Vosges

At Saint-Quirin we enter the Vosges — and our hearts beat faster. Not just from the climbing, but from the pure joy of mountain hiking with a backpack. This is what we love most.

The Vosges are a medium-altitude mountain range with rounded peaks — called "ballons" in French — of which the Grand Ballon at 1,424 metres is the highest. The GR5 winds through them for over 250 kilometres, and planning stages is a challenge: lots of climbing and descending, few campsites on the summits.

But what a world opens up. On the Donon we reach our first summit above 1,000 metres, with Roman temple ruins on top. At Barr and Ribeauvillé we walk through fairytale Alsatian villages with half-timbered houses in pastel colours. We sleep wild on a mountain meadow at sunset, find goat cheese at a roadside stall we'd saved on Google Maps from a car trip years earlier, and get caught in thunderstorms on steep, slippery paths.

The nights grow short and cold. At a mountain refuge at 1,300 metres Mark makes a 2.5 kilometre water expedition because the spring is dry. And then, on a clear day, we see them from the Vosges for the first time: the Alps — the snow-capped peaks of Mont Blanc, 200 kilometres away. That's where we're going.

At Giromagny we descend to the plain. The Vosges have stolen our hearts with their charm — the villages, the forests, the shelters, the chaussons aux pommes. But the best is yet to come.