I could walk all day and join together all the smaller walks and paths in the area. The whole picture came together and walking was not just something I did in my spare time, it was me, it was who I had become. 

Over the next few years I took every opportunity to be out on the fells, or if the weather prevented it I explored the woods on the lower slopes around the village. I was never really a solitary walker and always found friends who were willing to come along and share the adventure. Primary school offered new opportunities too with the head teacher being a keen walker he would often take a group of us out on a short walk after school, or a longer one on Saturdays. 

So somewhere in the years that followed, I moved from exploring my little patch of mountain ground that I was lucky enough to have on my doorstep, to wanting to walk through The Alps, from Chamonix to Zermatt. In some ways it seems like a giant leap, but really it is just an extension of the same feelings, the same inquisitiveness and the same love of mountains and the great outdoors that took me back to the copper mines valley time and time again, all those years ago....

Tomorrow:- The journey down to Chamonix and the French Alps.

Walking locally

Due to the Coronavirus all our walking is necessarily of a very local nature at the moment, at least until the lockdown is relaxed, who knows when. However, being lucky enough to live in Coniston, that's no real hardship with lots of great walking right on our doorstep. The weather has been kind this last week and spring is advancing fast. Here are some images from the last week

The lambing season has just begun here. 

Beautiful calm days by the lake at Coniston Sailing Club

The huge Elizabethan chimneys at Coniston Hall.

A slight haze across the lake in the early morning

Back along the former railway line. The Coniston branch line belonged to the Furness Railway Company and closed to passengers in 1959.

Primroses in bloom.

A variation in colour for this Primrose.

Home Fell from Low Yewdale.

Yewdale Beck at Low Yewdale.

The Gondola, a late start to this season. Waiting for the tourists to be allowed back.

Empty seats beside the lake.

Cafes closed. Bluebird Cafe

An Erythronium or Dog's Tooth Violet growing beside Church Beck. Not a native wildflower, it must be an escapee from a garden.

School closed and a village in lockdown.

Cirque de Navacelles

Ever since our first brief visit in 1986 I have wanted to re visit this amazing geological wonder. On our recent visit to France we got the chance to at last make our long overdue return.

On the southern edge of The Cevennes, The Cirque de Navacelles is a large erosional landform with an incised meander. It is in the Departement Gard, very close to the boundary with Herault. From the plateau at the top, to the small village down in the bottom, it is roughly 1,000 feet of descent.

The Cirque was formed from a dissected plateau and eroded by a meander in the river Vis which eventually broke through. This created an oxbow lake which eventually dried out and created a very rich crescent of arable land which can easily be seen in the photographs.

The small village of Navacelles nestles in the bottom of the cirque. The village and area around it have their own micro climate, which can be considerably hotter than up on the plateau, or Cause Blandas.

There is a beautiful old bridge spanning the river Vis on the edge of the village. You can walk down (very hot) or drive down. Some sites advise against the drive down, but there is nothing dangerous about it, it is a beautiful drive and remember, if you walk down, you will probably have to climb back up that 1,000 feet of ascent later in the day!

The old village of Navacelles in the bottom of the cirque. The population has recovered from a low of 190 in 1990 to a healthy 335 today.

There is a fabulous waterfall in the village and some very tempting rock pools near the top of the falls.

You can just wander around the village, or if time allows, take a walk down the gorge of the river Vis. Take water with you, it can get very hot down there.

The road out, up the southern side of the cirque provides excellent views of the former oxbow lake.

Back up on the plateau there is an auberge with a well placed viewing terrace, should you be in need of refreshment.

Viper's Bugloss.

Many wildflowers typical of the area grow here in what has recently become a World Heritage Site.

The geology of this area is astounding and well worth a visit if you are within driving distance.


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