Mont Blanc
Sea to summit

�AU PIED?� Our sea to summit trip on Mont Blanc will always be intrinsically associated in my mind with these two words, which mean �by foot� in French and which were voiced variously by fellow randonneurs in tones of admiration (well, once), disbelief (more often), concern (frequently), and, most commonly of all, pity.
These were, however, not the first words with which the trip was associated. The stinking hot weather at the mediterranean coastal town of Mentone and the start of a track, an 1100m climb straight up a waterless limestone hill in 30 degree heat and 90 per cent humidity, meant other words came to the fore. Among the printable ones were �brutal�, �hot� and �flies�. For a trip pictured as a Heidi-esque alpine ramble in the guidebooks, it was like going to the cinema to see The Sound of Music but finding you had walked into one showing The Black Hole of Calcutta by mistake.
Even getting to Mentone had been challenging enough. After being an illegal overstayer in Britain for three years, working as a journalist in the Royal Courts of Justice in London where my duties included covering, er, immigration appeals, one of the biggest hurdles of climbing Mont Blanc from sea to summit was likely to be just getting into France without being deported. As an Australian, I needed a visa and, as an overstayer, I couldn�t apply for one. Fortunately France and Belgium were among a group of central European Union countries to do away with internal immigration controls so all I had to do was get to Brussels and then cross the control-free border into France from there.
I sailed through British controls without a comment, boarded the midnight ferry to Ostend and, a few hours later, was breathing a sigh of relief to finally be in a country with the knowledge and acquiescence of the authorities. Or so I thought, until the Belgian official looked at my passport and motioned me into a room to one side with that calm tone which officials use when they know they�re going do something you won�t like but don�t want to tip you off just yet. Sure enough I was grilled about my intentions, the answers to which clearly failed to please them, and was told to sit with a group of others miscreants of Belgian immigration. One of my fellow detainees was not too keen on this turn of events and legged it through a side door, pursued by officials who were clearly built for comfort rather than speed. A few minutes later, he was brought back to the office, by which time the sweating officials had concluded that by comparison I was unlikely to bring down the European Union if allowed into their country. With a nod, I was freed.
The best part of 12 hours later, my train pulled into Nice a few hours before Sarah�s flight - she was the smug holder of a British passport - arrived. The next day, we were enjoying the beau monde of a Riviera restaurant, which included a section of private beach and even private water, since this and the other eateries had used lines of white bouys to demarcate a rectangle of water extending 20 metres or so out from their beach. After lunch we waded out into this economically-exclusive tepid Mediterranean water to fulfill the ``sea�� part of the journey, even going so far as to duck our heads underwater so that some stickler could not accuse us of failing to do the full sea to summit.
Even delaying our departure until 6pm was not enough to mitigate the effects of the heat as we sweated our way through the back streets of Mentone. The brutal, hot and fly-ridden nature of the walk that evening was not necessarily a bad thing thought since the first two helped ameliorate the effects of my onerous quality-control duties as chairman of the Alpine Club�s wine committee - AC-speak for volunteer barman on lecture nights at the club�s London base. As for the flies, it was a good thing that Sarah got used to the slow and dumb French variety before taking on their less-swattable and more numerous Australian siblings. The limestone landscape precluded the chance of any streams from which to refill our waterbottles so it was two tired and thirsty campers who arrived at a spring on the far side of the mountain and found an old olive grove to set up their first camp.
On the days which followed, we quickly learned to take our cues from the surroundings. On the steep uphills we ground slowly upwards like the articulated trucks we had seen tackling the hills of the motorway above Mentone. As the mercury climbed each morning and afternoon, we dressed on a par with the beachgoers. Best of all, we always made a point of observing the siesta during the hottest part of the day and then trying to find a campsite before the regular evening rains arrived. The countryside was just stunning and, in contrast to the teeming hordes on the beaches, it was well into our second day before we saw anyone else on the tracks.
Odd too that considering the thousands who make the Tour du Mont Blanc seem at times to be like being part of an endless supermarket checkout queue except with 4000m peaks instead of magazine racks, none of them came here to soak up untouched sections of a region which is generally loved to death because of its own attractiveness. It was the same with the mountains, which featured soaring slabs of granite and limestone which screamed out the prospect of fabulous rock climbing routes but which had probably never been touched, which was something of a contrast to the overpopulated crags of Chamonix.
The mountains we were following formed the natural boundary between France and Italy which, given the tenor of European histor