Steadily I worked my way round to a Chamonix course; I’m no longer clear about the route taken but for a long time I was seeing signs for Paris before they gave way to those for Lyon, Bourg-en-Bresse and Geneva.
Even now, I can’t get my head around the fact that I simply took myself off to drive around a wholly alien country, entente cordiale notwithstanding, with only a scrappy memory of school lessons in French.
I marvelled then, as I still do now, every time I squeeze along the road into the Arve valley near St-Gervais-les-Bains and up past Les Houches to Chamonix. Fifty years ago, finding a campsite in July was easy; don’t try it these days.
Ostensibly I was sizing up Mont Blanc for an attempted ascent the following year. Another camper had his telescope trained on the summit and invited me to view. I did; I gulped, and decided this was something I needed to give more thought to. There’s something about Mont Blanc, apart from the height, that sends shivers down your spine. It’s certainly majestic, but those crevasses seem like an open invitation to end your life in a spectacularly cold and unfriendly way.
On the culinary front, I spent ages looking for a chippie (frite wagon), only to discover in France they were a thing of the future. But there were myriad offerings in Chamonix’s bistros and sidewalk cafés, When I discovered crème caramel, it was love at first bite. And all those naughty cakes – well, my sweet tooth didn’t know what hit it. I still have it, the sweet tooth, in a jar in a bathroom cupboard somewhere.
Some days later I found one of the most stunning campsites I’ve ever visited. It was
in the Dordogne, somewhere near Condom