After a typical breakfast of cereals, fruit, yogurt, croissants, breads, cheeses, meats, etc... this time as much as we wanted to eat...and after Brad's six espressos to equal one of his cups of coffee back home, we were ready to get on trail.
We were so laid-back this morning, we were the last to get to the boot room - where we met Peter and Mario from California. Since we were so hot and tired the previous afternoon and just wanted to get to the hotel, we walked back towards town a bit to get some photos of Champex-Lac...........
It was here that we met a sole hiker - Ian from the UK - and he started back to the trail with us and the three of us hiked together - and wow - Ian was a talker! We barely said a word and he just kept on talking...... but it was all good.
The hike was relatively flat and through "working" Switzerland and we meandered through a few different villages and hamlets.
This guy was turning the hay by hand....... seems like a lot of work if you ask me!
This is the village of Sous La Le (also known as Soulalex)......
Eventually we arrived in the village of La Garde, where we basically walked right by people's homes. Everyone was friendly with a "bonjour" and it's absolutely no big deal to see people hiking all over Switzerland, even with packs and hiking poles.
We continued out of town..........
Along more rolling grassy hills........
Tangent - these yellow trail trail signs were everywhere we hiked and attached to everything - poles, houses, churches, benches, etc...
However, the signs weren't foolproof as it was just after La Garde where we got off trail a bit - it was super easy to do in this section as there were many divergent paths - and we realized that we were on the wrong path as there were Peter and Mario walking towards us! They also had taken the same wrong turn, so the five of us found the correct route and continued hiking together as we made our way to Sembrancher (where we arrived at 11:50am) ........a super charming town and a place where we had always planned to have a restaurant lunch (rather than our typical baguette, cheese, and sausage) since it was such an easy hiking day.
Seriously? How cute is this place?
Ian had plans to take the train to a different town to continue hiking, so we left him at the train station while the four of us looked for an open restaurant. Now it's a small town and a Monday - which we learned meant that many businesses were closed. Suzanne used her very shaky French to ask a couple people for an open restaurant, and with them replying to her using very simple French words, we found one! (It was her crowning French language moment.)
Of course we found an Italian restaurant, and the four of us enjoyed a very long meal - we were there nearly two hours! (Mario is across from Brad, Peter across from Suzanne). Peter is 75 years old and doing this hike - damn impressive!
We left Sembrancher and continued to make our way to Le Chable, passing the small village of Les Moulins.........
It was around this time that we came upon Jenna - also hiking the Haute Route, but she was lost. She had no map, no GPS, her phone died, knew absolutely no French, and decided to come over and do this multi-day hike/backpacking trip about one month prior. Ah....Millennials! 😏 But in all actuality, she was lovely and joined our group and we all made our way together to Le Chable............
Le Chable!
As we made our way into town, (and another cool water bisse), Mario helped Jenna find a place to stay. (We happened to run into her the next morning and she hooked-up with a group of backpackers that we had seen a couple days prior at the Fenetre, so she was all set.)
Le Chable was another cute town...........
At 3:40, we arrived at our hotel - Hotel A Larze (we made reservations online the day prior in Champex) - which was super modern. Again, the hotel was WAY at the other end of town and up some steep roads.
As with every other night, we did laundry.........
When we first arrived to the hotel, the reception area was closed (there was an envelope with our room key in it taped to the door) and when we went to officially check-in, we met one of the nicest receptionists in the whole trip. Besides recommending a couple places for dinner, she offered to make our hotel reservation at the next town, and then gave us ideas of what to do the next day. (We had a planned day off from hiking - and had some ideas of how we were going to spend the day - until we chatted with this woman and she had much better ideas.)
We had a very good dinner at a Greek restaurant called Cantaloupe - and finally had the opportunity to try some Swiss wines - a Gamay for Brad and Fendant for Suzanne - yum! We walked around town a bit and then headed back to our hotel - this was our deck and the view from our deck. (Notice the ashtray - it was strange to see ashtrays EVERYWHERE in Switzerland - and Paris, once we got there - every outside table had one, every hotel room's deck - everywhere. We were surprised that for a generally healthy-looking population, that so many people smoked.)
We slept great that night (could it have been the wine??). The beds in Switzerland are two twins pushed together, and each with their own comforter, so Suzanne could burrow-in and stay warm, and Brad could sleep with the windows open and stay cool. All night we heard the church bells chime in the distance - very cool. Oh, speaking of windows, we never had a screen on a window in any hotel room in Switzerland or the apartment in Paris - and they do have flies, so we just don't get that. Also, Switzerland has the worst toilet paper - if you go, bring some.
So some reflections on hiking with others.....
- Fun to chat and pass the time, as well and share the experience with others.
- It does go slower in a larger group - we probably wouldn't have take two hours for lunch and spent half-an-hour in Sembrancher to go to the train station with Ian.
- On narrow sections of the trail, all you see is the person behind you - think sled dog.
Today’s numbers:
Miles
|
Elevation
change
|
|
Champex to Soulalex
|
2.2
|
1,522
|
Soulalex to La Garde
|
1.3
|
482
|
La Garde to Sembrancher
|
1.2
|
617
|
Sembrancher to Hotel A Larze
|
4.1
|
499
|
8.8
|
3,120
|
Today's Word: Social.
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