Not yet earned

See TickyTocky's blip for our lunch, and a much better group photo than mine. Pro tip: Don't take photos of people in the sun under a bright red awning. They will all look as if they've been tippling all afternoon, rather than having had a modest glass of wine with lunch. The only solution was to convert to mono.

After lunch Bundle, Ingrid, S and I drove down to Prades where we were picked up by a surfer dude in a battered looking Peugeot van. "Landrovers are no good here," he told us as we bounced up officially the worst maintained departmental road in France. "They're not reliable enough. These Peugeots can take anything, but we do have to replace the tyres every three weeks." Perhaps they are more robust that the human passengers -- 23 km took an hour and a half, and we staggered out of the van at the Chalet des Cortalets just glad that our teeth had remained attached to our jaws.

Fifteen years ago S and I drove up here in Mamie, our elderly Renault 5. It took even longer, but I think the road must have deteriorated since then because I doubt she'd have made it now. It was amazing to see people in brand-new Mercedes and Audis whacking their undercarriages on protruding rocks. TickyTocky had told us about some people in a VW camper that got so irredeemably stuck that the only solution to unblock the road was simply to saw it up.

Anyway, arriving at the chalet there was only one thing to be done -- sink some artisanal beer made with water from a spring just a few hundred metres away. Later we had a very leisurely amble around the lake, hardly adequate preparation for tomorrow. Then dinner in the chalet with lots of serious climbers, and an early night. This blip proves we survived -- more tomorrow!