I’ve just recieved an email from Mark in Paris, he’s the American writer/ teacher I met in a Parisian youth hostel. He writes some fantastic emails on his life in Paris. They always make me laugh.

Hit the deck!
Holy hell, France is on fire!
I’ve been scared to leave the security of my own apartment. The streets are foggy with the black smoke of burning cars and the little thugs are out in full force! Just the other day I was almost set on fire, luckily I knew the stop, drop, and roll technique! Very dangerous here, don’t come anywhere near Europe, the flames of unrest are spreading.

Ok, didn’t even realize there was a riot going on until I was informed via telephone from the states, and that was 3 days into the maelstorm. Don’t believe what you see on the t.v., everything here is copesetic. Watching CNN to get your news is like going to a whore house to cure the clap; it just don’t make too much sense.

Gotta run, Paris is…well, it’s Paris.

Peace (that’s all this Parisian blow-hard really knows),

Mark

We’ve managed to grab another hour at a post office before we head for Italy tomorrow. So I thought we can give you a quick summary to our next steps.

As Putty-man has informed you (thank you PM) on the last post, we have got to St Jean-de-Meurienne on the route. It is about 60 kms short of where we started the walk over the Cenis Pass. In that 60 kms is a 1000 m climb, so for me this is going to be bloody hard work. Then, we will drive over the pass into Italy to get to the next available campsite, stopping on the way to complete a short bit of walking. We will then start in the town of Susa and bike back up the mountain to join up with where we had walked too with kitman.This will complete the pass into Italy, walking the bit Tom walked and biking where he rode a horse. Clear as mud ? it is all a bit tricky in this area.

HOWEVER, this is all weather permitting, It is raining In the Chambèry area right now, and our current forecast is that nightime temps are going to get below freezing at 500m, so we will find out what the weather is like at 2000m when we get there.

From Susa it is balls out biking all the way to Venice along the Po valley as Tom went in a mixture of horseback or cart along the entire route. We will be taking in Turin, Milan (with a quick trip up to Varese), Cremona, Padua and then to Venice.

As we’re due to be in Italy next week, I thought I’d write a few things we love and things we don’t about the French way of life:-

Things we love:

Their greetings - it doesn’t matter that you are a complete stranger, they will wish you a ‘Bon’ everything, in shops, restaurants or sometimes even just passing people in the street.

Buying fresh bread everyday, and not from a supermarket
(more…)

Kitman is doing a grand job of writing about the Cenis Pass. I’ve copied his comments to this post, the original comments are at this post.

first comment

NEWS FLASH - NEWS FLASH
I, kit man have just returned from seeing and living the life of Daisy for the last 5 days, summary as follows:
They are both very sorry for not keeping you all up to date with the travel news but they have been unable to gain internet access. Following the comment on the banner I can confirm that Chris is almost half the man he used to be, personally I was stunned by how skinny he was with his little pin legs and one chin. As for Michelle…. well she just looks as lovely as ever (only met her three times). Chris’s hair seems to have taken on a life of it’s own and morphs on an hourly basis from Morrisey (excuse speeling) to Max Headroom to Tin Tin on pro plus. I had a great time and will post some more info later including my Mac Pack ‘ping, ping’ story, the Wolf Police and Chris’s new nick name gained by stating the bloody obvious. But now, with my work hat on I have to go and look at a hole in London.

Second comment

With slightly more time to devote to telling the story I shall continue, are you sitting comfortably? With a cheap flight and a rucksack I was met at Grenoble airport by a thin version of Chris and the lovely Michelle. We then travelled up into the alps following the N6 to Modane and eventually to Aussois where we installed ourselves at a campsite with a lovely view and weird neighbours who try to hide their caravans by building a log cabin round them. Chris and Michelle had jumped ahead to this area so we could enjoy walking over the Cenis Pass into Italy. I was informed that Tom had been on horse back until reaching Lanslebourg-Mont Cenis where he then walked into Italy before getting back on a horse.
To ease ourselves into the walking on Friday we all set out on what we thought was the easy stroll round the Lac du Mont Cenis, the reservoir on top of the pass. Stunning views and clear blue skies accompanied us round the lake which turned out to be a bit further than expected and we actually got lost as well. Difficult to imagine - just keep the water on your left hand side! After a snack of chocolate brownies and a slice of hot chocolate, alright so I did get the quantities wrong, we almost ran the last 5km back to Daisy. Following a bit of food we managed to stay awake and drinking until about 1:15am.
Not surprisingly there were some casualties the following morning….
Back soon with more ups and downs - well mostly ups as we climb to the Cenis Pass.

Here are some photos to go with it.

The first few steps into Burgundy were a real milestone for us. Each region we cross always feels significant.

The initial route took me along the fabulous River Yonne. Still walking at this point, the river was a hive of activity with barges constantly on the move. It was comforting to see so much going on while I was on my own. During this short period I averaged over 15 miles a day, and yes, for those keen feet spotters out there, they really suffered. I’m sorry to those of you who don’t like this bit. But here comes some more gore.

Enough of the grusome feet, you will all be happy to hear only small lumps are falling off them now.

Ok, follow this to get to the pictures we took of this part of the jouney.

It all got a bit hectic at home before bringing Daisy over here, so the number of ‘just in case’ items that I packed seemed to outweigh the ‘necessary’ items as the pictures will show. (luckily John has now taken some of them back home with him and avoided paying excess on the flight).

Leaving England:

Claire and I drove through the night to meet Chris in Melun. We’d left our Driving Ballards CD at home so couldn’t put on Roy Orboson, but made do with a Peter Kay sing-a-long instead. Trying not to draw too much attention to ourselves, we noticed that when we’d changed one of the front light bulbs in England it was now poking up in the air like a Batman calling sign - alas no man in tight black leather pants appeared for us, maybe we weren’t sending out the right French signals.

After the tiring journey down, we all went back up to Paris to spend a lazy, sunny day chilling out on the river and drinking wine in the cafes. It all went a bit pear-shaped from there, as we then discovered another bar with happy hour lasting several hours. I think we all vaguely remember seeing the Eiffel Tower looking stunning lit up and Chris having an encounter with a lamp post, before we finally managed to get the last train home, but all of that was a bit of a blur.

(p.s I couldn’t have done the trip without you LG, not just because of all the help, but also for making me laugh all the way).

We’re back, sorry for the delay in writing. We have been charging across Southern France without a break until now. We are going to concentrate on getting some pictures on the site and then we will do some posts. I’ve got to thank Kitman for lots of things, but at the moment for doing an update of our adventures up the Alps.