Monday, 21 May 2012

Bousieyas

St-Etienne-de-Tinee

16.0

213.6

Overcast, foggy and raining all day

Hotel Normandie, Nice

Muesli Bars for breakfast, pizza for lunch, kebab for dinner

None

No GPS track today

I got up at 6:30am with the plan to pack up, eat some breakfast and be out on the road hitch-hiking by 7:30am.  I was glad that I had bought some instant coffee a couple of days ago as a large cup warmed me up on a very cold morning.  It was snowing lightly outside and the snowline was now a lot lower than it had been 24 hours ago.

No cars went by while I was getting ready and eating breakfast and none went by in the first 30 minutes I waited outside.  It then dawned on me that the road, which crosses Col de Bonette (2800+m), further up had probably been closed by the snow yesterday and last night.  They had left the snow plough parked in the village overnight and probably planned to come back up today sometime, maybe when it stops snowing, and clear the road.  So I started walking back to St-Etienne-de-Tinee down the road, which I guessed to be about 16km.  I had the road to myself for about the first 10km and quite enjoyed wandering down looking at the fabulous wintry scene.  Rain continued to fall below 2000m and I guess it was snowing above that altitude judging by what I could see.  Mostly the peaks were covered in swirling fog.  Water was pouring down off the mountains and the rivers were raging a milky sediment-laden green.  Nature at work.

After 10km I encountered some workman trying to break up and remove a giant slab of rock that had fallen on the road, and others trying to clean other debris.  When I reached a junction which marked the start of the road to Col de Bonette which I had been walking down, there was indeed a sign saying the road was closed.  I continued walking without a break because I couldn't remember what times buses went from St-Etienne to Nice, but knew there weren't many.

I reached St-Etienne at 10:30am and found that the bus did not go until 4:15pm.  I killed some time in a cafe to get out of the rain and had lunch in the same place, getting what turned out to be an embarrassingly large pizza (which I managed to eat).  I then wandered round town some more in the continuing rain, feeling sorry for those seeking to sell stuff at the weekly market, before being invited into the tourist office to get warm and dry and use their free wi-fi.  I used the time to book a hotel for the night in Nice near the railway station and decide that I would pick up the E1 European Long Distance Trail in either Frankfurt or Heidelberg and walk south, via the Black Forest, to pick up the Via Alpina somewhere in Switzerland.  I did not have time to plan in detail but went ahead and bought online a rail ticket from Nice to Frankfurt leaving about 8am tomorrow morning.  I chose Frankfurt because I worked there quite a lot in the early 90s and even had an apartment there for a while so know the city a bit.

I duly caught the bus at 4:15pm (still raining), for the two and a quarter hour trip back to Nice on the express service which cost a princely 1 Euro.  In the Maritime Alps province, where I have been since arriving in Nice over a week ago, it costs 1 Euro  for a bus trip whether it is for one kilometre or a hundred.  The trip was exciting as it followed the raging River Tinee downstream through narrow gorges with precipitous drop-offs at high speed.

It was still raining in Nice and I checked into the hotel, went to the station and collected my ticket and bought a kebab for a late dinner.  I also booked a hotel for two nights in Frankfurt and hope to be hiking again by Thursday if all goes well.  Getting maps may be the biggest challenge.