Day 42 – to Ballon d’Alsace (at the Pass)

To my surprise, there’s a couple of campervan / motorhome parking areas at the top of the Ballon d’Alsace pass. I’m always keen to stay at the top of passes, and have managed to do this several times this journey, but previously only in heavy snow.

Today the weather was more like spring, up here at 1170 metres asl it got to 19C in the afternoon, much warmer when out of the wind, and down to 5 or 6C at night. Very pleasant.

It’s about a 300 metre stroll to the peak of the Ballon, a stiff climb of about 80 metres, and no doubt in the high season, very busy. There are two restaurants and a new tourist information with bathrooms and water, so it’s a very comfortable stopover.

It gave me a chance to renew my love affair with the GR5, which I was last on a couple of years ago. The GR5 starts, or finishes, in the Netherlands, crosses Belgium and Luxembourg before crossing France from north to south. It is part of the European walking route E2. This trail is most famous for its route through the French Alps from Lake Geneva to Nice where it is called Grande Traversée des Alpes.

I managed a few kilometres of it today, though no doubt will get back to it at some stage in the next few years.

There was nobody, apart from a school group of about 25 11 year olds with their outdoor leaders, looking particularly enthusiastic.

It had been a late start, as I tidied the van and filled up with water before leaving the campsite, then stocked up at Leclerc supermarket.

Up at the Pass the afternoon was remarkably quiet. The odd motorcyclist called in for a selfie, the occasional cyclist for a breather, the random motorist for a leg stretch, the sporadic van to drop off the lazy cyclist, the casual visitor to get ripped off in the restaurant.

But all left me to my book, Jesse Ball’s The Curfew, which I greatly enjoyed.