Sue Esten writes:
Gentians, more gentians and yet more – combined with hillsides of alpenrose and masses of pansies to name but a few of the wild flowers we saw – these were the memories of an energetic wander through the Alpes Maritimes. Mike and I started our walk in Tende, on the French side of the frontier and home to a magnificent museum dedicated to the Merveilles, the Bronze Age graffiti. Don’t miss it if you are in Tende! Our route took us to Casterino and then on to the Valmasque hut from which we climbed the Baisse de Valmasque to descend into the Vallée des Merveilles. The Merveilles hut, which has 4x4 access, was heaving with noisy French and we decided to plough on over the Pas du Trem to the Relais des Merveilles in St Grat. The western side of the Trem was chaotic – massive boulders, through which we threaded our way on a faintly marked path. That led to a beautiful valley with the inevitable steep descent through woods to end the day. We then crossed to the Refuge de la Madonne de Fenestre, another hut at a road head, but quite uncrowded and with a superb chef! From Madonne de Fenestre we went to Lac Boréon – a day punctuated by some navigational errors simply due to not paying attention! We spent a couple of nights in the gîte de Boréon and climbed the Cime de Mercantour (2772m) at whose top we were greeted by some cold squally weather. Check out the summit record book if you get there and you will find our names! The day was the longest of the year – which the French celebrate as the Fête de la Musique and the patron of the gîte marked the occasion by offering his clients an aperitif accompanied by ‘la musique’, a large cow bell! Next day saw us crossing back into Italy – we had flown to Turin and ‘trained’ to Tende - in order to start making our way back towards the Italian transport system. We crossed the Col de Salèse and then the Pas du Préfouns, a dramatic col enclosed by towering cliffs. Our destination was the Rifugio Questa. Next day was a hard one and involved crossing the Colle di Valmania (2922m), the southern side of which had fantastically engineered mule tracks, but only a faint path on its northern side. We should have crossed the Colle della Paur, which has permanent snow; its southern side had a lot of snow too – hence the opt-out to the Valmania – a very long way round to our destination, the Rif Livio Bianco. We had a great welcome from the hut guardian and from a party of ‘Bolognese’ who were going to reverse our route of that day. It was a fun end to a very enjoyable trip. Our last day saw us walking down to St. Anna Valdieri from which we caught a bus to Cuneo and so on by train to Turin and the flight home. The flowers were magnificent – the wild life too – lots of ibex, marmots and chamois. Each hut seemed to have its resident chamois population! Oh, and plus tumbling streams, rivers and waterfalls…..