Day 8 Hiking, Champex, Switzerland

Hikers on the TMB

To date we have hiked 116 K and climbed over 6000 M. Today, however, was, as described by our Routcard, "the least demanding of the tour", except for the mental challenge of route finding through villages. We hiked a mere 15.5 K and only climbed  500 M. No high passes to cross. We are now in the very pretty Swiss Val (vally) Ferret, the home of the famous St. Bernard Dogs.

We have been seeing the most fabulous vegetable gardens. The first was in the center of Courmayeur, both a vegetable and cut flower garden, complete with a little, bent over, old lady watering. Yesterday, in La Fouly, there was a garden with beautiful pumpkins. Today, we walked past several more, one even had black berries.

Our hotel, the Splendide, in Champex is quite spectacular. We have a huge room on the 3rd floor with two balconies looking out over the valley to snow covered peaks beyond. We have been very happy with all of the accommodation arranged by our tour company, Alpine Exploratory.

Our hike today took us on a long woodland trail with many wood carvings cut from tree trunks, all very quaint. There were deer, rabbits, mushrooms, a pig etc. etc.

Our water source for our daily hikes has been a series of water spouts running constantly into wooden or stone troughs. The water is potable but we do not know where it comes from. Just like we do not know what the Alpine cattle herders do with all the fresh milk everyday. We have heard there is a festival taking place after we leave, celebrating the cows coming down from the high pastures. Having walked through several of the herds, and listened to their bells even when we could not see them, it is a shame we will miss the event!

Tomorrow is sightseeing. We will hit the tourist office bright and early to plan our day!

PS: Late note - we learned that, during the summer, all the milk from the Alpine cows is made into cheese on site in "cheese factories" and stored in "cheese cellars". No wonder we have cheese  in several courses every meal.