September 9, 2009
The Grand St Bernard Pass: We made it to 2473m !!
The night in our little wooden chalet was very comfortable and the double glazing kept out the noise and the cold. The hotel was closed in the morning so they gave us breakfast to take to our room, it was good but at 14.5E each Ouch! The total for our stay worked out to 190E but we had little choice.
We loaded up and were pushing at 8.15. The road was fairly quiet and we were doing 4kmph. Then 4-5 km of "galleries' to keep the winter snow off - very loud and a bit close at times but we made it to the tunnel and the branch off to the summit road. It was a beautifully clear fairly cold morning but the gradient went up a lot. Pushing was quite hard work. We stopped every hour but often it was quite hard to find a place to stop. We could see the ancient tracks below the new road,
Eventually made it to the top about midday and Tricia finally got a room while I waited in the cold wind.
The hostel is great and parts very old 1050. We couldn't get in until 2.00pm and were cold in our cycling gear. Once in the room we skipped the shower and had a snooze then at 4.00pm set off. Lots of stuffed St Bernard dogs and the real thing and a great little museum with a history of the pass and the St Bernards etc. A bit about Napoleon in 1800. In the hostel as well as two churches is a magnificent sculpture given by Napoleon and transported with enormous difficulty from Paris in 1806.
Walked over to Italy that was 200m away and generally explored. Then at 6.15 there was a mass in the crypt - there were not many there. At 7.15 there was a communal meal which was very good with 2 Swiss men from Lausanne opposite who were on a walking holiday. Had half a litre of a pale but excellent Swiss wine - the meal was very like a pilgrim meal on the Camino but I think we were the only "pilgrims".
It is interesting as I write this about 6 years later to see that we were still basically walkers at heart and hadn't changed yet into cycle tourists.
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Today's ride: 14 km (9 miles)
Total: 1,240 km (770 miles)
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