Day 0

Day -3 Thursday June 11, 2015. Leave Canada -Kristjan came home from work at lunchtime and drove us to the Ottawa airport. First we flew to Toronto, with no sort of customs to go through.  That flight landed in the same terminal as the flight to Heathrow departed from.

Day -2 Arrive Martigny Switzerland Friday June 12, 2015. The Heathrow flight also landed in the proper terminal to fly to Geneva.  It all worked out very smoothly, all flights were on time and Lynn managed to get a reasonable amount of sleep on the planes. Unfortunately Kristine gave Lynn a miserable cold the Sunday before leaving and all that landing and taking off resulted in major ear blockage. As soon as we landed at Geneva we hurried over to the train station, and managed to get a train to Martigny that was leaving at 11:55am, in about 20 minutes time.   We were expecting to not be able to get a train until around 5pm so we were very pleased about that.  We were also able to purchase our train/bus ticket from Martigny to Bourg St. Pierre for Saturday. Travel by rail is terrific in Europe.  You can set your watch by the departure times.  The trip from Geneva Airport to Martigny went round Lake Geneva through the Alps.  Beautiful scenery.  Martigny sits on the crossroads between Italy, France and Switzerland and is the start of the one road over the Great St. Bernard Pass to Aosta in Italy. It is surrounded by vineyards and orchards and nestled in the Alps.  Martigny’s history stretches back 2,000 years, Celtic tribes, the Romans and Napolean’s troops have all left their mark. We stayed at Hotel Vatel, which one traveler said ‘is very close to the train station – if you can find it’.  Lynn had printed out a lovely map which showed we should have been on the opposite side of the tracks to get there.  Anyway, we managed none the less to hump our suitcases about 1km to the hotel, at which point the shortcut to the train station revealed itself.  It was a beautiful hotel

and our room was advertised as directly facing the Alps (however, Martigny was surrounded by the Alps so it wouldn’t have been possible to not have a room directly facing the Alps) but it also looked out over a beautiful garden and pond.

We wandered about Martigny, established the fact that we couldn’t avoid roaming charges unless we waited until we were in Italy to buy a SIM card, did some laundry, had dinner, then got a wonderful night’s sleep.

Day -1 – Martigny to Bourg St. Pierre Saturday June 13, 2015 We wandered around Martigny some more in the morning, picked up lunch and breakfast at the co-op, roamed around the hotel’s garden then went to take the train to Orsieres followed by the bus up the mountain to Bourg St. Pierre.  Had another handy map to get to the hotel.  The bus driver offered to drive us part of the way, which was  very nice of him, so we only had to hump our suitcases about 500m along a very busy, narrow highway.  The hotel has another beautiful view of the Alps, and wed can see the two mountains we will climb between to get to Grand San Bernardo tomorrow.

The packet from Mac’s Adventure was there waiting for us when we arrived.  They just provided weeks 1 and 2, thank heaven, because there is a lot of literature telling us how get from A to B day by day. We spent most of the day going through all the Mac’s Adventure stuff and mentally preparing for the trek to the St. Bernard Pass, which we can see before us and looks rather daunting.  The room is very basic but rustic,

 it has a lovely newly upgraded bathroom, and the hotel restaurant is top notch and is very famous for this flaming beef/bison dish called Potence.  We didn’t get that but our meal of pea soup, roast pork, scalloped potatoes, green beans, and apricot marmalade (Martigny is famous for apricots) was delicious.  We were also very happy that our half board meal included a bottle of wine. Neither of us slept very well last night.

Day 0 – Bourg St. Pierre Sunday June 14, 2015. We booked an extra day in Bourg St. Pierre to acclimatize to the altitude and shake off the jet lag. The breakfast was very meagre but the weather is co-operating and after a lovely lunch we went and explored Bourg St. Pierre.  We visited the ruins of an old castle Chateau du Bourg

; the ancient church of St. Pierre– which was actually open and is very well restored inside

; the beautiful Linnaea Alpine Garden; we walked over a small wooden bridge over a deep gorge;and, toured the old Valsorey mill, which was built in 1681. The sightseeing involved a climb of 70 metres which was challenging enough to make one wonder about tomorrow! We also met two pilgrims walking the via Francigena to Rome– one was on day 26 after having started from Germany, and the other was a young lady from Ireland who was on day 3 walking from Martigny (starting at an altitude of 475 m).  We had a nice conversation. She said we were the first people she had met that spoke English.  She also walked the Camino, and noted that she had met a lot of Canadians doing it.  She was staying the night in the Bourg St. Pierre hostel, run by the Church St. Pierre - we look forward to seeing her again tomorrow either along the trail or at the Pass.  We are feeling a bit like we are cheating starting from an altitude of 1,600 metres, but climbing 850 metres sounds challenging enough for a bunch of old folk like us. Dinner was salad with pate, chicken with mushroom sauce and rice, and crème caramel.  Exceptionally good.  Around 7pm a very heavy fog descended and completely covered the Alps.  We have been watching the weather forecast.  Before we left it looked like solid rain and thunder storms every day.  Then yesterday, it looked like Monday was slightly better than today.  It did rain all during the night last night but today was very pleasant, sunny and 16 degrees.  It may rain again tonight

but tomorrow is supposed to be sunny in the morning with possible thunderstorms in the afternoon.  We are praying that we have nice weather in the morning until we get to the Pass.  We plan to leave at 8am and it’s supposed to take 4 hours.