Cluses to Chamonix

Today's route

We have to be in Verona to meet Will & Jo (Jon's youngest brother & his girlfriend – and that's Will's girlfriend, not Jon's!) next Friday – the 28^th July, so, looking at the map we decided that it really wasn't going to be practical to go with our original plan which was to head down to the south of France before heading into Italy. It was going to mean – at best – another week of driving 100 miles a day, and, although we had managed to do that so far, it wasn't the best fun it has to be said. So, we decided to come to Chamonix instead – partly on the recommendation of our friend Nic, and partly because some mountains, some beers and somewhere near by sounded like a top notch idea.

And so here we are.

44km down the road from Cluses we find Chamonix, a nice enough place, especially when you see some out of season ski resorts! Here there are plenty of shops, restaurants, bars, people, mountains, glaciers, the "petit train", sunshine and wireless internet!

I don't know what you know about wireless internet – but there are pretty much 2 types that we are interested in: secured and unsecured. The secured stuff is password protected and you have no hope of getting onto someone's internet in that case – unless you have the password, obviously. The unsecured type is someone using wireless internet with no protection (as it were). Either they are doing it on purpose – so that other people can use it – or because they don't know how to secure it or, like with hotels and things, so that people can use it but for a fee. So, you can imagine which type we are interested in!! Unfortunately signals are fickle things, and you can (and we have) spent quite some time this holiday driving and walking around trying to pick up a signal we can use. Today we found one – for a while, and I managed to get a whole day of blog uploaded, and was working on the next day and...................gone. And then the laptop battery went flat. Very frustrating.

So that's how it works – and why sometimes there will be blog, and sometimes there won't!

Anyhow. After a trip on the mini-train and the blog/laptop thing (there were a couple of beers involved in the mean time) we had a mooch about the place and then stopped for some dinner – a meat fondue. Do you know what that's like? Well, there is no cheese involved, I can assure you of that. Instead of the big bowl of melting cheese you get a big pot of hot oil, then you have a plate of raw meat, some sauces, bread and chips. Basically you skewer your meat – stick it in the oil until it's cooked how you like it, and then eat it. A nice way to eat, very sociable.

We stopped at a bar called 'Monkey' on the way home from town - just for Robin :)

Our campsite for this evening (and tomorrow as well we are thinking) is very nice. It has a really 'young' feel about it – and yes, I know that makes me sound about 100, but if you were here you would know what I mean. There are mainly tents – only one or 2 'camping cars', no caravans, lots of people backpacking, a nice communal sitting area near the amenities block, a strip of plugs to charge your mobile phone – just nice. Highly recommended if you are vising Chamonix – Les Arolles Campsite.

Current Cribbage Score: Jon 1-0 Trish