IanMcL

Packing at last... read more

So its Saturday night 3rdAugust. Catch up time again as we have been too busy (and the wifi has turned ferral again). So, Thursday 1st Another walk day. This one a 12 km around La Roque Gageac. LRG is another old town but built into the cliff and right on the river. The walk takes us through the town, up over the cliff and into the farmland and forest behind. This is a beautiful walk on lovely shaded tracks. Plenty of farms of various types, with the most interesting being a Fois Gras farm with hundreds of geese. I imagine they would be fat but they actually look quite fit. We startled 2 deer in the forest as they crossed at speed 5 metres in front of us. Beautiful animals. We think we saw a marmat ... read more

Tuesday July 23 to Saturday July 17 OK so catch up time again. We have been relatively slack over the past few days since our crunch day in Cinque Terre. Tuesday was washing day in the morning – and meant getting some use out of our balcony and our swimming pool and the beaches (such as they are), but somehow, we still do a fair bit of walking. Wednesday was much the same. BTW, our passports caught up with us on Tuesday so we can sleep a bit easier ….. Lunch and afternoon tea and supper was spent on our balcony. Shaded and breezy to relieve the hot. All up, Sestri was brilliant. So Thursday was another big train day. What a mix up! Our first leg was a cock-up. We actually had first class tickets ... read more

Day 12 Saturday 20 July Caught the early bus to Bolzano and arrived at 10.30. Good trip and the hotel, a bit of an olde world 5star hotel is great and we are upgraded. Sweet! We wait in the attached rear garden while our room is madeup. Great garden as well. We set up in our room at 11 and head off around town. Market day and it is very busy. We do the roll and cheese and ham thing for lunch and it works great. Bolzano or Bozen in the local Ladin language is the capital of the South Tyrol district and is as Austrian as any Austrian town. Very attractive. After checking out the market, the town, the cathedral and a river walk, we headed back to the hotel for a rest . Chris ... read more

Day 10 Thursday July 18. With adequate improvement in Chris’ knee, we decided to join the ‘easier’ walking group again today. Today we head off by chartered bus over into the next valley. We walked to the gondola which again took us to a high plane. Today’s walk sees us head off to a distant ‘Hutte’ along a fairly rambling and undulating track – but not too many difficult ups or downs before lunch. That all sounds too easy so Hughie decided to step in and throw rain at us for the first time on a walk. Chance to test all of our wet weather gear. The surrounding thunderstorms were a little worrying as we were very exposed but they were safely distant. Lots of different wild flowers here – including a couple of Lily varieties ... read more