Back in Chamonix

Following Kaisersberg, we finished our Trover tour in Colmar. Yet again we were met with a christmas market!

The centre of Colmar is a gorgeous medieval town and well worth a visit. If we hadn't seen Kaysersberg it would likely have been our best christmas market experience, as it was even Ali said that she'd had enough of Christmas markets for a while (not something I ever thought I would hear her say). So we cancelled our planned trip to Freiburg, and instead set our course for Chamonix.

The most direct route is to pass through Switzerland. Pretty much the moment we passed Basel the landscape really changed. Apart from a short interlude in Luxemberg we'd been almost exclusively travelling around lowland estuaries and river valleys, at last there were mountains to look at! Hoorah!!

I was about to write that "my heart and spirits lifted" which is kind of true, but really i'm excited to be back, the mountains just feel right to me.

The only problem with mountains is that in a 6+ ton truck, steep climbs and windy roads are a bit of a test. I was particularly nervous that our route from Martigny took us up to the Col de la Forclaz (700 metres straight up). As it turned out other than over heating light flashing the bus made it up just fine. Here we are about 600m above Martigny:

From the Col de la Forclaz the rest of the way to Chamonix is pretty straightforward and soon enough we were back! Time for a bath...