The Alps Ⅲ

From Briançon, the highest city in France, we head into the Queyras and the Ubaye. The landscape grows rawer, the villages scarcer, the evenings quieter. At the Lac Sainte-Anne — so blue it seems unreal — we dry our wet tent in the sun while curious hikers ask if we camped there.

Autumn has arrived. The first frost of the trek lies on the grass, our fingers and toes stay cold for a long time in the mornings. But as soon as we climb and the sun breaks through, the layers come off. At Fouillouse we have the funniest shopping moment of the journey: Malou finds the shop open but unmanned, tracks down the elderly owner in her pink house, and the woman doesn't know how the cash register works or what the prices are.

We enter the Mercantour — 55 kilometres without a village, shop or open accommodation. It snows at 2,400 metres. We sleep wild in the cold and wake with ice on the inside of the tent. But when we reach the col the next morning and see a golden glow beyond the last mountains — there, on the horizon, unmistakably: the Mediterranean Sea. After 1,800 kilometres of walking, the endpoint is visible.

It is magnificent. And it also takes our breath away.