17th August - France - Villar-d'Arêne

Today it was time to move on to the next little alp village. We packed our gear and checked out of the hotel (in French of course) and I had the opportunity to have a little dialogue with the owners about our origin. They were surprised that we were Swedish.

We drove back towards Briançon and Le Monêtier-les-Bains. At the latter we stopped for a while and took a walk.

I had seen a post office which was open and decided to get some stamps. Walking down the main road we saw several adventure guide offices with wet-suits hanging outside. Apparently river rafting and canyoning is quite popular here.  

We walked down to a river and saw three rafts pass and a large spa area with swimming pools. Indeed this town is known for its two hot water springs and has had a thermal spa since Roman times. The springs are 34 and 38 degrees warm.

After walking around for a while we arrived at the post office - which was lunch closed! Damn siesta region! Well... no rush with the post cards. 
We strolled back to the car and drove on towards Villar-d'Arêne. On the way we saw a huge glacier area looking like old yogurt running down from the peak of La Meije.

 






We arrived in Villar d'arene in sunshine a few hours before check-in time at the hostel, Auberge de Villar d'Arene, but that seemed to be no problem. Our room is on the second store above a restaurant. There are no bed sheets here, but we bought sleeping bag liners before the trip so that is no problem. Little did we know what torture it is to sleep in a 85 cm wide cotton bag. These liners actually became a point of repeated jokes during the trip.


There is an old church on the plaza outside the hostel and we can hear the bell toll every hour. Will make for an interesting night. One luxurious aspect of the room is the little balcony we have facing the plaza and the mountain. 

After having dinner we drove to the nearest via ferrata to check it out. We didn't have time to do the climb today, but decided to walk to its beginning - meaning a 200 m ascent over 2 km. On the way we passed a really tame donkey that cried out to passers by for attention. 

The ferrata is called L'Aiguillette du Lauzet and begins at an altitude of around 1940 m  and ends at 2611 m. Hopefully the weather will allow us to try it out tomorrow. We asked a couple of climbers about it on their way down and they looked a bit worn. They had been active for 7h30m at that time. ;) 

It started to rain as we were walking, but no worries. The view is still magnificent.

Afterwords we headed back to Villar-d'Arêne to continue our chill evening.