La Terrasse

(long one)

woke up in my tent above grenoble and started hiking down towards the autoroute. made a nice "direction chambèry" signat a gas station and got picked up by julie and paul after less than 10 minutes.

they dropped me off at la terasse, the closest town next to l'arche miracle. there was a kind of street vendor event going on and i bought a gold watch for 10€ in case i need to trade. headed up towards the mountains and left my backpack in an abandoned shack right beside a campable meadow. i knew neither how long it would take me to reach the rock formation nor how i would get there, so i left with food, water and backup clothes and started hiking.

had a break at a cascade about 2 hours in, already doubting that i would make it to the rocks and back. had to trespass through private area and hide in the bushes one time in order not to be seen. then i realized that the google maps marker was completely off and did some research. turns out i was headed the wrong way, but my actual goal was in the same area. after some 6 hours, a lot of trial and failure and some climbing, i finally made it up there. took 20 minutes to take some pictures and ran down the mountain in 3 hours to make it back to my pack before sundown. was on the phone with jakob for more than 2 hours and arrived in the dark.

set up camp, made some ravioli and slept till 9 am. packed up the next morning and headed to the autoroute again. was running desperately low on water at this point and bought some at a store. jumped a fence to a highway rest area where i was greeted with free wifi, a toilet and some outlets. was picked up by the first car to pass by, took me to ikea.

wanted to find a sign and some hotdogs there but managed to find only a wooden plank and some chocolate. quickly realized i wasn't going to make it anywhere by thumb from there, but remembered i still had an interrail ticket. after some debating i decided to go directly to marseille without stopping at valence or voreppe, where i was planning to hitchhike to.

walked 20 mins to the hostel i booked on the train and got settled in. had some pasta and enjoyed the company of 4 other germans. most of them had never eaten pasta with ketchup, that shattered my world view.Read more