Hillary and Tenzing

We woke up early, well actually Rob was knackered and could really have done with a lie in, but Deb thought it would be funny to tell him it was 11:30. Hilarious, it was actually 7:30.

Rob set about making breakfast and was looking forward to his honey on toast. The only problem being he had purchased onion chutney . Mmmm onion chutney on toast. He still ate it though, of course.

Deb’s glass back was really troubling her, so she sent Rob for supplies. Imagine his shame buying a hot water bottle in 35-degree heat.

It did the job, so we walked to the Téléphérique Aiguille du Midi.

We set off to climb the Aiguille du Midi. Well, when we say climb, we mean take the cable car. €160 later, and we were on our way up. Now, Deb doesn’t like heights; she really, really doesn’t like heights. She huddled in the middle of the car with her eyes closed while Rob made hilarious jokes about the standard of welding and how it was swinging a bit.

There are two cable cars and an elevator ride to get right to the top.

Once we reached the top, the views were spectacular. We could have taken another cable car ride to Mont Blanc, but we decided we had been damaged enough financially for the day.

Here, we witness Deb attempting to portray herself as having climbed 3842 meters. 

We considered going for a climb with these guys and then realised we really didn’t want to.

The idea here is a glass box where you can see the mountains immediately below you, immediately to the right of you, immediately ahead of you, and immediately to the left of you. That is, of course, providing the clouds haven’t just blown across. We wouldn’t mind, but Rob queued about 20 minutes for this photo. You might just be able to make out the slippers that you have to wear to save you from scratching the glass base.


Following this, we got the first cable car down to the middle level and went and grabbed a drink and a panini, guarding it from the crow or raven or whatever it was that was trying to steal it.

This was the last sensible thing we did today!!!

Following this, we decided to forego the cable car ride we had paid for to descend the 2300m to the town. “Let’s walk it,” feking idiots the pair of them. The sign said 3h. But 3h later, we still had half the descent to complete. We even started to ration ourselves to a sip of water each time we stopped. To make it even more exciting, thunder and lightning started over the top of Mont-Blanc, shortly followed by thunder and lightning over the other side of the valley.

“At least if I die here, I have got nice nails,” said Deb in an effort to make the journey seem to go quicker. It didn’t!

We thought we might need this.

We came across a hiker’s café and probably indulged ourselves a little too long, giving the thunder clouds time to form.

Possibly the best view ever from a coffee shop.
Groovy! At this point, Deb had no idea what lay ahead and had been duped into a lie of Donald J. Trump proportions, 3 hours to the car park, my arse.

Sheltering under a rock from the thunder and lightning. Unbeknownst to Rob, they still had nearly 5 hours ahead of them.

Hospital, we may need that. 


Totally prepared for the 2300m decent in slip on trainers


We started to loose the plot.

Never been so glad to see a carpark. And a €16 Uber the 1-mile home was worth every penny. 


It took 7 hours to get down, and Deb really hurt her knee, having to resort to a homemade walking stick. What a trooper. 

Merd c’est chaud

We left our digs in Lyon around 10:30, which is late for us, but Rob was knackered. It was useful being able to park the bike right by our hotel window so we could pass things through.

We have previously mentioned Deb’s glass back, the reason why she chose to fly down rather than endure the long ride. Well, Deb tries lots of things to try and help: snake oil back rub potions, booster seats, and the latest arsenal in the orthopaedic tool chest… a big shoe. We kid you not, clumpy as we are now going to call her, is using a big shoe. Rob is so proud, never has he been so happy to have a face obscured sun visor on his helmet.

We decided to take to motorway Annecy. Our thing was that doing 80mph on the bike would cool us down. Nope , Wow it was hot, despite doing 80mph on the toll road nothing could save us from the savage 35 degrees heat. On arrival in Annecy we dived into the first underground car park we could find, locked the bike and all the gear up and then braved the sun only to immediately walk past the free motorcycle parking, followed by another and then another. Genius! 

Clumpy spotted the toe dipping spot and nothing could stop her she was straight in there.

Followed by Rob, god that was bliss 









A little stop for a salad and an alcohol free been and then it was time to make our way back to bike. Lovely town (or city, not sure)





They keep Annecy spotless, was vey tempted to ask this guy to hose us down but he definitely did not look like he was in the mood.


And then onto our next stop , we took a wrong turn about 5km outside of Chamonix, which gave us a taste of things to come: hairpin after hairpin scraping the pegs. We’re sorry we had to turn around.

The view from our apartment is fantastic. We can see the Aiguille du Midi and marveled at the paragliders coming down, feeling like they were going to land on the roof of our apartment. Rob thinks he will be having a go of that.  

Secure underground parking for the bike.


Ordered a pizza with chips, never expected a chip pizza