Chamonix Mont Blanc and Lake Maggiore

18^th June

Posted  by Mike (for a change)
We drove through some awesome mountain country from Annecy and set up Boris in a huge car park, which is also a motorhome overnight spot. It was only a few metres from the cable car station, so after speaking to a young girl at info we discovered that we could get an all day pass for all of the rides around Chamonix Mont Blanc at pensioner price of 46 euros which we thought was great value.

So we boarded the cable car and up we went, and up and up and up!

Then we transferred to another cable car to go on up and up and up again to Aguille du Midi which is at approx 3800 metres. The weather was fantastic and the views were absolutely indescribable. We felt like we were at the top of the world and took many, many photos, but I doubt that they will do complete justice to the place.

As we were walking around the various viewing platforms we both noticed that it was becoming more difficult to breath and both of us began to feel a little queasy. After sitting for a while all was good but we did see several people struggling and indeed one lady had to be wheel chaired back to the cable car.

On the way down we stopped at the mid station and sat in the sun on the balcony and had a coffee and then we went for a walk around on the snow.

After we descended, we walked around to the railway station and caught the rack railway train up to the glacier at Montenvers. While there a rain storm hit briefly

but we didn’t get too wet as we travelled back down to the town where we strolled around and as luck would have it found a bar where we had a beer or two and wrote out some postcards.

Back to Boris for dinner and bed.

19^th June

Lazy morning and then on to the entrance to the Mont Blanc tunnel, which goes under the mountain to Italy.

It was 54 Euros for Boris to travel the 11 Kms through the tunnel, which was dead straight, slightly uphill to approx halfway and then down hill until we emerged into Italy. We descended down the valley through some pretty country and it was noticeable that all of the towns were very quiet. Probably mostly reliant on the ski season. It became very hot around mid 30’s and we decided to get on to the toll road toward Lake Maggiore. Interestingly the tolls in Italy are only about a third of the price found in France and soon we found our way to Baveno. The caravan park we found “unfortunately” was right on the edge of the lake and the lady insisted that I have the best spot in the camp, literally 6 feet from the lake. Tough Life!

I was so hot that I immediately went in for a swim and cooled off.

20th June

Swimming in the lake in the morning and after lunch we went for a trip on the local ferry on the lake to several beautiful ports, the best of which was Isola Madre,

with its extensive gardens and a very impressive palace which had heaps of rooms elaborately fully furnished and decorated.

The boat returned to our port late-ish so we decided to go to a lovely family run restaurant for dinner where we had delicious pizzas and a carafe of the local red. What a great day!