French Alps / GR 58 – day 10

Refuge des Fonts de Cervières – Refuge de Furfande

16.7.2024 Tuesday

→ 28,6 km ↑ 1682 m – total 232,7 km

Alarm’s at 6:15am. I sleep really well tonight. Even though I went to bed at 11pm, getting up feels easy. Breakfast is baguette with eggs and pâté. We haven’t had such a hearty breakfast in a long time — I can’t even finish mine and pack the rest for the road. We start with a climb through a beautiful valley, 600 meters up to Col de Peás. We start in long trousers, but change after just a few minutes. Two lively older men pass us. Jozef overtakes them right away, and I slowly catch up to his lead. In the end I pass them too and climb to the pass alone. It looks like the Dolomites here.

I reach the pass and Jozef’s nowhere to be seen, so I continue on. He’s sitting on the grass with a view, and the views really are beautiful.

We walk along a perfect trail. Easy, gently downhill, with beautiful views on every side. I really enjoy this stretch, it’s about 5 km.

Then we descend a short, steep set of switchbacks to the settlement of Souliers. From there we leave the official route and head to the village of Arvieux, since there’s a shop there. It’s 5.6 km, and the shop closes in 1 hour 15 minutes, so we shift into top gear. We pass a group of hikers, all retirees. Jozef has his umbrella clipped to his backpack, and it catches the grandmas’ attention — they ask how it’s attached. Jozef looks a bit confused. We continue on the road and then join a hiking trail.

We go down into the valley on asphalt road. Just after 12 we’re at the shop. We buy beer, chips, peaches, tomatoes, a baguette, cheese and pâté. We settle in the shade by a drinking fountain, where Jozef cools his beer. We sit there a bit, until the wind picks up and blows the fountain water straight onto us.

So we move to a bench. I have a beer too, that should be fun. I write up yesterday’s blog. Lunch is baguette with cheese, olives and tomatoes. At 3pm we go for coffee and a cake too. We hope they have flan, but they don’t, so we get fruit tartlets instead — also good. I drink two small 5.5% beers and I really feel it. My steps get lighter going uphill. Refuge de Furfande is 7.5 km away with 940 m of elevation gain. A road leads to Col de Furfande, just before the hut, so we start on that. After about half an hour we join the official GR 58 route. From there it runs through a beautiful pine forest with lovely green grass.

Flies swarm us badly again. We climb fast, and by 6pm we’re at the pass, with a beautiful view opening up on the other side.

We take our first photo together on this trip. The hut is now just a few hundred meters below us.

There are loads of marmots here. We drop our packs outside and I go ask how things work. We can pitch the tent anywhere, as long as it doesn’t block the view from the hut, and that costs €3. Shower and electricity together cost another €3 per person. Worth it for that shower alone. We go set the tent up on a little hill nearby with a nice view. I warn Jozef the ground slopes, but tell him it’ll be fine.

At first I try to help Jozef pitch the tent, but I make it worse, so I go take a shower instead. The shower is a wooden hut outside, with a little window set too high for me to see anything through it, for obvious reasons.

There’s hot water for as long as the sun’s out. Second day in a row with a shower — we’re living the good life. Dinner is mashed potato with tuna, olives and dried tomatoes. In the evening we sort through photos together. I don’t feel like writing much, so I choose sleep instead. The tent is set up completely crooked, and we keep sliding downhill in it.