October 8, 2023

After two months basking in the sunshine of Biarritz, I finally left the coast in order to settle in the mountains.

Naturally that meant I had to take a road trip. So I’ve spent the last nine days driving 1200+km from town to town across France.

Biarritz, Toulouse, Aix-en-Provence, Annecy, & Chamonix.

Life was filled with quaint cobbled streets, beautiful architecture, and endless historic castles.

It’s not cheap driving across France though. Almost every road is a toll road, unless you want to add an extra few hour to each drive. You can spend as much in tolls as you do in petrol. But, at least you get to drive through beautiful countryside at 130km/h.

Having lived in Western Canada for the last six years - a country that has never impressed with the quality of their building designs - the beautiful cities were a treat.

Squamish, the town I left before coming to France, was basically a bunch of warehouses, and unexciting blocks of apartments. In a wonderful landscape of course. These French villages were a welcome change of scenery.

I also had the pleasure of driving past a city named after one of my favourite board games - Carcassonne. It even looked identical to the picture on the front of the box! What a coincidence.

It was all fairly enjoyable. I even took a few photos.

Then, one evening I drove to the coast, to the Calanques. It’s a coastal region of cliffs and azure blue inlets. I was blown away by it’s beauty. I was meant to be going for a run along the trails, but found myself stopping every few minutes to pull out my camera (phone). It was invigorating.

I thought it was going to be the highlight of the trip.

A few days later I arrived in my new home for the next seven months or so, Chamonix.

There was a trail run I wanted to do, but, recovering from a knee injury, I couldn’t manage the whole 22km. So I paid a large sum of money to take the lift up the mountain to skip out a large chunk of the distance. The ticket included a return trip on two different gondolas, one after the other. The run started in the mid point of the two, but I figured I might as well visit the top as well.

So at 8:40am I rode 2800m vertically upwards to the peak of the Aiguille du Midi - viewing platform for the famous Mont Blanc.

With the summit at over 3800m, I’ve only ever been this high twice once before in my life. The last time was on the Inca Trail, in Peru about 15 years ago.

The view at the top was breath taking, in all possible senses of the phrase.

I spent an hour up there taking it all in, watching the other tourists pick the perfect selfie spot, while the mountaineers disappeared through ice-caves onto dangerous snowy ridges. Death waiting patiently on either side for them. Apparently this is also a classic ski descent in winter. I made a mental note to return when the snow depth had increased.

Eventually, I made my way back down to 2300m to start my trail run.