Another quiet night with aspersions to my snoring roundly refuted – I admit I would have snored if I had managed to get to sleep but for the snoring of the Italian gentleman who was sharing our 5 bed berth. My nose was 6 inches form the ceiling in the top bunk of 3 so kept thinking of Das Boot.
We were about the last to have breakfast at 0430 – a delicious repast of stale bread ,a soup bowl of cafe and no sign of avocado on homemade bread or an egg white omelette.
Patrice, was slightly perturbed by the early pace – a combo of teenager trying to walk in a straight line at 0530 and an old man with a dodgy knee juiced up to the eyeballs with Nurofen / Codeine. After some stern reprimands, we attached our crampons and our goat like guide led us up 800 metres of 45 degree snow slope in 1 hour thereby overtaking everyone else who had left before us.

It is important not to look down when attempting such a manoeuvre. In fact, a blindfold would be an excellent costume. We did the final 250m over rocks and reached the summit at 0830. Saw an Ibex which was a great thrill – I lost Harry’s Blackberry which was not.
As alway the going down is the real nightmare. Got back to the refuge (Refugio Vittoria Emanuele 2735m ) at 1030 with an earful of reprimands including “Harry – keep to the track” ” Roger – remember flat crampons” ringing in our ears. In fact Patrice could not be a more gentle and excellent guide.
He even administered first aid on the sun-kissed terrace as I had managed to spike myself with the aforesaid crampons and have a nice hole in my calf. Much blood & twitching muscle only to poo poohed by the pharmacist in Chamonix who still managed to sell me a container load of medicine.

A early wake at 4am up did not respond well to my body as my natural response to this was try to get back to sleep, this was hard as my dad’s power to be very annoying in early hours cam to use in this time. the breakfast was average as are most in the early hours when you have a dried up mouth. we finally left at 4:40 to attempt and climb the highest mountain in Italy*. As always it looks at lot easier than it really is, the long slow pace walk up the various rocks and hills was getting to me and my mood was not improving thanks to dad’s very helpful little comments to perk me up (note the sarcasm). We then put on crampons which although it was time consuming were quite sharp. Then the walk began it seemed short after a long walk over the first hill, our guide said we were only 500m from the top, I was encouraged till i saw a steep long walk to a ridge, which then connected to the last push to the top, aw with heavy feet we ploughed on, when we had reached the top after a series of diagonal lines we made it up to the ridge where we were promised a relieving stop of which it was hard to do anything as dad tried to order me around to put on suncream and eat a piece of half eaten sandwich, so finally we attempted the last push to the summit which looking at it was long, steep and crowd, a combination of things I don’t the like. but we finally made it pass the hordes of people coming down where there were even more people, but to the response of our guide patrice, we pushed straight pass everyone to make it to the summit with the virgin statue which was to say at the least scary as walking on rocks with crampons over 1000m drops was not enough at the top there was a space of 2m with a rock bench over a 500m drop, I have to say after reaching the 4060m summit I was glad to be down and walking down which was a lot tricker then expected made harder and slower by Dad’s swearing at the rocks and snow on the final bit down to the hut, vittonio emmanuelle II, when he also fell in a hole and twisted his knee. But finally we were down at the hut. coca cola and beer galore.

On the first day in the italian alps the old man (papa as it is in french, not sure in italian) struggles to keep up with the pace, we were reduced to a speed of 1km/ph or so it felt. After finally reaching the hut of Chabod we our greeted by stares and a tired and grumpy receptionist who pushed us off as soon as she could. While trying to enjoy the evening we tried a very sketchy game of boules, where I (Harry) managed to chuck a rock/boule off the cliff to a look of concerned faces. The most pleasant part of the stay at this refuge was the dinner which was as always in Italy pasta for the starter and then less normal meat and mash potato. the sleep for others was made hard as my father’s constant snoring as I’ve told him many a time kept everyone up but himself.

A long day and not the best to travel. Most of the UK and Europe were on the motorways and driving badly. Those that weren’t were sitting in their gardens in the sun, sipping a cool drink and stoking up the BBQ. We were either in a traffic jam or queueing at an airport.
However we arrived in Chamonix about 10 hours after we set off from sunny Leicestershire. Memories flooded back of our last trip. Similar hotel – more of a climbers hostel – but it will no doubt seem luxurious after a couple of nights in refuges.
Wonderful fireworks last night and street parties down little alleyways. Got to bed at midnight after unpacking & repacking but woke to this wonderful view of Mont Blanc.
Courmayeur and 2 days of climbing awaits us.

Left Burrough at 10:30 and was 28C, slight Panic while packing but finally on our way to conquer the mountain. Bell just scored a century good news for England.

In August 2011, Harry and I set off to climb Mont Blanc. Harry was only 11 at the time, his father about 39. We had to stop 300m from the top due to high winds and are now all limbered up to try again.