Day 5 - Chambave to Verres - Friday June 19, 2015

Breakfast was at 8am again.  Lots of quiche etc (more excellent pie dough). However, I like fruit and cereal and yogurt for breakfast.  I think I’m suffering from heat exhaustion and/or dehydration, felt pretty sick this morning. It was very hot first thing this morning, which didn’t help. I got a really bad sun burn two days ago, so have been wearing long sleeves to protect that, which doesn’t help, and my nose and ears are still blocked. It wasn’t a good day.

The instructions were virtually impossible to follow, so we were getting nowhere fast. We had 27 km to go, and had travelled about 8km by noon.  Early on in the day, we met two pilgrims from France, who said they were doing the via Francigena but not going to Rome. They were going to Pavia, which is where we get to on our Day 14. I found it a bit strange though, that they did not go the same way we did from where we met them! 

Luckily, we did go through a town with stores etc right around noon. We had already drank 1.5 litres of water, so were able to stock up on another 1.5 litres water. The climbs were brutal today and we never really were able to sink with the instructions. We followed the via Francigena signs and the GPS. At one point the instructions referred to the ‘map’ which we didn’t have which was a clue we weren’t using all our available resources.

Part of the trail today was from a Roman bridge in Cillian to Filley which is called "Dal ponte Romano ale rupi celtiche" meaning "from the Roman bridge to the Celtic crags".

We climbed 1020 meters today over 23km. We finally managed to sink with the instructions when they said we were at 15.5km but we had covered 18.5km.  It was 4pm, and we had at least 12 more km to go. Our feet were fine, but we were exhausted and suffering from the heat. We kept going to 23km, at which point we travelled over an ancient roman road that you could see the chariot wheel marks in, and the view was absolutely stunning. We then arrived at the village of Toffo, and the instructions said there was a very steep climb coming next.

I was doing the math on this.  There was about 10km left according to the instructions, it was 5pm, and at the rate we were going that would take a minimum of three hours, and we were out of water again. So, I asked a fellow we met getting into his car in the village if he could help us call for a cab to get to our hotel. He was very nice, and said he worked at a restaurant hotel and would drive us there. When we got there, what he was thinking was that we would stay there. So I showed him our voucher for our hotel, and he said he would drive us to our hotel.  What a saint.  I gave him a big hug and Russell gave him some money, which he didn’t want to take but Russell said it was a gift.

Tomorrow is another day. Russell is all concerned about us bailing today, but I’m not. We need to get used to climbing the Alps every day, acclimatize to the heat, and carry enough water! We have also discovered that we do have some maps, which are in a rather large heavy book, but I’m planning to ripe them out of the book on a day by day basis. Russell would like to keep the book as a souvenir, but we have to be practical.  This whole thing will go a heck of a lot faster and easier with the maps. Maybe now the instructions will make a little bit of sense.

We had a lovely dinner at the hotel, which was not included but neither of us felt like wandering around town looking for a restaurant. We both had a turkey curry and shared an order of grilled vegetables, and we had a lovely whipped cream dessert.

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