Ailefroide and Part I of the 'Chronicles of the Wedding Dress'

So packing up the van with what seemed like the contents of the house we set off to Ailefroide. It is a great little village near the top of a valley which gives access to the high mountains. There is a huge campsite there. On arrival, we opened the van and seemed to spread our stuff all over the field.

There were four different university climbing clubs in the campsite. Unfortunately, we agreed to drink some wine with one group that night. So after a lot more wine than we thought we would drink we crawled into our sleeping bags at about 3am and found it very hard to get up to go climbing the next day. When we did get up to go climbing, it was really hot and once climbing we discovered that we had somehow lost our climbing skills. After sweating and get loads of 'disco leg' we decided it was time to call it a day and retire to the nearest cafe to drink some coffee.

That night we avoided all students.

Next day we were up bright and early. We had to acheive our Part I of the 'Chronicles of the Wedding Dress' so we lugged up skis and the wedding dress onto the glacier below the Barre Des Ecrins. Another hot day and many French people giving us weird looks from the unorthadox luggage we were carrying up into the hills.

Not often you can say I went skiing in shorts and t-shirt with my wedding dress in a bin bag attached to my back is it!

Once up there, I found out how much of a faff Lara's bridesmaids had to go through in actually getting her dress on to her and doing it up; my God it was sooooo complicated. Once on, it was time to point and laugh at her as she tried to skin up hill and do a kick turn!

She got the hang of it however, and we spent half and hour taking pictures in different places. Just have to sort through them and Lara has to chose one for the book. A few of the ones sorted so far.

Off out on the road bikes now. Until next time.