The End!

So here’s how we walked.

	Distance	Distance	Distance
Total	466 km	28 084 m	27645 m
Daily average	27,42 km	1652 m	1626 m

We were on our feet for 17 days and slept in the tent for 18 nights. On average, each day we climbed and descended the equivalent of Poludňový Grúň from Vrátna — twice. Even though we had 11 km more to cover to reach that altitude.

Our original plan was to just do the GR 54 (around Écrins National Park) and then wander around a bit afterward. We had a big buffer in case of storms, and also because this trek is considered one of the toughest in the Alps. But the weather was on our side and our fitness was genuinely good, so we managed to finish it in just 7 days. We can confirm: GR 54 is definitely tougher than the TMB. In case we had a few days left over, we’d considered heading into the Vercors range, but it just felt like a waste not to put 10 free days toward something better.

	Walking time	Net walking time
Total	154 h 54 min	119 h 35 min
Daily average	9 h 6 min	7 h 2 min
Average speed	3 km / h	3,9 km / h

So we decided to head into Vanoise National Park. And it was a good call. You can’t just pitch a tent anywhere in Vanoise, so we tried to sleep just outside its borders and once booked a bivouac spot by a mountain hut. Vanoise is really beautiful, and the climbs were less demanding. We always planned about two days ahead. Our days ended up a bit shorter, mostly because of the weather, but I think our tired bodies appreciated it too. Once we’d wandered across the whole park, we still had a few days left, so we decided to cross the Massif des Cerces, back toward GR 54, to Le Bourg d’Oisans, the town we’d started from.

And it really didn’t fall short of the national parks. If you ever happen to find yourself in that area, don’t skip Mont Thabor — we didn’t get better views in any direction anywhere else on the whole trip. To finish things off, we treated ourselves to something every cyclist would envy: the Col du Galibier (last year the Tour de France went over it twice — we’re currently watching the Netflix series about it). It was the last proper climb on our itinerary. The final stretch was genuinely steep, and it was there, for the only time on the whole trip, that thoughts of “why am I even doing this to myself” crept into my head. But once we reached the top, it was all good again — like it always is once you drag yourself up some peak or pass. Driving up to Col du Galibier isn’t much of an achievement. Cycling it, now that’s something. And walking it is the peak of madness.

Coming home

Coming home is tough. Slotting back into society is never exactly a favorite activity. In Grenoble we wanted a coffee, but right by the station was a Muslim neighborhood with a market going on and a million people around. So we ended up in a bakery, and even went to McDonald’s, just so we wouldn’t have to bother finding food at the airport. At the airport we repacked our things so Jozef’s backpack would come to 10 kg, and wrapped it in plastic film. We went to drop it off at check-in and the woman told us it couldn’t be wrapped like that — by the way, there was a paid wrapping service right there. We then read the rules and apparently it’s not allowed to be wrapped in film from home. Honestly, I have no idea what the actual difference is. So we took the film off and secured it some other way with straps, but we’ve had it happen before that they’ve damaged the backpack a bit. On top of that, they sent us over to the oversize counter (even it weighed only 10 kg). The staff there had no idea why we’d been sent over, but they took it anyway. We flew to Kraków. We weren’t seated together — I ended up next to a bunch of kids, Jozef was sitting next to a Frenchman, with whom he even spoke in English during the flight. So he does know English after all. In Kraków we wait at the baggage carousel, wait until it stops completely. No sign of our bag. There’s another girl standing there too, who says she was also sent to oversize with her backpack. So off we go to fill out a lost luggage form. They’d left it behind in Lyon. It’s supposed to arrive on the next flight, on 2 August, and then they will send it to us. Because of all that, we miss our train and don’t leave Kraków until almost 8pm. I handle the navigation. Part of the route takes us down a genuinely narrow road through a forest, but Google showed it as the fastest option. By quarter to eleven we’re in the Kysuce region. We eat something, chat a bit, and go to sleep in an actual bed! The next day we head off at 9am to Partizánske with 6 buckets of blueberries. We don’t even stop at home first, straight to distributing them among the family. We get home at 2pm. Once everything’s unloaded from the car, the apartment looks like a bomb went off in it. We hadn’t been home in almost a month. Jozef cooks pasta puttanesca while I sort out what I need for work tomorrow. In the afternoon I fall asleep on the couch, and toward evening we go for a bike ride. Our fitness is fantastic. Róbert Fekete’s is closed, so we grab a beer at Osemdesiatka instead. And that’s really the end of our journey. It was amazing. There were harder moments, easier ones too, but we got through it together. Hope you enjoyed this diary, and that at least through the photos you got a little taste of the French Alps.