No more, Bonjour!

First things first, apologies for the super long blog post, we have had a few connections issues kicking us off the blog server, so your getting Italy in one big hit!

As we entered Italy via the Mont Blanc tunnel, we quickly realised the Italians LOVE a tunnel, following the 11.8km tunnel under Mont Blanc (well Aigulle di midi but lets not get tied up in the details) there is a raft of 20+ tunnels we lost count at the amount of tunnels we went through before reaching civilisation. Ellie HATES tunnels and I mean HATES! But I do find them appealing, instead of building roads around the side of mountains and ruining the visual aspect of the mountain, why not tunnel through and keep the visual aspect of the mountains. So Italy, I'm on board, Ellie is not!

We did however hit a slight hitch as we left the tunnel. Our French sim cards stopped working. We knew they had data roaming, but we could not access the internet to change the settings. We knew we were heading to the Aosta Valley, so we followed the signs to Aosta  in search of Wifi. However, it was around 4pm on a Sunday, so nowhere was open.

Finally, we connected to some crappy WiFi and slowly managed to book on to the camp site in Gressoney a day early and we would figure the sim cards out from there. Another 30 minutes down the road and we hit the town of Pont Saint Martin; a beautiful little town with a river flowing straight through the high street from the Monte Rosa Massif. From here we headed up yet another mountain pass, the start of this one winds through tight hair pins up into the mountain valley.

Considering the journey after exiting the Mont Blanc tunnel was only approximately an hour it was evident we were no longer in France and in a country I had been wanting to visit for years, Italia! It came as a bit of a shock to the system coming to Italy - I felt like I had got used to the French culture and understood enough of their language to hold my own in shops, restaurants and cafes. No more 'Bonjour' for us but luckily 'Buon Giorno' was basically the same, but after that we didn't have a foggiest.

We were staying on Camping Margherita just out side of Gressoney Saint Jean. It was a small cramped in camp site but it did have everything we needed, with good WiFi, clean toilets/showers and a laundrette to wash all of our clothes. It was 2 days until Sam the Worm and Tory Will arrived (sorry lads), and we headed up to Monte Rosa for 4 days and I was excited to see the boys!

On the camp site I met a team of Polish climbers and a Danish climber and we drank some wine (supplied by the Dane) and talked mountains. They were heading up a day before us, so it was good to get some mountain chatter in. I needed a big kit check, I had tried to stay organised but it the back of the van was a mess. We were a little unsure whether we was moving huts on Monte Rosa or staying at the one and the thought of carrying all my supplies up and down the mountain was hurting my back just thinking about it, so I was trying to pack light...It didn't go to plan!  This was my first time at high altitude and I heard of a European styled 'Light breakfast' by Andy Spink (Ocean Vertical/ Hebridean Pursuits) on an alpine style course  with him in Glencoe early this year. I knew I needed to pack plenty of protein bars and peanut butter!!!

My 38l Mountain Equipment bag was BURSTING.

The next day was 13th of June, and the Boys were in Milano on their way to Pont Saint Martin where I would pick them up at 2pm. We had seen that their was a public swimming pool down in Pont Saint Martin so we had planned to go there, but our sim cards were fully gone now so we needed to sort that, I wanted to make sure that I could contact Ellie on the Mountain, so we drove from shop to shop to shop, trying to get a pre paid sim card. The Italians weren't giving us a great impression at this point, All they kept saying was 'You don't live here, no sim card!' ...hang on a minute I thought it was the French that didn't like the Brits, not the Italians. We knew from online research we could get a pre paid sim card so it wasn't us asking stupid questions on this one. So I had another check online and found a FRENCH supermarket,  ye olde faithful, 'Carrefour' down the road that had a phone shop...

After a 5 minute snoop around for some pay over the counter sim cards with no success, I plucked up the courage to ask at the information desk about sim cards. Restoring our faith in the Italians this women was WONDERFUL, she took us over to the phone counter and explained what we needed to the non English speaking phone master/genius and we were on our way. 'Ho Mobile' 100gb of data for a month for 10 euro, beltin!

After the sim card drama, it was time to pick Sam and Will up from PSM Train station, no swim for us :( We headed over to the train station and the boys had arrived! I was pretty buzzin to see Sam and Will, both of them have become really close friends over the last few years as we all share the same exuberant passion for the mountains. So after a quick hug and 'WELCOME TO ITALIA!' I chucked them in the back of the van and headed up the mountain pass to Tache.

Ellie was staying at the camp site for the days we were heading up the mountains so we dropped Sam and Will off at the hotel and we headed back down, Ellie had agreed to drop me back off at the hotel so it was her first experience of driving on mountain passes, which she smashed! Ellie is actually a really good driver she just gets stressed out about driving a big van, I could probably get her to drive more often but 98% of the time I love driving so I do most of it, plus it gives me an excuse for not cooking the tea...'Soz hun, I drove!'

After a shower and a long hug with my Fiancée, she dropped me back off with Sam and Will where we headed out for beer and pizza. Lots of catching up to do, lots of laughs and plenty of piss taking to be done. We were in bar in Tache called Bar Favre with friendly workers, We had a good laugh with the barmaid who pronounced IPA as 'EEEEEE-PA' which became a running joke for the next week. The night was getting late-ish and the guy who owned the bar found out we was heading up Monte Rosa and gave us  shots of some spirit that was proper heart burn tackle. We headed to bed for the big day ahead!

The next day we woke up and had breakfast, as it was a 1pm pick up we had plenty of time to sort kit and the anxiety kicked in. I had never felt anxiety like it, my heart was racing and I was going into a full panic asking my self stupid questions...'will I be okay at altitude', 'Am I fit enough', What will Ellie do is something happens to me?'...it was getting out of hand and I had to calm myself down, everything was going to be amazing, but me being me I had put plans into place with my brother to get Ellie home (and the van) if anything did happen.

I am not going to report about Monte Rosa on this post, as it requires a full post. I can report however, I did make it up AND down and it was truly amazing. A full Monte Rosa post will follow!

After Monte Rosa the next few days were a bit of a blur, Probably due to be tired but also may have something to do with the whiskey we downed on the night we got down off the mountain.

Sam, Will, Ellie and I headed out to Bar Favre for pizza and beer, to celebrate our success at high altitude and also to bid farewell to the boys. We got drunk and played some pool, then in the most childish, British fashion, Sam cropped up with, 'I wonder who's the fastest in a race?'... challenge accepted and we headed down the road, Will didn't play apart in the first race but he soon joined in after he had finished another beer. Sam went off like a rocket in the first race and beat me, then we had a decided with all 3, where we were all utterly useless and ran like the tin man, but I won so my competitive side and being a sore looser I took that.

The night was over, Sam and Will head home in the morning so we went to bed and we dropped them off at PSM train station at 8am the following morning.

We weren't completely sure what our plan was after Monte Rosa, all we knew was we needed to head east towards Croatia to get out of Schengen in time. We had a cicerone book for single day treks in the dolomites, so we decided on there! Gressoney is a busy place and we wanted some wilderness again, after a quick check on Park4night we found a spot about 1 hour north west of Lake Garda called 'La Plana' which is also a very famous bouldering park. This sounded ideal.

On the way, We was driving through the mountains, I was getting Hungry and I was 'baking hot', like a gift from god we spotted a lake, with people swimming in it! We needed this...

We hadn't brought a bouldering mat with us, so we headed to the famous climbing town of Arco to pick one up. Ellie had also been inspired to climb after watching the Climbing world cup in Chamonix, so to my utter shock she wanted to get a pair of climbing shoes to join in on the bouldering. Arco is known as a climbers town, it is literally FULL of climbing shops but it also has a beauty about it, old stone buildings, tight alley ways with coffee shop tables lining the sides. We picked up a bouldering mat, Ellie some shoes.

While we were on Lake Garda it would of been rude not to go for a swim! Lake Garda is obviously a huge tourist attraction, on the tip of the dolomites it reminds me of Lake Windermere or Loch Lomond as people flock there all year round to witness the outstanding beauty of the lake and take a dip.

It was about 38 degrees that day, so a cool down was definitely needed. Following our swim we headed up to La Plana to the cooler weather. La Plana is situated about 1000m up, so this would be ideal to get the van cooler and get a good night sleep.

We woke up in the morning, to work men tarmacking the road, which was weird we was in the middle of a forest, but hey ho. We looked over at the other climbers, shrugged our shoulders to the early wake up and drank some coffee. The actual boulder park is about a 2min approach from the car park, which is perfect! We met some Italian climbers and had a chat and climbed a bit together. I was struggling on a route and they give me a few tips but I couldn't nail in that day, my fingers were killing and skin was shredded so I  called it a day. That night they invited us over to their camp for some authentic Italiano Prosecco had a good chat about climbing, life and all things random until the stars come out and we got to watch an Astro Storm, which was cool. Manuel (one of the Italian climbers) said to me I wasn't allowed to leave the next day until I sent that line. So as promised I woke up, chalked my hands and went and sent the line!

I've never really bouldered before so to send a very crimpy 6a, I was super stoked, Plus my shoulder had managed to survive the thumping just 5 weeks after I dislocated it, climbing in France. Ellie even topped out on her first every climb, it might of only been a 4+ but for someone who loves her feet FIRMLY on the ground I was super proud of her and she said she had a nice time, which is good!

After we had finished at the bouldering park, we decided to head deeper in to the dolomites, to Arounzo where we had found a couple hikes we wanted to do. We found another spot on Park4night just off the main road between Arounzo and Cortina. Where we met a French couple who were planning the same hike as us. A really friendly couple which loved talking about the mountains as much as me.

We was planning on heading out at 6am to try get down before the mid day high temps kicked in, but I woke up and thought 'Nah not happening I'm knackered' so I rolled around. I think I was still exhausted from the time up Monte Rosa, the 3am starts and lack of sleep had hit me and I slept in until 12! I must of needed that, I had 14 hours sleep and then we tidied the van...exciting stuff!

We went for a wonder around Auronzo and said we would hike the following day, we found another spot for the night a little bit further up the road next to a river. This is where we met our new friend Benjamin, the chef/camper van maker from Germany/Slovenia. Beni, as he likes to be called, is all things van life, solo traveller who loves to cycle EVERYWHERE. He told us he had recently cycled down the coast to Croatia from Slovenia which is pretty cool. We got chatting and he mentioned he fancied going climbing, he had all he stuff so we said we would meet up back in this spot the following day and go climbing.

We actually got up at 5am the next day to go hiking, but this time it wasn't to avoid the blistering heat, it was to try get up and down before a thunder storm hit. So we set off up the road to the starting point and hit the trail. a 10km loop up to refuge and around some wonderful peaks of the dolomites. The weather forecast said the storm would hit at 12, we had plenty of time, 6 hours to get up and down. we got about an hour half in to the trail and was around 2300m when the sky turned black. 'Its only 7.30am, its bloody 5 hours early' I said to Ellie. We continued up for a bit when this HUGE rumble shook the floor. We've had our fair share of thunder storms on this trip, but walking at 2300m with metal poles in a thunder storm didn't seem like such a great idea. It was at that moment the sky lit up and fork  lightening appeared just to the side of us...'TIME TO BAIL, FAST'. We got down in record time, and met a guy from Norway to chat to, whilst we waited out the storm.

Typical, its been scorching hot for a week now and the day we head out, we have to bail due to a storm. But oh well, we headed to Cortina a super fancy town, with Gucci, Rolex and other expensive retailers. A really nice place for coffee and an Italian Croissant. We headed back up to meet Beni to go climbing the next day, although the weather was not favourable for the next few days. We had a chat and decided, its probably not the best idea to head out, so we drank whiskey instead and Beni got to show off his chef'ing skills by making us some nice snacks to enjoy the night.

The next day we said farewell to Beni and started to head south east towards Croatia, our next destination for the foreseeable future. On the other side of the Dolomites there is the Austrian border and we found a cracking spot for the night just on the Italian side. After we had made our way up, what could only be described as the 'Smugglers route' to Austria. We settled down for the night.

3 counties 1 day

We had decided to head to Slovenia for some wine tasting. Slovenia is super strict on wild camping so its can get expensive on camp sites, but I had found a spot on Park4night at a small family run winery and if you go for wine tasting they will let you stay on the winery for free. Sounds like a win win situation to me that does!

But before we head for our Tory top up at a winery,  we were a 5 minute walk from Austria. lets go! We walked around the lake, and over the Austrian border. To be honest there wasn't much to see, they were building a ski complex so it was just cranes and diggers, but still its another country we have visited, albeit for 15 minutes and Ellie got to jump the border!

Back on Italian soil, we headed off to Slovenia for WINE! We arrived and you could tell you were in wine country. Vineyard after vineyard is all you could see across the horizon. We had our wine tasting at 6pm, the usual lady was sick so the son of the family held the tasting. There was only Ellie and I there, so it was like a private tasting session, which is probably a good thing because we hadn't had a shower for a week now.

The wine was amazing, its won gold awards all over America and we couldn't help but top up on a few bottles. the tasting was only 10 Euro each which a sharing meat board for an additional 5 euro, well that's tea and drink sorted!

After our tasting had finished and feeling a little bit tipsy, the weather was so hot. It was 9pm and still 36 degrees, with no breeze and we were boiling hot, no choice for it, lets crack open a bottle of that wine we just bought! We sat out side on our new sofa (bouldering mat) and chatted until about 12am. These days feel really special when travelling, we got really lucky finding this place and had such a lovely evening. One we will certainly remember for the rest of our lives.

Slovenia is a beautiful country and although only there for 24 hours we become fond of the place, we will definitely be going back through there on the way home. Probably get some more wine in, so get your orders in...

All support is massively appreciated, if you'd like buy us a coffee (wine) you can do this on the below link! Thank you!!

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Europescape

Next stop CROATIA...