Europe 🇪🇺2025 Part2 TourduMontBlanc 👣

The Tour du Mont Blanc (TBM) a beautiful trail which passes through France 🇫🇷 Switzerland 🇨🇭 and Italy 🇮🇹. Starting from Les Houches close to Chamonix, it is a loop of more than 175 km and 10,000 meters of elevation gain around Mont Blanc. Breathtaking panoramas, crossing passes at more than 2,500 meters of altitude, and climbs facing glaciers on the way.

Mont Blanc is the highest mountain in the Alps 

This alpine trek will inevitably stay etched in our minds forever! 

Day 1 Les Houches to Le Pontet 🇫🇷 

26km Elevation gain 1141m

Check out my walk on Strava: https://strava.app.link/6SRSmbJcfVb

Overnight Le Pontet ⛺️ 

Good campsite

Wifi in the reception area

Charge points

Washing machine & tumble dryer available extra charge

No shop. Best to buy food in town before the campsite 

Small restaurant.  Also serves a breakfast buffet 

I will still post the rest of the Tour du Mont Blanc when I am home

 Network was limited on the way. Below some info.

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Mont Blanc Day 2 Les Contamines-Montjoie 🇫🇷

Hiked from La Pontet to La Balme

Overnight at La Balme ⛺️ at Bivac

On the way had coffee ☕️ at a refugee with beautiful views and comfy 💺 

La Blame is a wonderful campsite. Almost like wild camping. No charge. Washed in a water stream ( Used no soap, to protect nature)

No wifi, no shop. No charge points.

Free of charge.

Only take cash at the refugee next to campsite. 

A small restaurant at the refugee. Need to book dinner in advance (27E pp). Can enjoy a drink 🍺 

Check out my walk on Strava: https://strava.app.link/6QsMIsavzWb

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Mont Blanc Day 3 Les Contamines-Montjoie 🇫🇷

Hiked from La Balma to La Chapieux

Overnight at La Chapieux ⛺️ 

Practical campsite. We swam in the river instead of taking showers. 

Wifi at the little restaurant.

Charge point at reception & restaurant

Small shop with some supplies. Bread, cheese, ham, etc. Expensive. Or at least in comparison with shops in town.

Free of charge box for donations. 

 

Check out my walk on Strava: https://strava.app.link/FDsZbDmvzWb

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Mont Blanc  Day 4 Bourg-Saint-Maurice Walking 🇮🇹

Hiked from La Chapieux to Hobo Camp

Overnight Hobo Camp ⛺️ 

Very good campsite 

Charge points

Wifi

Restaurant. Pizzas and other food 

Small shop where one can buy bread, cheese, charcuterie, drinks, and some tin food, etc

Washing machine & dryer coin-operated 

Jacuzzi free of charge. Need to book a time slot in advance.

Credit card & cash accepted 

We ended our hike in the mountains above Courmayeur the day before. This morning we took a bus 🚌  to Courmayeur to start close to where we ended the day before.

Check out my walk on Strava: https://strava.app.link/i2sx6lsvzWb

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Mount Blanc Day 5 Morning 🇮🇹

Courmayeur Exploring the Town 🇮🇹 and enjoying 🍕 in the morning since it was raining. We started our hike in afternoon. 🇮🇹

We planned to hike in the morning and do shopping to get fresh supplies for the next few days. However,  it was raining during the night and morning so we changed and went to town in the morning. 

Shopped at A&O supermarket very reasonable prices & good quality 

In Courmayeur a couple of shops where hiking gas bottles are for sale

Mount Blanc Day 5 Afternoon 🇮🇹 From Hobo Camp to  Courmayeur  Hiked up the Mountain to above Courmayeur.   Stunning  views.  🇮🇹

Overnight Hobo Camp ⛺️ 

Lovely campsite 

Check out my walk on Strava: https://strava.app.link/o1uN2sGvzWb

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Mont Blanc Day 6 🇮🇹  Courmayeur to Val Ferret.

Camped at Jousaris ⛺️ 

Very good campsite 

Charge points

Wifi

The restaurant has very reasonable prices. Pizzas and other food for the evening. Morning delicious croissant, chocolate croissant, good coffee, cappuccino, etc.  

Small shop where one can buy bread, cheese, charcuterie, drinks, and some tin food etc

Credit card & cash accepted 

We ended our hike in the mountains above Courmayeur the day before. This morning we took a bus 🚌  to Courmayeur to start close to where we ended the day before.

Check out my walk on Strava: https://strava.app.link/aCnA7cOvzWb

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Mount Blanc Day 7 From Val Ferret to La Folley  🇨🇭

Overnight at Les Glaciers 🏕 

Good campsite. 

Charge points

Wifi on the entire campsite

No restaurant

Small shop where one can buy drinks.

Swiss prices. More expensive. 

Good campsite

Expensive 86 CHF for 4 people and 2 small tentsTMB price

Friendly

Accept credit card & cash

We finished at Val Ferret the previous day and took the bus to the campsite where we slept

Then this morning, we took the bus back to Val Ferret to start hiking where we ended the day before.

Check out my walk on Strava: https://strava.app.link/kJQk9gTvzWb

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Mont Blanc  Day 8. La Fouly to Champex  🇨🇭

Overnight Les Rocailles ⛺️ 

Charge points

Wifi

Basic restaurant with pizzas

Close to town with a supermarket. Easy 5-minute walk

Good campsite

Expensive 86 CHF for 4 people and 2 small tentsTMB price

Willing to keep things in the Fridge

Friendly

Accept credit card & cash

Check out my walk on Strava: https://strava.app.link/HIONGYXvzWb

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Mont Blanc Day 9 🇨🇭 Champex to La Peuty Trient

Overnight La Peuty ⛺️ 

Charge points

No Wifi 

Small shop

Small bar where one can buy drinks and food but Swiss prices.

Very reasonably priced campsite. 32.4 CHF for 4 people and 2 small tents 

Showers 🚿 pay extra.

Rivier next to campsite. We swam in river instead of shower.

Credit card & cash accepted 

Check out my walk on Strava: https://strava.app.link/OCRgR52vzWb

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Mont Blanc Day 10 a  🇫🇷 Trien to Mont Roc

Overnight at camping du glacier d'Argentière ⛺️ 

Lovely campsite. 

Wifi

Charging points 

Small restaurant 

Fridge & Freezer available for campers.

Washing machine & tumbledryer - coin operated

Walking distance to the town. Supermarket, Marche U,  in town 

Check out my walk on Strava: https://strava.app.link/TWOQXKewzWb

Mont Blanc Day 10b 🇫🇷  From Mont Rock to d'Argentiere

Overnight at camping du glacier d'Argentière ⛺️ 

Lovely campsite

Wifi on the whole campsite

Charge points 

Fridge Freezer for campers

Nice area with tables under roof where campers cam cook, socialize

Washing machine, tumble dryer coin operated 

Small restaurant 

Close to town with a Super U supermarket 

Very reasonable rates 

Check out my walk on Strava: https://strava.app.link/K8aMa7jwzWb

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Mont Blanc  Day 11.  🇫🇷  Walked from Mont Roc to Chamonix

Overnight Les Arolles ⛺️ 

Good campsite

Wifi at reception 

Charge points 

Fridge Freezer 

Area with tables under a small roof where campers can cook, socialize

Close to town with supermarkets.

Reasonable rates 

Check out my walk on Strava: https://strava.app.link/cjnu9ZpwzWb

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Mont Blanc Day 12. 🇫🇷 Our last day🥲 Chamonix to Le Houches where we started . 

Tour de Mont Blanc successfully completed

Overnight: Les Arolles ⛺️ 

It was amazing!!

Check out my walk on Strava: https://strava.app.link/guNVs8uwzWb

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Day 13 Mont Blanc Day 🇫🇷 

Relaxing Day

Chamonix- relaxing after Tour du Mont Blanc

Check out my walk on Strava: https://strava.app.link/DpxGWizwzWb

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Day 14 Mont Blanc Day 🇫🇷 

Departure day.

We took the Flix Bus to Geneve

Europe 🇪🇺2025 Part1 🇨🇭

 Day 1 

Depature from Cape Town. Super exited! 

Luckily Emirates is very generous with rhe weigh allowance! Quite a mission to pack for biking, hiking, socializing etc and stay within the weight allowance ⚖️!

On the way to hike Mont Blanc👣 & cycling 🚲approximately 800 km in 🇪🇺 ⛺️& visiting family and friends 🧡 Super excited!

Hoping to visit our kids in Ireland 🇮🇪 but still waiting for our visas. Apllied in April already! Still need to figure out how we will mansge this.

Day 2

Wonderful to be welcomed by our friend, Retha Swanepoel Strydom at Frankfurt Airport Totally blessed! Baie dankie Retha!!

Day 3

On the way to Valais Switzerland 🇨🇭, to spend time with Katharina Lauber, Eberhardt Stephan and a lovely group of people who previously toured with me in South Africa🇿🇦 🤗  Special welcome on arrival in Brig. Blessed!!

Day 4

Walking in the Rosswald Alp in Valais Switzerland Beautiful!🇨🇭.Lovely Lunch at the the bortelhuette was delicious and so much fun!! All food are delivered by helicopter. No road going to the hut. You need to walk👣 or pay to fly with a helicopter 🚁You should go there it really is great!

Day 5 A wonderful day walking in the Vineyards of Valais Switzerland 🇨🇭 enjoying Swiss wine, Raclette, and spending time with wonderful previous guests who were on tour with me in South Africa 🇿🇦.  It was an amazing, unforgettable day with Zerzuben Touristik 

Day 6 A wonderful day walking in  Binntal & in Ernen Valais Switzerland 🇨🇭 with wonderful friends. Ending the day with  Swiss wine & Raclette 🧀 I love Raclette! It is an unforgettable day in a beautiful country and dear friends.🤗 Blessed!

Day 7 A wonderful day walking at the Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland 🇨🇭 with wonderful friends. It started snowing while we walked.  Wonderful! It was an unforgettable day in a beautiful country and dear friends.🤗

Day 8

Privileged to go up with the cable car at to visit the The Aiguille du Midi which is the highest point that can be accessed by cable car in the Chamonix valley. The station stands at 3,842m and is situated directly across from Mont Blanc 🇫🇷  Another Wonderful day with wonderful friends.  Absolutely amazing. 🤗 

Blyderiver Canyon

Panorama Route &  Blyderiver Panorama Route &  Blyderiver Canyon 

The biggest green Canyon in the World. 🌎

Third biggest canyon 🇿🇦 after Grand Canyon in USA 🇺🇸 & Fish River Canyon in Namibia 🇳🇦 

Timbavati Game Reserve

Greater Kruger, staying at Simbavati Hilltop Lodge, super lodge in Timbavati Private Game Reserve. Amazing🐘 Even surprised ice-cream in the bush 🍦🦓 Topped with great sightings 🐘🦒🐆🦏 Fantastic!🇿🇦

Watching animals from "own swimmpool" on the deck of one's room.

Whale Trail 👣 🐳

 Whale Trail, just finished this wonderful trail with a lovely group of people 👣🐳 🪷

https://www.timeout.com/cape-town/news/one-of-the-worlds-best-trails-three-hours-from-cape-town-050625

The Whale Trail is a must-do if you love hiking and appreciate the outdoors. The trail is suitable for medium-fitness hikers. It is a five day, 56-kilometre slack-packing trail through the De Hoop Nature Reserve that introduces you to some of the most beautiful scenes along the Western Cape

And a Whale Trail 👣 Wedding 💕 💍 👰‍♂ 

Cape Town & Peninsula

 Cape Town and the Cape Peninsula - beautiful  🇿🇦 🐧🦍

Table Mountain Cable Car, St James Tidal Pool, Chakma Baboon at Cape of Good Hope, African Penguin on Boulders Beach, Dassie (Rock hyrax)

Bo-Kaap / Malay Quarters,  Mandela on Balcony at City Hall,  The Sentinel Houtbay, Recyvlong artwork 🦒

Tea Tasting ceremony

Lovely Tea Tasting ceremony.☕️💐 Nigiro Tea offers tea tastings features a selection of 180 unique tea blends. 🍵 ☕️ Very enjoyable. 😀

Nigiro Tea Tasting can be enjoyed at Spice Route in Paarl. Enjoy!☕️ Let me know how it was.

Cango Caves

The beautiful Cango Caves, close to Oudtshoorn, are known for their spectacular rock formations, including stalactites, stalagmites, and other dripstone formations.  

The caves were  formed by the dissolution of Precambrian limestone over millions of years, creating a system of tunnels and chambers, and resulting in the spectacular rock formations.

The primary rock type in the Cango cave is limestone (CaCO3) from the Cango cave group. 

The caves have been discovered to extend naturally for well over 5km, but visitors can only explore about one-quarter of the entire system. 🇿🇦

Swartberg pass

 Swartberg Pass:

SWARTBERG PASS, a National Monument between Prince Albert and Oudtshoorn, is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular and best known mountain passes in South Africa. It is the masterpiece of the brilliant engineer and road builder, Thomas Charles Bain (1830 – 1893), and the last of the seventeen passes he built in the Cape Province.

Originally the routes through Meiring’s Poort and Seven Weeks’ Poort were the only links between the port of Mossel Bay and the towns and villages of the Great Karoo. The road through Meiring’s Poort was often closed due to flood damage and rockfalls. The heavy flooding during 1875 caused the closure of these gateways for weeks.

In 1879 Thomas Bain was commissioned to plan a new route over the Swartberg Mountain Range. The existing footpath over the mountain between Prince Albert and Oudtshoorn could only be negotiated on foot or on horseback. Due to the unavoidably steep gradients, Bain tried four different lines before he succeeded in finding a practical one. Bain’s original master plan was approved by the Government in 1880.

The building of the Swartberg Pass proved to be a mammoth task. As Bain was building the Tsitsikama road, John Tassie’s tender of £18120 was accepted. Employing 100 Mozambicans from Delagoa Bay he started construction from the Prince Albert side of the mountain in 1881, but after 13 months of toil he had advanced only 6 kilometres.

After Tassie was declared insolvent, construction came to a halt for a year, until Thomas Bain took over the building of the pass in November 1883. Using 200 to 240 convicts he tackled the job with great enthusiasm.

The pass was built with the use of pickaxes, spades, sledgehammers, crowbars, wheelbarrows and gunpowder. Boulders were split by heating them with fire and then dousing them with cold water. Rocks were broken into smaller pieces with sledgehammers and then carefully dressed by the convicts. The dry-wall method of construction was used to build the impressive retaining walls that supported the road against the precipitous slopes. A century later, travellers still wonder at this feat.

Meat, dried beans, soup and other kinds of food were cooked in large pots for the convicts. Fresh bread was baked and an ox and sixteen sheep were slaughtered daily to provide meat for everybody on the project. The convicts were divided into teams and the ruins and remains of the convict stations can still be seen in the Swartberg Pass.

Conditions during the winter were very unfavourable. During May of 1885 heavy rain and mud slides almost destroyed the convicts’ camp. The nearly completed road was also badly damaged. The road through Meiring’s Poort was completely washed away by the same flood.

The official opening of the Swartberg Pass was 10th January 1888. All the shops and offices in Prince Albert were closed for the day to allow everyone to participate in the festivities. At 7am that Tuesday the procession, consisiting of about 100 vehicles (spiders, capecarts and mule wagons) started off from Haak’s Hotel on the 3 hour trek to the open terrain near the summit. It’s estimated there were about 500 people present, including reporters from six newspapers.

The Commissioner of Crown Lands and Public Works, colonel F.X Schermbrucker, officially opened the pass. Miss Gertrude Schermbrucker broke a bottle of champagne at the summit of the pass, 1 585m above sea level, and a twenty-one gun salute concluded the ceremony.

On 5th May, 1888 a toll was proclaimed on the summit of the pass. From the eight tenders received, John F. Mackay was appointed the first toll official with a salary of £45 a year. Besides collecting the toll fee(4 pennies per wheel and 1 penny per animal), the official was responsible for maintaining the road in good condition. The official was also allowed to use collected toll fees to his own advantage

Blyde River Canyon

The Blyde River Canyon is the third largest canyon in the world 26 946 ha, after the Grand Canyon in the United States and the Fish River Canyon in Namibia, and is the largest 'green canyon' due to its lush subtropical foliage, with the deepest precipitous cliffs of any canyon on the planet.

One of the most-visited attractions in South Africa, the Blyde River Canyon is 26 kilometres in length and is, on average, around 800m deep. The dam itself, when full, is at an altitude of 665m (2182 feet).

The Blyde River Canyon Reserve extends along the Blyde River Canyon's winding path, which at every turn offers more and more impressive views over sheer edges droper personing 800m into the riverbed. Blyde River Canyon Reserve is situated against the Greater Drakensberg escarpment and includes natural wonders such as the Bourke's Luck Potholes, the Three Rondavels, Pinnacle Rock and God's Window. Many visitors to this region enjoy the visual splendor of combining the Panorama Route with exceptional game viewing in the Kruger National Park to create a spectacular itinerary in Mpumalanga.

Cape Town Shopping with a twist.

 Cape Town Shopping with a twist.

Shopping for  Cape Town. Amazingly beautiful fabrics 

Visit: 

Da Gana Fabrics. Mnandi Fabrics, Jacksons, Lively Fabrics. And more...

Shopping for sport socks Cape Town. Loads of fun

Visit: Falke, AP Jones, Sportsmans Ware House and others.

Shopping with clients for products made from "waste". Amazingly creative artists!

Visit:Nathan Chikoto, Bo Kaap Bazaar, Recycled Flipflop or many street artsiist 🎨 

Sandybay Shipwreck Trail

Hiking the Sandybay Shipwreck Trail 👣 ending wirh a loceky swim 

The BOS 400 is a French crane barge that ran aground during a storm in 1994. It was being towed by a boat that was not up to the task of tugging such a massive vessel, and the tow rope broke loose, sending the barge into the rocks just south of Sandy Bay. Deemed too damaged and difficult to salvage, it was abandoned and has been rusting there ever since.

Check out my activity on Strava: https://strava.app.link/T4eF30LPtQb