Sunday 7th September: Warm to hot, mostly sunny, white fluffy clouds. 12°C to 22°C in shade, and 28°C in sun
Le Chable to Champex: 22.5k: 9am to 4pm: 7 hrs
Forest walk along River Danse
There's no ladies tree here
Yeh! Seat in shade. It's 28°C in sun
Pretty village of La Garde with Verbier way in backgrand
On the way to Champex - forrest and meadows
Lunch in gully with a view
Hotel Belvedere - we stayed there twice
Lunch on Champex Lac
Warm hazy day over Champex Lac
Beer Garden at Relais Arpette
Our hottest day yet, because we're way down in the valley at only 700 metres in Sembrancher and only 1600 metres in Relais d'Arpette - of course all relative to the 2,900 metre cols and refuges we've had for the past 3 weeks. A very relaxing day walking along the Danse River from Le Chable to Sembrancher then a forest walk uphill at a good grade to Champex and the beautiful Champex Lac with thousands of Sunday visitors. Today was more of a holiday than an adventure.
We're awake early. It's Father's day at home. Bonnie Facetimes, Will rings, and Tom rings simultaneously on a flakey internet and Ian misses his call. Breakfast is at 8am with really fresh bread and croissants (she's been to the boulangerie down in Le Chable especially), with home made jam, sliced cheese, plums from their own tree and really hot tea - perfect. There's two other couples in our B and B, both Swiss, and doing a day walk to a glacier - because that's what you do in Switzerland on the weekend. They's told us that the weather in Switzerland, particularly the north, has been wet and cold all summer, and the meteo says temps are 6°C below average. These are the temperatures I had seen in the weeks before we left home, so we were expecting the worst, but luckily, most of the bad weather has passed through further north. Even today, there's more rain moving north near the aSwiss German border.
It takes us an hour to gather in our washing, pack all our food to keep it cold as the meteo tells us it's going to be at least 27°C today, pay cash of 140 Swiss Francs and head off across the green fieldat 9am to pick up a path through the forrest to Le Chable. It's a beautiful sunny Sunday, with church bells ringing and zillions of people out walking, biking and sight seeing. The forrest path takes us along the River Danse, then around the corner to Sembrancher where we've been before as it's a rail transfer centre.
Ian is sorry he's missed Tom, so we detour into the centre of Sembrancher looking for an internet cafe - nothing - I mean nothing is open in Sembrancher - except for some sleazy hotel/cafe with 4 old men drinking beer at 11am in the morning, and they look like they'd been there all night. Next best thing is to turn the Samsung on and search for a WiFi signal and lo and behold, there's one pops up called Default and it's free - we think it's from the Mayor's building. So Ian dials Tom directly and has a chat. He's happy.
We're looking for a seat in the shade for our first cup of coffee. We've not been looking for a spot in the shade for the past 3 weeks, but it's already hot today. At last we spy a seat in the shade - voila!! And have a quick coffee. The track up to Champex from Sembrancher is an old horse and cart track from the nineteenth century, so it's double width and mostly and easy grade. We walk up through the 10 house villages of La Garde, Sous La Lex and Chez les Rouse, sometimes in the forest, sometimes through green open meadows with views down the valley to Orsieres. We're familiar with this valley having watched the Tour de France come up the 18k road from Orsieres to Le Grand St Bernard Pass in 2009 - It's a long long climb for the riders, but we've only going half way.
Near the last village of Chez les Rouse, it's time to sit down and have a bite to eat. It's 2pm, we're famished and we've still and hour to climb. Just a hunk of bread and soft cheese - not too much as there's still a steep 300 metre high track to climb. There's a shady spot in a cement gully with views of teh valley. This will have to do.
The last 300 metre climb into Champex is quite steep and goes on and on for ever. The track comes into the back of Champex near the Hotel Alpini and Hotel Belvedere where we have stayed twice before. Then it's just a downhill walk to the icy cold Champex Lac with paddle boats floating all over and the lakes edge crawling with day trippers. It's almost chilly, with a light breeze coming off the water but at the end of the lake, there's a sheltered spot - lunch! I've been hanging out for a mortadella sandwich with cheese for hours, and now is the perfect time. The sign above us says there's only 50 minutes to Arpette. Our packs are noticeably lighter when we move on and decide to follow the road which goes up steeply into the Valley of Arpette. The track dives down into the valley before heading up and our Aussie friends we met at the lake are doing the down and up track.
The road is steep, but after 2 k we recognise the beer garden of the Relais d'Arpette. We've been past this before in 2012 and decided it would be a nice place to come back to - such a beautiful spot beside the the glacial stream, with rooms and dortoirs. I had booked on line yesterday but had not received a confirmation, but we had noticed that out of 90 beds, there were 44 free, so we took the chance to come regardless. But they had received our booking for a 3/4 person room and offered us the chance to upgrade to a 2 person room with real sheets and a towel - yes thanks. And for dinner do we want Cheese Fondu or Deer Stew - we'll have Bambi please.
The showers and toilets are up the hall way but that's ok. We're in the groove for this now and in half an hour we're showered, with clothes washed and ready to go down to that inviting beer garden for a cold beer. There's a clothes line out the back near the baby goats and it's going to be in the sun for a few hours so they should dry.
a lovely refuge/holiday house about 3k further on than Champex. e