It all started in a mad rush of drunken tiredness for myself. The antics of the night before were having quite the detrimental effect on the organisation of my packing. Rachel and Bernie turned up around 1030 and helped me sort my life out for 30 min before we left. We then traveled to bri's house to do some final sorting then left to pick up the caravan. After talking to the most informative caravan rep lady ever, we finally got on the way two hours later. A short and some what scary drive down country lanes lead us to the first of many 3 point turns and eventually the main road. Jesus drove first getting used to the clutch smashing the gears, and down the motorway we went. After a short while Rachel started to change to an awful colour of green so we had our first seat change to prevent messes in the back. Several hours later we arrived at the ferry port...only one hour off schedule.
During the drive down antics had started and challenges were issued. Sadly only two team members remembered theirs and stuck to it through the duration, but as I'm writing this we are travelling home so I can't reveal it's nature. We got off the caravan and headed for the lift. Bri stomped on full of kiwi eagerness and energy. Once she stepped on the lift,the rest of us in a very British way decided to double check the van, so she went to fly solo on the ferry. We couldn't decide if either we were lost or she was lost, but after 30min of searching we gave up and headed for food. We all had quite different experiences of our first taste of travelling cuisine. Jesus went for a classic fish and chip whilst I pushed the boat out and went for a lamb curry. The French man who served me didn't live up to the reputation of beautiful food being displayed in an appetising manor. I would best describe my meal as abandoned "without a fuck given" on my plate.
-Side note, Chloe is lovely and I am a massive dICk !
Part way through the meal the lone kiwi saunters into the restaurant. She was demanding food and swearing like a drunk tramp from Liverpool about how she had been looking for us, then got bored and went up to look at the sea.
At this point the main features of the "expedition" started;
1st the game,
2nd the game,
3rd random object.
Turns out that Bri is awful at random object. Despite the fact she claims to have never been gotten by Tom Rose. Her and I ended up being random objected together. At one point Rachel joined and we became the 3 person random object chain. We ended up spinning in circles around banisters and other fixed objects including a urinal.
This all ended when Bri refused to shop lift. I had random objected her in the shop and she didn't want too buy the object.
Side note-Jesus says: "The trip was fun..."
Day 2.
Soon after we arrived in France, I fell asleep so can't comment much on the night time driving. The previous nights antics had taken there toll. I had started to talk to myself in the navigator seat, so I retired to the back to sleep. I woke up an hour or so north of Lyon, with Jesus driving. Rachel was asleep in the back after her stint of driving. Jesus plodded on a while longer with me before needing to have a break due too being awake for ....... ( a fuck of a long time),
so up stepped Rachel for several hours. One very delayed sun rise later, we arrived at Lyon's motorway junction. What followed afterwards consisted of many wrong turns, wasted euros on silly motorway errors and stupid French roads. Eventually we made it out of Lyon's shit roads and cracked on down in the direction of Grenoble. From Grenoble we started towards the ill fated Briancon.
Driving to Briancon was both long, beautiful winding roads, tunnels and our first proper view of mountains and waterfalls. After a navigational fuck up, several wrong French roads and a couple 3 point turns later, we found ourselves at the base of our first Via Ferrata.
Excitement was a plenty and we were all busy getting our harnesses and bags sorted, ready too clip on! At the base of the first climb, Rachel asked who else has been on a Via Ferrata before, (a question that should have been asked months ago). Turns out it was just her so a short lesson of the do's and don'ts followed. Up we charged, Jesus shot off ahead whilst we followed shaping pictures and enjoying ourselves. During the first 10 min, Chloe decided that her lanyard was too long, wank and shit.
We had a short walk back off our first Via Ferrata that took us roughly an hour, then moved onto the second one. During the first section we had a choice left or right. Once again navigation left us and the team split. Bri and Bernie went left. Chloe, Rach, Jesus and I went right, wrongly, our side was steep with very lose large rocks. We did meet the more sensible members of the group at the top of the path to re-join at the Via Ferrata. This lead us around and up a rock face to a broad ledge of bare rock and grass. Here we rested and re grouped.
The Via Ferrata lead into a gorge which was awesome, and lead us back onto the face for a slightly overhung "spicy" descent.
For some of the group "spicy" was a new word, it's a climbing term that means dangerous or unnerving. However, spicy became a kind of grading system for the trip. I shall call it the spice scale, generally it was judged on spiciness of currys e.g.
Lamb Vindaloo
Tikka
Korma
So on it went until we would come to a spicy part and someone would shout what kinda curry they thought it was.
Back at the van we set off hunting for a campsite. This was when we discovered that campsites in the alps have an off season and that we were traveling in it. Several campsites were tracked down and they were all closed. Eventually we camped outside the last one to enjoy our first proper night on the road.
Day 3
I woke early and went for a wander in the local village. Finding a village fountain, I had a quick wash and returned to find everyone still asleep. While lurking outside the van the owners of the campsite, that we where hiding outside of, arrived. With very sad, broken French I said hello and sorry until they went away. Hurriedly we slowly had breakfast and sorted a route for the day.
That days plan was firstly to stock up on food, secondly to do the Via Ferrata above Grenoble. Sadly only one of those things was achieved. We did however spend a great deal of time hunting for campsites and planning routes for further days so that we wouldn't waste any more time.
After stocking up and plotting all the Via Ferratas onto the map, we headed for the only campsite that would pick up the phone. Thanks to Rachel's French skills, which only just surpass my own, she got us booked into a campsite for the night. There we enjoyed showers for the first time in 3 days, charged everything In the world, and enjoyed free wifi.
Whilst here Bernie and Bri hunted down a cave that we had passed.
We had dinner in the communal room and planned the next 2 days worth of adventures. Through the highly trained organisational skills of Chloe and Rachel, we had no reason not to get shit done.
Day 4
We got up early and cracked on, heading towards our first Via Ferrata of the day- a long grade 2 high up on a valley that started from a white water rafting site.
Once we had reached it and after several hours, 2 bridges and a wet slab climb later, we had to walk down a very twisty road.
On the way down we were passed by some British cyclists hooning it down the mountain around the hair pins. All of them shouted hello before going by except one, he stealthed up and scared true shit out of me. I heard a noise from behind and stepped to one side to look, nearly stepping into his path.
Once back at the van doing final prep before driving off, (sorting bags and drinks) a truck driver wanted to hitch up to his trailer which was just in front of us. He proceeded to get very close to us while we were trying to reverse away.
Off we shot again, the second Via Ferrata of the day was a 400 metre waterfall. As soon as I saw it I shit my pants, 400m straight up is very daunting. Off we went stomping up a grave track towards the biggest waterfall I have ever seen. I set off ahead to find the base of the water fall to try and alleviate my fears. It didn't work but we all gathered at the base and negotiated the route to find the start of the Via Ferrata. What followed was one of the coolest things I have ever done. I was following up at the end of the group. I saw Rach, Jesus and Bernie disappear off while Bri, Chloe and I worked our way up, taking pictures and pushing ourselves. At 7 we all gathered again in a grassy meadow at the top of the cliff. Once we made the top we realised that we had very little time to make the walk down before it was dark so we began to run.
15 min in we came to a large hut/refuge. Bri found a man and asked for water. Would you believe it that the man that owned the mountain refuge didn't know the way down. I can only assume he was born there and never left his house.
We ran on as the light faded. Many jokes were made about "taking the hobbits to Isengard" all at Bri's expense of course. We made it down an hour later just as the light completely faded, and made camp in the lay-by for the night.
Day 5
We awoke in a charming little builders lay-by. While preparing breakfast we saw some what appearsed too be builders getting ready for work. I carried on making breakfast ( eggy bread my standard breakfast job). We heard a helicopter approaching and all looked out the windows too see if we could see it.
