Amazing Aosta

With our time running short and our weekends now booked until departure, we finally returned to the area we both love: Valle d'Aosta. This is a gorgeous mountainous valley that Rory frequented when he was living in Torino (Rory lived in Torino for 18 months after graduation - hence his fluency in Italiano, and returned the year before Jane met him!) and had endless weekends free, abundant energy and had found an alpine club to tag along with. From the valley you can climb Mount Blanc (Monte Bianco), The Matterhorn (Cervino) and Gran Paradiso to name the big three. It contains many many ski fields – some tiny, some huge and from the valley you cross over the alps into France and Switzerland.

When we were first married (for those reading who don't know us), we came straight to Italy after our wedding where we worked in Assisi for two months, before heading to Milan for another two months to work alongside Alison (much like we are doing now) and promote La Plastecnica. 

Rory grinding up 2000m: 2006

We went to Valle d'Aosta on 3-4 occasions, tramping with Richard Wesley, climbing a wee mountain by ourselves and finally cycling up it at the start of our grand cycle tour of Switzerland (mainly). We hauled our bikes and gear up a spectacular side valley just for the heck of it before descending to the valley floor again and a couple of days later exited over Gran Saint Bernardo pass (2469m) into France.

Rory in our 'freedom camping spot' on
 Grand Saint Bernardo pass
 - totally illegal and totally spectacular 

I love the valley. Of course the mountains are spectacular but it also has a rich mountain culture developed over hundreds of years. It is lined with precarious castles atop rocky outcrops. The houses are beautiful – great stone slabs for tiles, decorative woodwork on balconies, eaves and window frames, cute little windows that keep out the cold often laced with colourful window boxes. The shops sell lots of Aosta artisan work and you can imagine the creativity which can flow from being couped up through a long winter. The food (as I have talked about before) is rich in calories, dense food for people who are used to adversity and hard work (well, they used to be!). The cheeses come from local cows and goats – often hand milked with the cheeses made in tiny factories on farm.

November is a great time to go if you are like us and don't like doing what everyone else is doing. It is post trekking season and pre ski season and is probably about as dead as it gets. The locals are just tucked up, ticking along and readying themselves for the crazy ski season.

So finally, with the forecast looking great, we got to take our boys there and revel in a weekend of mountains – the place where we seem to do best as a family.

We had chosen a village called Cogne in Gran Paradiso National park (which contains Gran Paradiso the mountain). 

We booked the day before and rocked up to the hotel which is run by a family whose Father (Dorino Ouvrier) is probably the most significant artist in the area – a wood carver and artist. The hotel had lots of his artworks in our room, in the restaurant and outside.

Hostellerie Del Atelier

 On saturday we walked from a local village up to the local rock crag – sort of by accident. It was a magnificant, sun-bathed slab of rock, situated beside a waterfall which is busily forming up for the ice climbing season. We met only one person at the rock – a local alpine guide who proceeded to free climb up the slab in his alpine boots (it was a very low grade we discovered) to go check on how the ice was forming up.

 

Gwilym and Silas adored scrambling on the rock and kept us on our toes since we were half way up a rocky outcrop with some bad drop offs! Gwilym does not seem to have developed a natural fear of heights just yet and seemed to scramble up anything. We walked to the top of the crag for a snack as the sun dipped over the ridge before we headed back to the hotel. It was easy to imagine coming back in a few years with some ropes and shoes for a play. This is an admission because I consider myself a retired rock climber!

Native to the area are two types of mountain goat: the Chamois (or Car-mosh-shee in Italian) and the Steinboch (Stambecco). We were pretty eager to see both – Silas particularly wanted to see the males fighting (I had read that Nov/dec is the fighting/mating season). We spotted Chamois from the car en route to the village where our next day walk started from and thought we were pretty clever.

Steinboch

Chamois

The walk we chose wound up a hillside – eventually hitting a col and heading down to a Rifugio (or hut). The Italians do huts pretty fancily. They are more like hotels with all the comforts and seem particuarly appealing with kids because you wouldn't have to carry so much gear. However, the rifugio had closed for the season so we just nosied on up the hill. Our goat spotting desires were soon met with heaps of Chamois out grazing and Rory finally spotted a Steinboch. These guys are impressive and very cool, calm and collected. As you can see from the photos – they don't worry about being shot and humans do not provide much of a threat. We saw only one but got really close and we all really enjoyed just hanging out watching this beautiful animal munching away in its natural environment.

All rugged up

 

A happy descent in Autumn sun

I think we climbed about 500m – not making the pass but hitting enough snow to make it not as feasible with small kids. A single tramper interupted our solitude on what would usually be a highway in the season. We snacked and turned around with the sun still shining and wound our way back down. Honestly – it was our best day yet I reckon.

I just loved the space and the freedom, the colours and the views. Watching and spotting the animals (goats, squirrels, birds). I loved watching Rory gently coaxing Gwilym along the track (he walked most of the way up) and Silas skipping along in his happy place.

The boys were so happy – endlessly entertained with walking and watching, sliding and scratching about in the dirt. Gwilym said on the way home: ' I want to go the mountains again and again and again and again. Actually, I want to live there'.

I wondered why we had bothered with Florence, why visiting art galleries had been so important to me when faced with the beauty of these mountains. But the sun was shining and that can make all the difference in the world!

We headed back via the town of Aosta (the heart of the valley) to stroll the streets in a chilly twilight, window shop and eventually eat 'Turkish Takeaways' made by Pakistanis' with Italian side dishes! It hit the spot before we hit the beloved autostrada with the ever cool calm and collected sat nav lady to accompany us back to Baggio.

En route home we talked of what we would change if we knew we were dying or if we could have our time again – in the words of my brave and beautiful Auntie Roz (who passed away with cancer a few years ago) when she was asked the same question: the answer would have to be “more of the same”. It just doesn't get much better than this!