Luncheon was served. And what a luncheon! Everyone seemed relaxed. We were on schedule for the day, (and yet together), it was not raining, and the rest of the day was a very gentle rundown-hill all the way to the hut.
Figure 22: Lac de Nino
We made soup, luxury. We ate foie gras. Double luxury. It was delicious, and it was heavy. Triple luxury: I didn't have to carry it any further. Luckily, Claudia volunteered to give me her full water bottle, so as we set of again my load weighed slightly more than it had before I'd unloaded the lunch. The afternoon was uneventful. After the first open section, the valley dropped sharply for a few meters (a mere bagatelle, but you had to watch where you were putting your feet) then leveled again, this time in more wooded terrain, making it more difficult to chart our progress.
Round the side of a junction in the valleys but maintaining our height, then on to Bergerie de Vaccaghia at the top of another steep slope leading to the last huge open plain. The bergerie was a rather odd ancient/modern affair. Its stone walls looked as if they'd been built in the same era as the hills themselves, but one of the roofs seemed to made out of a sports parachute, and there was a large sign advertising it as one of the pit stops for a guy [who?] doing his Everest training. The path across the plateau below was clear, a black scratchin the green baize, and along it, little groups of people all heading across in the same direction. In the far distance, an hour and a half's walk away, we could just make out the hut, stuck half way up the other side, at the entrance to the next valley, the next climb. As at the lake, the ground here was spongy with water, and here and there the grass was forced to concede a small stream. It was depressing to see that some of the streams clearly contained pollutants and refuse from the bergerie .
We set out across the plain. Although we were making good time, in some ways I was feeling more tired than usual. Some of this was undoubtedly the extra weight I was carrying to try to ease the burden on Claudia's knees. Alfie was doing the same, and our sacks now weighed nearer twenty five kilograms that the twenty we had set off with. There seemed to be a threshold. I'd had no problem with twenty, but this extra seemed to break the camel's back. Now I walked at about the same pace as Claudia, and looked forward to her hourly breaks at least as much as she did. I was also concerned at the stream of people we could see marching in front of us-would there be room at the inn? Although I was still lugging the tent, I had no intention of using it. We had not brought mattresses for that reason: it was for emergency use only, if we were unable to make it to the refuge for some reason. So far, the ground around the refuges had been like granite. Never mind not being able to sleep, my tent would not stand up unless I could get the pegs in, and I seriously doubted whether this would be possible without a coal-hammer.
Alf and Martha had saved us a tent spot. They had arrived when the refuge was nearly full, and had had enough of the crowding. Another million people had arrived since then, and the place was full. Still, we were not going anywhere else, and Claudia and I were determined that we were not going to use the tent. Wewent inside and paced around looking forlorn, counting sleeping bags and so on, until the gardien arrived. He read our faces well, and shuffled the bags around until he'd created two extra spaces.
Preparing the meal that night was just as chaotic. Finally, around nine o'clock, when most of us were ready for bed and it was black outside, a party of nine more people came through the door. I know some people had already been told to sleep on the tables when they had been cleared for the last time, so I have no idea where these people were going to crash. We went to bed.
