World Cup Road Trip World Cup 2006 – The Road Trip – Barcelona to Berlin

900 kms (exactly!)

Well I made to the Alps ! Am in Chamonix, right up against the Mont Blanc Massif, just a few km’s away from Switzerland and Italy. It’s amazing up here, this is probably going to be a long post ‘cos I’ve seen so much today.

The journey up from Barcelona was pretty smooth, after bidding farewell to the city from the two towers (cheers to Pete & Chris for seeing me off!), i headed north east up past Girona and said ‘Adios/Adieu’ to Spain/Catalunya at La Jonquera. Had a pretty rough ride past Perpignan and Narbonne ‘cos of the wind, it really blows hard through there, on one occasion I nearly got blown into a juggernaut! After bidding farewell to the Med I chewed up the miles past Avignon and Orange and ended up near Montelimar, just south of Valence.

Next day (5th June), and the scenery started getting good as I slowly wound up into the mountains. I stopped for a while at Grenoble which sits on the confluence of the Isere and Drac rivers, very picturesque with the Alps off in the distance. Started getting a bit worried at the amount of snow sitting on the peaks, it was looking pretty white. But ‘Bronny’ (nickname for the car, Lucy F – does that name fit ?!?) handled the drive no worries, although the mountain bends certainly tested her a few times. Especially when I had to take a detour just after Albertville cos the road to Chamonix was closed ! Up through, a mountain village, over a small pass and down the other side, I had visions of hitting six foot of snow and needing snow chains … but as it happened the road had just been closed for repairs, and I came down into a wide green classic Alpine Valley. Then it was into real mountain country, the drive down from Megeve to Chamonix revealed the whole valley stretching away towards Geneva, split in two by the grey ribbon of the motorway, whilst towering mountain ridges rose away to the north.

Got to Chamonix late in the evening, staying at a nice little mountain hostel (cheers Benny!) just outside the main town. There’s beautiful views of Mont Blanc and the surrounding massif Last night the dusk light over the mountains was really good, the top of the mountains glowing as the sun westered behind them. And at nighttime, the mountain stars were incredible, there’s hardly any ambient light or pollution, so they’re real bright.

Anyway onto today, and my trip up to the La Aiguille du Midi & Italy !!! Looking up from the Chamonix valley, the Aiguille du Midi towers above the town, just to the left of Mont Blanc. The cable car up there runs in two stages, the first from the valley floor at 1000m, up to the mid station at 2300m. Then it’s a steep steep ascent above sheer black rock, ice and snow until you arrive at the summit at 3800m. Its one hell of a piece of engineering, I’ve been on cable cars before, normally the ascent flattens out as you arrive at the peak, but this one keeps going at about 60 degrees right until the end. The views from the top are almost beyond words, an amazing panaroma of the whole Mont Blanc Massif and the Chamonix Valley. It’s real harsh landscape, no green meadows and Heidi here, just black jutting peaks with streams of cloud blowing off them, everything blanketed with thick white snow. The ‘Glacier de Bossons’ tumbles off down the mountainside, a river of ice, as above Paragliders are out catching the thermals, sharing the sky with little black birds of prey, gliding and swooping in the alpine air. And then there’s the adventurers, the hardy folk that are actually out walking, climbing & skiing the mountain. There was even a few camping out in the snowfields, respect is due !

Then on the recommendation of Bernad & Brendan, a couple of young Irish lads in their 70’s, i caught the gondola over the ‘Glacier de Geants’, otherwise known as the ‘Valléé Blanche’ to the Hellbronner peak in Italy !! It was an incredible journey, just suspended over this huge glacier, blue crevasses and ice punctuating the snow, the Mont Blanc peak rising above us. Again there’d been some hardcore engineering to set this up, at one point the gondola went through a tiny little cutting in the rock, looked like we’d never fit through and in fact it actually banged the side as we went through. Then when the gondola stopped for 5 minutes halfway across, it started to get a little scary. But we made it, and I finally set foot on Italian soil. OK, it was only about 100 metres across the border, and I couldn’t go anywhere else, but what the heck, it was Italy, and to top it all, in the mountainside there was a picture of the Pope (the new one, Benedict) he’d beaten me there by a couple of months! Asked the Italians serving in the cafe there how they though Italy would do in the world cup, the answer was a shrug of the shoulders and ‘Brasil are too good’. There’s a lot of people thinking that.

The weather was closing in on the return, so was glad to get back to France and back down into the valley. On the way down there was a Japanese chick that was suffering from Altitude sickness, she’d collapsed and they were getting her back down the mountain as quick as possible. I certainly noticed the difference in altitude, just walking up a couple of flights of stairs to the viewpoints really took a lot of effort, at the top I was pretty breathless, and a little light headed. It was also pretty cold up there, one of the lift attendants said it was about -9 Celsius, though the sun and bright blue skies helped take the edge off that. I saw one girl that had no idea what she was coming up to, she’d was wearing a summer dress and flip flops, she was literally freezing up there, Don’t you know we’re up one of the highest mountains in Europe love ?! Some people have no idea !

So anyway today’s been a day to remember, some of the most breathtaking and incredible landscapes I’ve ever seen, absolutely amazing. I’ve posted a few of the photos up in the Gallery, check ‘em out. Tomorrow I head up the valley and into Switzerland, then I’ve got the run across the Swiss Alps to Zurich, hope Bronny holds together well, cos there’s a couple of 2000 metre passes to head across.

Shit, that was a long post, hope you kept going through it ! Guess by the time i post again i’ll have arrived in Germany. Only 3 days now until the good stuff starts. Bring on the Football !