A mountain goat in a previous life...

Day 3. Stage 3 - Refuge de Carruzzo to Haut Asco

This morning was a struggle to get up at 5am - legs and shoulders were very stiff. Glad I did though, because today has been my favourite stage yet. I also finished feeling much fresher than the others.

The hike started today with a walk through a wood followed by a hairy trip across a rope bridge crossing a very steep sided valley with views of Calvi and the North coast in one direction, and a shear cliff at the other.

As I've come to expect, the route was only going to go one way. Up! In this case, the 'up' was so 'up' chain hand rails were bolted into the rock face to climb up. The chains only went so far however, and we were left scrambling along rocks with a several 100 ft drop below!

Today, I also learned that Ben was a mountain goat in a previous life - show him a rock with a view and no matter how much climbing he's done in the last few days, his legs always have room for a bit more!

The climbing was rough, but at the top of the valley we broke through the 2000m mark for the first time, at the top of the Bocca a i Stagni where we clapped eyes on the massive bulk of Monte Cinto for the first time.

Every up has a down, and so came another knee crunching, toe bashing 588m decent into Haut Asco - an absolute paradise!

Haut Asco is a ski lodge in the winter, and so our first port of call was naturally the ice-cream man- after 3 days of 33 degrees, this. was. AMAZING!

Spent the afternoon with my feet in a small stream that Ben dammed up to make a rock pool, having a beer with Tim, Paddy, Mark and Joey - and this was supposed to be hard!?!?

I may have been a little more tired than i thought as I accidently asked the barman for a ham sandwich... in Spanish.

That evening, we also helped Mark and Joey move their tent 100m closer to the refuge as a man with a gun tried to explain that they were too close to the trees...... No, we had no idea either, but he was armed so we didn't argue!

Steak frites and Tiramisu in the lodge restaurant tonight!!!