A Walk to the Water - The Film

Jake (to the right of the photo) spent some time producing this special array of video diaries, scenic footage and photographs, accompanied by some splendid songs. Click on the link above the photograph and follow our adventure as it happened. The film is presented on Jake's photography page for those interested in exploring further.

A Walk to the Water in film

Time to Reflect

Four weeks after our toes felt the Mediterranean Sea I sat at my desk, glancing every now and then through the sash window in my room. It was drizzling. Surrounding me were piles of books, diaries, notes and photographs from our trip. I was in a particularly decisive mood and had spent several hours gleaning as many facts and figures from the materials in front of me as was possible. As my bottom began to numb from the hard wooden chair I deemed it time to stop. So, here are the results.

·         Days – 130, beginning April 14^th 2013, ending August 21^st 2013.

·         Overall distance walked - 2,842.9km (as the crow flies, Bristol to Menton is 1000km).

·         Steps taken – Danny; 5 million, Jake; 5.1 million (because his legs are one centimeter shorter than mine).

·         Number of countries – 8; England, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland and Italy.

·         Total ascent and descent – 60,000 metres, that’s nearly 7 Everest’s!

·         Tick tally (combined) – 195 (Jake; 117, Danny; 78 - only counted if imbedded beneath the skin. Number of ticks found on bodies likely to be quadruple the figure).

·         Highest point - Col de L’iseran, 2770m.

·         Hottest day – 38 degrees centigrade.

·         Greatest distance covered in a day – 42kms.

·         Blisters tally – 3 – unbelievably Jake had no blisters, the three were mine.

·         Accommodation – 70% camping, 25% hotels/Bed and Breakfasts, 5% donated shelter.

·         Average daily distance - 21.8 (24.1km excluding rest days).

·         Enjoyment ratings (out of 10) – Highest 9.5, lowest 2, average 6.3, mode 7.

·         Painkillers – Jake; every day for headaches, Danny; 3 for headaches.

·         Number of scroggin (trail mix) components – 47.

·         Number of falls (all the way to the ground) – Jake 7, Danny, 3.

·         Number of fellow walkers who joined us for a section – 14.

·         Wettest country – Belgium.

·         Largest city – Bristol (432, 000), closely followed by Antwerp(en) (408, 000).

·         Capital cities – Luxembourg City.

The rain was still toppling from the sullen sky, and as I stood to get a closer look I was reminded of the dull ache that remained across the sole of my feet; would it ever fade?  

                     

Sospel to Menton - Day One Hundred and Twenty-nine to One Hundred and Thirty

We packed our bags for the last time in the dim pre-dawn light and left Sospel. As the boulangerie ovens burnt strong, the leaves of the plane trees played with the warm Mediterranean breeze.

Once above the town, we ate a box of Chocolate Noisettes and watched the sun ripple across the terracotta roof tiles. The path climbed by elderberry, apple, blackberry and plum, then fell into a deep forest of holly, pine and beech, clad with hugging ivy. Mountains gave way to hills. We picked lavender and margerets and strung them to our packs before reaching our final col. Six million steps after leaving our front door we sat on the grass and looked down onto the Mediterranean sea. We were still 1,000 metres above sea level, a fact felt as we slipped down the rocky path towards Menton. To the east was the Italian coastline, and to the west lay Monaco; the grandeur of Monte Carlo rolled into the sea where million dollar yachts left wakes of wealth.

'Menton, 1hr', read a sign. We began to run, a suggestion of the track gradient, but more notably our excitement. Houses began to appear and soon we were catching glimpses of azure through the alleyways. We emerged onto the Promenade Reine Astrid and made for a crested moon of beach, small and stoney, where the waves met our toes. As the water lapped over my shoulders I felt weightless.

St Etienne to Sospel - Day One-Hundred and Twenty to One-Hundred and Twenty Nine

As Jake's stomach cramps faded and his bowels fortified, the baton of illness once more was passed back to me. We had ran out of both toilet paper and Imodium, a recipe, I assure, for disaster. Via various tenuous links, Jake had miraculously acquired a connection in the local hospital, where an angel was waiting for him with eight sachets of magic powder.

On our second day in St Etienne we ambled amongst the market stalls, taking the rare opportunity to buy fruit and vegetables, which we ate as we poured over the forty-first, and final, map of our journey.

Eagerness saw us find the path as morning broke. We climbed zigzags to the modern ski town of Auron, where we sat on a bench amongst a host of music-blaring shops and eateries: Free Style, Point Break and my personal favourite, The White Grouse Pub. I ate far too many banana flavoured sweets as our feet took us briskly away from Auron and over the Col De Bianon. Derelict stone farmhouses, filled with lavender, rose bushes and untamed raspberries, led us down to the village of Roya, where children played in the dirt, and grass and clothes hung from drooping washing lines. We set up camp by a bustling torrent. I picked grass seeds from my socks, noting how the previously mundane had become, dare I say it, habitually enjoyable.

Jake had spent the night sharing his pillow with a beautifully green caterpillar that stretched lethargically when we woke. It was the 14th August and our granddad's eightieth birthday. Ted, undeniably, was our inspiration. We discussed his feats whilst steadily ascending to the Col De Collette, where a possible view of the Mediterranean Sea was scarpered by a thick haze. A flock of sheep jangled in the valley below, diverging into lines, like a drop of paint blown through a straw.

The day was beginning to draw to an end, when we bumped into 'Spiritual', a character we had met several times over the previous two weeks. He held out a hand and offered me a stone, more specifically a piece of dolomitic limestone from the Hanging Valley in which we had just passed through. ''It's for the heart'', he gestured. Having snapped our toothbrushes in half several months earlier in a bid to reduce weight, it was difficult for me to drop the weighty stone into my side pocket, but I figured an unhealthy heart would be heavier. We pitched in a dry river gully, which, as the thunderstorm hit, became rather more wet, provoking the ridiculous visual of me scaling the steep forest slope with a tent over my head in the drizzling rain in search of flat ground.

The village of Raure, perched precariously onto the forested walls of La Vallee de la Tinee, was magical, not only for its thirst-quenching lavoir, but for its friendly locals, its loaded flower boxes and its shuttered windows. Deep in the valley's trough I felt a wave of nostalgia for England - oak, apple trees and blackberries - but was soon reminded that home was far from close by, as trees of fig, cherry, olive and pomegranate bowed across the path.

St Dalmas proved to be one of the most poignant junctions of our journey thus far; we were to diverge away from the GR5, a path that we had been treading for a quarter of a year, and instead join the GR52, a more raw and rugged path, that took us back northwards. After a night camped amongst bilberry and juniper shrubs, labyrinthed by deer tracks, our route swung to the east. Mushrooms of all shapes and sizes  began to appear, some like cups of cappuccino on stalks, others like flattened peaches, and one species, whose purple concave hats made me think, quite awfully, of an inverted baboon's bottom. We diverted briefly from the GR52, stepping foot in Italy, courtesy of the Col De Fenestre, then the following morning broke through the Pas De Mont Colombe, a shoulder-wide gap in the ridgeline, 2,500 metres up, that revealed a show of radiance as beams of hazy light shot across the valley like an asymmetric kaleidoscope.

We passed a lake drifting with ice, a proud bouquetin and a young German boy who sang 'Survivor', by Destiny's Child, at the top of his voice. Who could blame him? As we climbed through the Baisse De Valmosque, I noted my hunger. Our bodies were craving 5,000 calories a day, but were only getting 2,000. With relish, we ate jam sandwiches whilst looking down into the Vallee De Merveilles, our wildest scene yet. Huge chunks of angled rock, like piles of lego, dusted purple, green and red, lay on the valley slopes.

Our final night of wild camping was spent on a col swamped with mist and cloud. By morning the skies had cleared and we watched the sun rise over the eastern Alps. A daddy long-legs strode across a tangle of brambles. The walk to Sospel took us down to 350 metres, the closest we had been to sea level in five weeks.

Modane to St Etienne De Tinee - Day One Hundred and Eleven to Day One Hundred and Twenty

The Bee Gees played whilst I brushed my teeth in front of a mirror. My lips had cracked from the sun and wind, and on my chin sat a bird's nest of hair. We left Modane up a steep, needled path, appreciative of the fading sound of the town. I noted Jake's composed, regulated breathing compared to my open mouthed, gormless expression, which allowed air to come and go as it pleased, and flies, for that matter. Just past the tiny hamlet of Les Herviors, whose gardens were coloured with pastel-yellow foxgloves, Jake ground to a halt. The vaseline applied earlier in the day had done little to reduce the friction between thighs and berries (if you know what I mean). Thus, in an act of experimental desperation, Jake found himself taping something other than his toes. For those interested, it seemed to do the trick and, yes, we have applied for a patent on the design. We gained 1,200 metres then ate jam sandwiches whilst watching a cyclist undress to his tan lines, before washing himself with devoted enthusiasm for what must have been half an hour. We left the splashing gentleman, soon cresting the Col de la Vallee Etroite, where a more rugged, scree dominated view took our eyes. An old lady stepped by as we rested, "Bon journo". This, it seemed, was an Italian valley. That night we slept by a flume of cascading water over quartzite.

In the days that followed we pushed south through forests of larch, windswept cols and prairies thick with tussocks of grass, like the manes of a hundred sleeping lions. On the Col de la Lauze we looked west through a frame of two mountains. Crows flew the valley, doubling their numbers with shadows that matched their owners' acrobatics. Through a particularly clement valley my unintentional weight loss programme finally got to me as the map case, which used to fit snuggly between my arm and body, slid out for the umpteenth time. "Fucking map", I raged at the inanimate object that, to be fair, took the critique on board like a true professional.

Our Modane food supplies were running low - we squashed breadcrumbs between thumb and fingers and dipped the unconsolidated structure into a pot of jam before rushing it mouthwards. Our arrival, therefore, into the medieval town of Briancon, which boasted both ancient forts and not-so-ancient supermarkets, was all the more welcome. We ambled the bunting -clad, cobbled streets and then checked into the wonderfully cheap Pension de Ramparts, where a sign forbidding eating in the room was contradicted impressively with the provision of our own kettle and microwave. When I returned from the shop, Jake revealed, through words as opposed to the more visual option of physical matter, that he had been vomiting. He spent the day in bed and the following day in considerable discomfort as we crossed over the Col de Ayes. In fact, it was not until we dropped our bags on the south side of the Col that Jake finally showed a smile following a mountain -splitting trump. "I have been waiting five hours for that!".

We had been promised bad weather by a "meteo" report slapped on the window of a closed Office D'Tourisme. The prediction came to fruition as we rounded a bulbous crest to strong winds that blew the hat off my head. White dust swirlled across the path from the crumbling Ravine De Ruin Blanche below and conifers slouched at their bases, as the gale played their woodwork like an eerie orchestra of pipes. When the rain came it didn't stop for a day and a night.

I unzipped the tent the following morning to valley walls awash with bands of cloud. A lack of resupply points over the following one hundred kilometres left our packs filled with four days' worth of food. To accompany, Jake was still carrying the heavy weight of illness. We were thus grateful for the magnificient Ubaye Valley and the Parc Nationale De Mercantor that distracted our tired minds. We swam, as bare as the day we were born, in the turquoise Lac D'agnel, where unsuspecting walkers diverted their eyes. A golden eagle soared and the chamois scrambled along the scree.

With just ten days of our walk remaining, we lay inside the tent, pitched (with permission) on the grass of a cemetery. Starring at the tent ceiling I began characterised our bed-sharing insects. Zany Zac appreciated personal space, Nostalgic Nigella lived forever in the past and Timid Tina had joined a dating agency in a bid to improve her self-confidence. As I drifted off to sleep I heard Jake blasphemise firmly at Tina; her new found confidence had put her dangerously close to a hand not afraid to swot.

Landry to Modane - Day One Hundred and Six to One Hundred and Ten

I grappled at the tent door in total darkness, terrified that death was upon us. The trampling grew louder and my panic stronger. Finally, the zip unlodged from its buckle. Below in the valley the lights of Landry glimmered and I realised that the dozen or so charging giraffes, that had somehow found themselves in the depths of the French Alps, were, in fact, not going to crush every bone in my body.

When morning came Jake and I packed up our gear and descended down the steep forest path into Landry, where we bought pains au chocolat and found the train station. Tumbleweed rolled by as a hot wind blew through the tracks, making my eyes water. At 12.10, the rails rattled and a dusty, old train ground to a halt. The doors bounced open and there stood Phil, bearded and beaming. We pushed out of town, fuelled by Golden Delicious apples, and soon joined the Tonturin River where Phil stopped to look at an ant, "This could be a long trip", Jake steered Phil's way. We continued climbing as the sky grew ominous. "Are you not scared of the storm?", one lady questioned after we informed her of our intentions to camp. The Nant Puters waterfall tumbled from a limestone overhang, its waters transformed into mist before reaching the rocks below. We camped opposite, sharing stories late into the night. It must have been after 9.00 p.m. by the time our heads hit the pillow.

The thunder and lightning came at 4.00 a.m. "You all right, Phil?" Predicting good weather, Phil had opted to sleep outside. Through the pelting rain I heard a muffled response, "Yeah". Several hours later I pulled open the tent door to reveal a suction-packed Phil. He had spent the night in what can only be described as a giant, orange plastic bag, which clung to his body, puddled with rainwater. The temperature had dropped thirty degrees from the previous day. Winding through boulders that surrounded D'Entre Le Lac, I watched as mountain spires came and went through the wind and rain. We reached a refuge where a Frenchman pointed through the cloud, "The pass is that way". As my bones chilled to the marrow, I acknowledged for the first time in one hundred and six days, that shorts were perhaps the wrong attire. After just three hours of hiking we arrived in the walker-despised town of Tignes Le Lac, bought a hot chocolate then checked into a cheap hotel. An unjustifiable fify five euros was spent on a lavish salad which we prepared then ate with a bottle of Old Nick rum, a sickly sweet spirit that pushed conversation inevitably towards romance.

We left Tignes swiftly, soon finding ourselves on rugged terrain, where horses roamed and marmots called. The Col De L'Iseran signalled the highest point of our entire walk (2,770 metres). Despite the extensive sweet stand, the moment was anticlimatic and we made our way down the southern route, glimpsing a baby marmot as it wobbled out of its burrow. By late afternoon our feet were ready to rest. We resupplied in the quaint town of Bessans, where a wood-carved fawn rode a serpent in the town centre, then pitched our tent amongst hazel. Cows jangled and the L'Arc Riviere rumbled, water over stone.

The following day our path led us further down the valley. Phil's glowing sunburn, which resided most seriously upon his ankles, thighs, arms and hands, had forced him to wear his only long sleeve top, a thick hoodie, no doubt uncomfortable on a day where the temperature gauge sat above thirty degrees. A market strang out along the main street of Lanflevillard. We bought a melon each and ate it with jam sandwiches, a new lunch time recipe, by the town lavoir.

The first of August signified the final month of our walk to the water. It was a chill morning and dew sat on the grass and in the contours of Phil's body. Jake and I watched as the sun shone through the trees on the cliff top above our pitch. Through squinted eyes, the rays curled with my lashes, forming a catherine wheel frozen in time.

Since the beginning of the week I had noticed a transformation from alpine to mediterranean; vegetation dried, heat radiated and crickets clicked. Modane, Phil's parting town, was a relatively uninspiring place. Perhaps most entertaining was a 'sign of distances'. Monaco (just a few kilometres from Menton) sat 250 kilometres from Modane. Our route would take us over twice this distance. Phil's initial plan of sleeping in a park in Lyon whilst waiting for a bus was altered when he learnt of an earlier departure. He left as the sun dipped behind the mountains.

In the five days that he was with us, Phil walked 107 kilometres (that's about 125,000 steps), ascended 4,600 metres and descended much the same, gained first degree burns on thirty per cent of his body, clocked a dozen hairy stumbles, and inflicted some sort of abrasion on each and every toe. His greatest distance covered in a day was 35 kilometres which, without training, was quite frankly rather impressive. The highest temperature in which he walked was 35 degrees celsius and the lowest 5. Phil had one shower and one bath, both on the same day.

Jake and I sat by our tent in the dusk light. A well tanned man, with grey hair and a proud belly, stepped from his Challenger campervan in Speedoes that used to fit. He poured pasta through a plastic colander by a tree, then returned to his van. "I guess you get to an age when you just don't care," Jake uttered, as a warm wind blew.

Le Brevent to Mont Chavin - Days Hundred and One to One Hundred and Five

The Casios sounded at 5.00 a.m. We packed in the pre-dawn light under the watchful eye of Le Brevent, a mysterious and rugged ridgeline destined to meet the souls of our boots. We rejoined the path whose fringes bobbed with globe flowers, orchids and cotton grass, still sleepy from their night under the stars. Climbing steadily, I watched the sun lick the skyline before taking whole mountain faces captive under an amber glow. A marmot printed the snow with busy feet and chamoix clashed horns on the cliff edge with envy-provoking sure footedness. We reached the Col De Brevent, at 2,525 metres, suddenly feeling somewhat overwhelmed. Mont Blanc sat on the other side of the valley as close as ever, streaming with glaciers and icy torrents. From the Col, we took a dramatically wrong turn, an act which consequently found us clinging to the mountainside with any limb that could offer purchase.

My state of illness and Jake's nurse-like inclination resulted in a day of rest at Les Houches. I became wonderfully well acquainted with the wall opposite the toilet, whose artex, painted white, spun and swirled like a snowstorm. I stretched my legs once, a pointless exercise in which I chased two flies around the room with my hat. They outwitted and outnimbled my efforts, leaving me, eventually, with nothing more than a stubbed toe. Meanwhile, on a trip to the pharmacy, Jake had been forced to 'charade' my symptoms to the lady behind the counter. Now if that's not love...

Once again, a day of rest had proven to be iconised by boredom and feet that tingled to walk. It was thus a relief to be back on the path, where we climbed to De Voza, perhaps the most infrastructured Col in the Alps, where climbers, hikers and day trippers congregated and the Mont Blanc train chugged. A man in a tight t-shirt approached us as we sat under the shade of a tree, asking us for directions for the Mont Blanc summit. 'Not sure, we aren't going that way.' He responded 'Why not? It's much more fun'. As he walked away, none the wiser, Jake mumbled under his breath, 'Probably would if I wasn't shit scared of heights'. At that, we ambled off down a gentle gradient, passing Le Hoches, the birth place of Alexis Bouvend, the chap who discovered Neptune, before arriving at a campsite in Le Pontet where we paid 14 euros to have footballs kicked at our tent by a gaggle of excitable children who would not, I predicted in my rage, make the French national team.

For the past two days our route had coincided with the world renowned Tour de Mont Blanc (TMB), a six to ten day hike that circumnavigated the mountain. Its extreme popularity saw us join a stream of hikers who pushed and pulled up the track, like a sweaty Slinky. At the Col De Bonhomme we sat on the rocks and ate soggy Ryvita that we had found in the campsite in Le Pontet. We gladly peeled away from the TMB route just after lunch and were slung onto the distinctive ridgeline of Tete De Gitte, whose magnificent, steep slopes were subtly contrasted by the pretty flowers that rooted the soil and rocks. Jake stepped slowly and cautiously along the precipice, as vertigo pulled his mind over the edge. Far ahead, on the ridge, I caught sight of a tiny Irish flag, billowing on the pack of a blue t-shirted body. We caught up with Kevin in the Gitte at Plan de la Lai, who informed us that the high temperatures would continue, before pressing on through slabs of limestone that jutted from the earth like slanted gravestones, one hundred metres high. We pitched at the bottom of a boggy slate fall, amongst alder scrub, with a westerly view over Lac de Roselend.

'Thirty six minutes, that's how long it takes to pack our lives away', Jake said, as we pulled our bags over our shoulders, on a morning that left my nose cold to the touch. Scarves of water drapped the mountain sides, their turbidity rendering them pure white. At the Col de Bossens, 2,469 metres, a family threw snowballs and slabs of ice lay with crumpled edges, like the curve of a child's paper fan. The L'Ornente river led us south, streaming with oxygen that plagued my bones with contentment. At one point we stood beneath an ice cave carved out by the river, whose dimpled ceiling and walls dripped with meltwater, collapse seemingly imminent.

Mont Chavin sat high on the valley side. A beautiful campsite gave us a view over the Italian Alps and Landry, a town in which we would meet Phil, a friend from England who attracted adventure. For the first time in a week I was able to eat again. We prepared a refreshing salad which we ate whilst looking south. The thermostat read 38 degrees Celsius.