Hiking in the French Alps

There's nothing quite like a hike on Saturday morning to put a downer on Friday night festivities. Not that I'm normally one to stay out at amazingly late hours of the night - but I was having quite a bit of fun at the beach when I realised it was 12am and I had to be awake in 7 hours to go on a 5 hour hike through the French Alps.

On the other hand, there's nothing quite like someone who didn't realise that, ended up staying up until 2:30am and consequently woke up with the world's biggest hangover. I have quite a few entertaining photos of this man with a barf bag trying to survive a 2 hour drive to the French alps, but for the sake of his decency I will refrain from making them public (today, at least).

A map of where we drove:

A - Cannes, where I live and B - Castelino, in the French Alps

The drive, rather surprisingly, took us through Italy - where sadly I understood the signs quite a bit better than I understand French signs (I'm working on the language thing. It's hard when everyone seems to be determined to practice their English with me).

We parked the car at Castelino and started on the hike. There's not much to say other than the views are pretty damn breathtaking. And also I'm a bit of a tool for forgetting to put a memory card in my camera - so my phone photos will have to suffice:

At the start

This picture does not do justice to how steep the hike got

Peaks

More Peaks

Dry icky lake

I was quite tired at this point and didn't fancy how those stairs looked

Panorama

I think you can see Italy from here

There's nothing quite like hearing cowbells for an hour and then suddenly coming across a field of cows in the middle of the mountainside

Incidentally - Castelino is home to a couple of resorts that seem to attract the rich types with Monaco branded number plates. And so quad-biking is a thing. Sadly not that I took any part in.

Herd of quadbikes

Sorry for the delay. I've been planning my holiday for next week - Italy! To Firenze and Roma.

And no, I'm not stupid enough to try to parkour across all the rooftops, as much as I want to be Ezio.