Aosta Valley Detour

Following the death of my kindle, the loss of the cleat off my right shoe (since repaired with a spare bolt I found which is slightly too long and sticks into my foot) and the ripping of my T shirt, some people in my situation might think these are ominous signs.

But I was in a happy place, so just surfed right through these little setbacks.

I didn’t even really shed much of a tear the next morning when my netbook also decided to die a partial death (the escape, backspace and shift keys stopped working).

Bye, bye my old friend.

However, when I also realised that my legs weren’t working and that I felt like I had just run a marathon (which I’m putting down to sympathy pains from Kim’s great run in the Sydney Marathon on Sunday not my own four hours of pounding down a steep, rocky hillside after having done no walking for months) well then I became a little bit unhappy because this threw a bit of a spanner in my plans for my last week over here.

You see, after reading a brilliant blog post from Jill Homer about the Aosta Valley on Monday, I looked up from my (still working) iPad at Mont Blanc and thought to myself … That valley is just over the other side of that little mountain … hmmmm.

A few hours later I found a bus service that would take me and my bike through the Mont Blanc tunnel for €21 and drop me at Cormayeur where I planned to spend the day hiking (and trying the pizza) before heading further down the valley the next day.

But, of course, with my legs barely able to get me up and down steps, never mind mountains, I just had to spend the day doing some easy rides, reading and lazing around enjoying the magnificent scenery around me.

Isn’t it terrible when things go wrong.