Pete's Blog - Week 6(a)
Josiane Nicholas ( who taught at Tiverton School ) joined us a Ceillac ( 1639m ) for 10 days of walking. We were now making early starts, in order to avoid the afternoon heat, so it was quite chilly as we walked up the road towads the Col Giradin ( 2700m ). We crossed the Cristillian torrent and climbed steeply towards what looked like unscalable cliffs. The path wound around the cliffs and eventually reached la Pisse waterfall! If we had thought that we had left stunning mountains behind in the northern Alps then the Lac Sainte-Anne ( 2451m ) soon dispelled the idea: a huge circle of high, jagged peaks and curtains of scree led down to turquoise lake. A chapel perched by the lake ( another place of pilgrimage ) contrasted with the desolate beauty of the rock. We now had sight of the col and the steep precarious path through the scree that led to it. At the col we looked back to the peaks of the Hautes Alpes that we had been crossing for the last week. Cont - 6b