Valleys, Vines and Vineyards

Aosta is an incredible valley. its late-summer and the air is a fresh as you could wish. the skies are a wide clear blue and the mountains are green with pine. there's such an abundance of nature that it grabs you and hugs you and even just to walk through brings a smile to your face. being a famous wine region the whole valley is full of vineyeards, ripe with grapes just waiting to be plucked. the VF route though is relatively simple: just follow the river Dora Baltea that flows along the valley floor which seemed a simple idea at first & became complicated later. the VF is a trek promoted by the Italian government as their version of the Camino de Santigao which now attracts thousands of pilgrims each year. the main differences that i'd read before i'd left were lack of signage, more expensive accomodation and more travel on roads than was pleasant. in 3 days i've experienced all of these, and more. first of all though the valley itself is just such a beautiful place. i've trekked over 70km in 3 days and the wonder of it still makes me smile as i walk though little villages dominated by the green alpine ranges, seeing run-down castles perched on hills and waterfalls and rivers sparking in the sunshine. Day 2 i set off from Aosta (wishing Mafia Granny a fond Ciao) at about 7am. the good thing about this kind of trek in this kind of country is that you know somewhere soon a cafe will be open selling some strong coffee and light buttery croissants. my Day 2 destination was a place called Chantillon, 32km away and i set off very content and very happy. the smile was taken off my face by a simple fact of life in this valley - the SS26. this is a major roadway going the whole way along the Aosta Valley and one that the VF intercepted, crossed, was part of, or was alongside. it was said that the road developed along the old Mediaeval VF route. all of this would have been ok except for walking actually ON the SS26. more later on this as its been a complete nightmare. the river Dora is a turquoise-blue, a radiant colour that transformed the landscape as it washed and tumbled over white rocks and served as a lodestone for me as i trekked on. it needed to as the signs for the VF were cross-pollinated with signs taking people on a walking tour around the vineyards in the region - which initially seemed a good idea to me. the only problem turned out to be i'd follow a sign going up, then down, then up again, the down again. i cannot tell you how many times i went up and down these bloody mountains. all i kept thinking was 'just follow the bloody river - its on the bottom!!!'. but no, up and down it was and up and down i went. from 7am to 4pm. and i got lost. in a field. on a mountain. there were probably quite a few happy bunnies in the region but i wasn't one of them. my feet were killing me, my backpack weighed a ton and i just wanted to rest. i did stumble across 2 donkeys nearby and they let me scratch their heads and somehow it pulled me back to myself and enabled me to continue on, absolutely knackered, into Chantillon. little did i know that yet another old granny was waiting to pounce in my next hotel ...