Campervan Therapy

The Piccolo San Bernardo Pass

Fran the Van climbs up to the Alpine pass, the Col Petit St. Bernard, on the French side, and the Piccolo San Bernardo on the Italian. Jagged mountains, heathland and indigo lake leaves me silent – and, for those who know me, that is a rare occurrence. It’s only 14 C but I brave the elements in my flimsy summer dress to breathe that clean air. All I can hear are the cattle’s cow bells, from their summer pastures.

International Touring  – Sarre

We stay at this campsite as we visit my friend Pina in Aosta. I met Pina at eleven years of age. Pina is responsible for introducing me to La dolce vita, through her Mum and Dad’s cooking all those years ago.

International Touring has a bar, restaurant, swimming pool, tall, shady pine trees, a cycle track to Aosta and if you stray off the main valley road, hundreds of mountain walking trails.

Fairy Lit Music

Our first night and the bar’s terrace is lit with fairy lights.

A young man, complete with trilby, shades and tattoos, sings Zucchero classics, the crowd knowing the words so well that he can let them do half the work. He breaks into an acoustic rendition of Bob Marley’s No Woman No Cry and, with the fairy lights, the mellow night, the soft music, it works.

Cogne

We bus it up the gorge-like valley to Cogne, arriving just in time for the market. The vendors speaking French patois and Italian in turns. We’re rewarded for trying out our ropey Italian with an extra big piece of local sheep’s cheese, a spicy salami, walnut bread, sweeter than honey nectarines and tomatoes tasting of summer.

Leaving the Sunday crowds behind we walk up a steep path, through pines, larch, birch, ash and oak to a meadow where Pina brought us once when our children were small. We picnic with the sharp toothed mountains poking up above the trees accompanied by the birds’ gentle trilling from far up in the tree canopy.

A tree-green shaded path is scented with pine, great moss-covered boulders lining it. Then we come to a meadow, snow-capped Alpine peak behind it, full of wildflowers, now gone to seed. I promise myself to come in May and see them in all their multi-coloured glory. Campanula’s delicate blue bells, the only plant still blooming, gives me a hint of how beautiful it must be.

Of course I’ve got to channel my namesake and break out in song.

“The hills are alive with the sound of music…”

And of course, my droll partner-in-crime, chimes in with “How do solve a problem like Maria?”

Recovering our equanimity, we follow the Valnontey River as it rushes past, its water the palest blue. Butterflies flutter pale blue, yellow, white, russet wings, drunk on the nectar from the cheery yellow bird’s foot trefoil that blossoms in meadow and  riverbank.

An obligatory gelato in the typical Alpine town square is an end to a day that has been a feast for the senses.

The Money?

Camping International – €38 per night

Bus to Cogne – €5.00 for two one way