Hi, I hope all is well in your world. And thank you for opening this email as well as supporting these dispatches.
I shall once again audio transcribe a diary entry into my phone. Despite the last issue being peppered with errors. If these spelling, tense and grammatical issues annoy you, wait a bit, and some of it should been fixed in the web version. ;-)
Day Two…
I woke in room 217 of the Al Giardinetto hotel and ristorante.
It had been a clammy night, but thankfully there was a floor fan I could leave on. I woke around 3 am when it had turned off due to me foolishly setting a timer. With the fan back on I managed to get a couple more hours sleep with the added bonus of my clothes being dry.
When I popped to the toilet there was a mountain looming outside the window. I come from the edge of The Fens and while you have to travel a long way to find a hill, you don’t have to travel too far to find some areas that are actually below sea level.
So yes, it was a daunting prospect climbing anything bigger than the long flight of stairs, especially as once out of bed, the previous day‘s travel already had me feeling achy and dehydrated. And that was just city hopping. I tried not to imagine what carrying my 13kg pack up a mountain was going to feel like.
The mobile signal had been pretty good since arriving in Switzerland. 5G everywhere it seemed. I guessed they might have put the masts in some high up places. There’s plenty to choose from.
Rather than write in my paper journal as planned, I was reaching for the phone as it backs up to the cloud. Last time I was here I’d used an internet cafe and Hotmail to share a few thoughts. Sadly I lost those words as Hotmail had a habit of deactivating inactive accounts after a few months.
At 7 am, knowing it would mean waiting for it to open, I went for a walk to see if I could find anywhere that sold camping gas and walking poles. Nothing. I have a feeling this little town gets bypassed as even the sports shop only sold T-shirts and socks. I did meet a lady who confirmed the bus stop I needed to use to get to the cable car. She didn’t speak any English but we managed to converse about little things.
Until she told me the cable car wasn’t working because of an electrical fault. That certainly was not a little thing. If I could muster the energy to walk all the way, it would take hours and untold energy. One thing I do remember 25 years ago is the walk from partway up the valley. Not even from the bottom. Yes, I was a little out of practice but I was also 25 years younger and it was still enough of a traumatic experience for me to swear never to do it again. Back then I carried nothing but a stick as I was retrieving a lost dog.
The lady left on her bus and I sat on a wall, googling again for where I might be able to get walking poles. The nearest outdoor shop was 15 miles away. An accent on hands and knees crossed my mind.
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