“I cannot attain the intensity that is unfolded before my senses. I have not the magnificent richness of colouring that animates nature” Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
The Reason.
Why we started Nordic Walking / Trekking
Just for clarity, and so that you know what I’m on about, I call ‘one day’ walks with nordic walking poles ‘Nordic Walking’, (or in deference to those of you in other parts of this planet ‘Nordic Pole Walking’). If the outing involves an en-route overnight stay I define it as ‘Nordic Trekking’ (‘Nordic Pole Trekking’).
Louise and I set off to Nordic Trek the Tour de Queyras in the Hautes-Alpes region of France in the Summer of 2018. This was the first long distance Nordic Walk we had done since organising and taking part in the Nordic Ninety, a 90km sponsored walk from the source of the River Stour to the sea in aid of the Trussell Trust Charity, a decade before.
Nordic Walking in the Middle Ages
If sixty is the new fifty, and fifty is middle age, I reached the Middle Ages earlier that year, and my wife was twenty one, again, in May.
I’d come up with the idea of a high-altitude alpine trek back in 2017 as the intended ‘goal’ of a weekday daily walk. A Cicerone guidebook to Trekking In The Alps edited by Kev Reynolds, led us with our Nordic Walking Poles to the Tour de Queyras (it pertained to be the easiest on offer, and the least likely to be inhabited by other Brits – to whom I have an aversion when travelling.)
The Planning.
Choosing the right kit for Nordic Trekking
It came as a bit of a disappointment to tight old me that we really couldn’t just take the kit that shared the loft with various unmentionables that chew and make rustling noises in the night.
We spent a good number of months sourcing kit, seeking advice from the best suppliers we could source, and consulting the internet for guidance on everything from rucksack weight to smell- free underwear.
Underwear, yes me a chap, was checking out men’s underwear online! – it’s not as pretty as that lacy stuff that ladies wear, but I don’t think the latter would suit me, and the thought of being caught prancing around in a high alpine dormitory wearing a cerise Brazilian is just too much. (Perhaps this is where I should insert an affiliate marketing link to some lingerie site in the hope of a being commissioned to write a blog!) Now I hope you don’t take offence at this; my three daughters tell me I simply cannot put stuff like this online, so I just have!
How to minimise background weight
What do I mean by ‘background weight’? It’s the basic weight of the rucksack plus contents but excluding all the food and water. At the end of the day the less weight you carry the less strain on your body, and believe me when you’re tramping up a slope and you’re at your limit, that extra pair of pants weighs a lot more than the few grams it did when you packed it.
I’ll mention more clothing comments as the trek notes process, but nothing more about ‘men’s modesty modules’. Suffice to say, clothes should be light and as few as reasonable. I’ll put together a list of what we took, and whether we’d change that. Comments from high-altitude Nordic Walkers are welcomed and may lead me to compiling lists for other areas, along with lists of ‘what to take Nordic Walking’ on the shorter UK Nordic Walking we’ve done.
Striking lucky with backpacks and nordic walking poles.
A casual enquiry to Osprey on recommended rucksacks led to us setting off with some of their amazing kit, similarly with Leki Nordic poles – a happy combination in view of the nifty carrier on the Osprey that circumvented the need to remove your pack every time you didn’t want to use your poles.
Choosing the essentials for Nordic Walking in the Alps (and other mountains), learning the hard way.
There was a certain degree of ‘discussion’ on what was essential, and how many pants, socks, and shirts were allowed – I skipped on the dresses that Louise insisted were de-rigour, but wish I’d taken a quicker drying polo shirt!
How much does your underwear weigh?
It really is worth weighing kit, old boxers weigh less, as some of the material has worn away, they also dry quicker for the same reason. And the less ‘background weight’ the better.
Avoiding blisters and smelly feet when Nordic Walking.
We both decided to invest in new footwear, and having consulted various experts decided that the likely terrain was the controlling factor and that the ultra lightweight low ankle boots beloved by the lowland Nordic Walking fraternity were not for us. We took the middle road with Salomon Quest 4D 3 GTX.
Advice from a member of staff at GoOutdoors who had done her dissertation on material breathability, led to us selecting Bridgedale Wool Fusion Socks. As we were expecting hot feet rather than cold we took their lightweight ones. We took Compeeds in our first aid kit, they are in our view the best treatment for blisters. Favourite Wife has got into the habit of applying a liberal dose of Neal’s Yard Organic Lavender & Tea Tree Body Powder, it seems to reduce friction and as I spend so much time at her feet I’m glad of the pleasant scent!
Where to stay in the Region de Queyras – a guide to refuges and other types of accomodation.
Booking accommodation is always a source of pitfalls, the logistics of ensuring you have a bed to sleep on gets harder the longer you leave it. Imagine the frustration I had of successfully reserving places for the first eight nights, to be told that the only accommodation for the next night was fully booked. I had to shift everything by one day, including our day of leaving home, and the ferry.
If you have sufficient time and budget there are ways round such drastic and annoying action, like spending an extra day on the way, or doing the wise thing and spending a second night at the third refuge. LINK TO TAKING A REST
Camping is an option and there are many hardy folk who do, no, that’s wrong, there are a few hardy folk who do, carrying their kit with them, and indeed we came across one lady on the first day, with one of those ‘g-string with poles’ style of tent, happily ‘wild camping’ by a lake.
As an aside, I’m not sure where this ‘wild camping’ phrase came from, it seems to be an awfully middle-class phrase for finding a nice spot to pitch your tent and hoping you don’t get caught. ‘Wild camping’ has been happening since cave man got kicked out of the warm dry cave to hunt mammoth – it was wild, but nobody said so. Bit like ‘wild swimming’, aka slipping into a salmon-pool hoping the bailiff doesn’t mind. Personally I’ll go for the wild camping and risk the wolves, than the salmon-pool and the ex-Black-Watch bailiff.
What camera to take Nordic Walking
As a photographer in my other life, and wanting to get some decent images camera gear was important, but so was weight. My everyday portrait gear consists of heavy Nikon cameras and their amazing 75-200 f2.8 VRII, but it weighs a ton compared to what is available, and if I also carry the wide-angle zoom as I did on the charity trip to Sudan with Cress UK it would almost require sherpas. I’d have loved to have taken some mirrorless kit with me, but in the end took my daughters’ Nikon. Nice piece of kit! A Nikon D5300 with 18-35mm zoom, always with a UV filter to protect against grit on the lens, and a decent plain polarising filter to save a lot of editing later. If I was updating I would probably choose the Nikon D5600 with AF-S 18-140mm , or match it either with Nikon’s 16- 80mm f2.8 or 18-300 mm F/3.5-6.3G .These are all DX format, so not ‘full frame’ and therefore less heavy. If you have the money then I would recommend the B+W XS-Pro HTC Kaesemann by Schneider Optics. And don’t forget to get a decent quality memory card with plenty of space on it.
Is my Phone Camera good enough when Nordic Walking? (a guide to choosing the best phone camera)
Whereas I carry camera gear with me when Nordic Trekking, I also carry a phone, and it’s often all I carry when Nordic Walking. Having been using a Mac from the days when they also kept the rain off you, the iPhone has always made sense for me to carry. To save you doing a bunch more research I’ve had a browse around and it does seem that the best option in terms of make is still the iPhone, partly because of the plethora of Apps available to go with it. The iPhone 11 Pro will probably be my next purchase because although in another life I’m a portrait photographer, it’s the wide angle in the hills. There are other excellent camera phones around, but with fewer apps. Of these, one that gets a lot of good reviews is the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G
The best way to get to the Tour de Queyras – Rail, road, air.
My original plan to get to the start of our Nordic Trek had been to follow the ‘suggested’ means of transport from the UK, the train. However, by the time I’d got my act together, the price seemed too daunting to consider. This was not too bad as Favourite Wife liked the idea of driving across France. We both enjoy taking a turn at the wheel, except in the early hours of the morning when your’s truly is actively encouraged: “I don’t know how you do it darling, you’re so amazing at staying awake, do wake me if you feel tired”. This to a man who will fall asleep when hosting a supper-party, and once nodded off against the central reservation of a French motorway, at seventy miles per hour – it was 06.00 !
Across France by Train
The UK guidebook to the Tour de Queyras is by Cicerone books and the walk starts from Montdauphin Guillestre Station, so it is perfectly possible to go by train. I had left it too late to get a decent price, so we went by car.
The first place I’d go for tickets is to one to Trainline, and is one of my choices for travel in Britain, and has huge overseas activity as well.
Another useful, and possibly more obvious site is SNCF themselves, these are the company who operate the French railways.
One thing to note is that there is a limit as to how far ahead you can book tickets, Eurostar is 180 days, but is much cheaper at this stage.
I found this possible little gem when researching for this section, it was on a ‘at first glance’ rather charming website BonjourLaFrance: “When you travel by train on 3 different days or more in one or a few European countries then buying a European Rail Pass could be to your budgetary advantage compared to point-to-point tickets.” The site even lists the station with the following:
“The train station Montdauphin-Guillestre is a French railway station on the line: Veynes <=> Briançon, located in the town of Eygliers, near Guillestre and Mont-Dauphin, in the department: Hautes-Alpes in the region: Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. Its latitude and longitude geographic coordinates are 44° 40′ 29″ North, 6° 36′ 56″ East with an altitude of 888m, It is on the train line 2 with 2 tracks and 2 platforms.”
I’ll be doing a blog on train travel in Europe separately.
Across France by Car
There are a maze of options if you choose to travel by car, depending on your budget and where you live, and your preferred ferry operator. We usually use either P&O or DFDS from Dover, depending on the timing, costs and which boat it is. Favourite Wife likes the ferry from Newhaven, also run by DFDS, the arrival at the terminal has a certain old-fashioned feeling about it.
Our nearest port is Poole and Brittany Ferries do a service to Cherbourg when the tides are right – and as a sailing man I would say that is not as oft as one would like! But the pleasure of making the journey past the chain ferry, with Sandbanks to Port and Studland to Starboard on a summer’s evening is divine.
Access by coach.
Long distance coach from Victoria Coach Station to Guillestre is definitely an option. The great site Rome2Rio.com is a good place to look. The attached screenshots show route and timings for a spring journey.
Access by air.
Now in these days of increasing environmental awareness the immediate response seems to be that air travel is the most evil way to travel, however as with all judgements we need to be aware of ‘scapegoats’. Some research I glanced at recently concluded that if you include the infrastructure in the calculation then rail and road do not sit as far away from air in total carbon footprint as may be commonly stated, and indeed in some countries may swap positions.
There are five main airports for reaching this part of the French Alps from UK airports – Geneva, Grenoble, Lyon, Nice and Turin. If you are approaching from another country then the choice of air access may be different. To find flights we habitually use Skyscanner, and have been recommended to try Momondo.
Each of these airports requires connection by train, bus or taxi to the start of the walk.
Useful links for travel bookings. (Some of these are affiliate links meaning that I may be paid commission, but at not cost to you. This helps me run this site, plus have the odd glass of wine once in a while.)