Lost and Found

Day 10. Stage 10: Refuge de l'Onda -> Vizzavona

A VERY leisurely start to the day today - 8am!

Woke up with all sorts of aches and pains from the yesterdays double stage - every up-hill had become a struggle, and every decent had become agony for my knees...

The end of this stage is in Vizzavona - a very small town, and the mid-point of the GR20. As people tend to build towns and houses in sensible places, we had to lose a lot of height to get down to the valley bottom. The relentless downhill sections finally got to my knees and i genuinely began to struggle.

With the knowledge that we were about to complete the GR20-North and the highest three peaks on the island 2 days ahead of schedule, we decided it was time to think about our bodies rather than days on the beach, and made the decision to take a day off tomorrow!

Suddenly we both perked up, and not long later found the river we'd hoped for - more deep rock pools and waterfalls!

Unfortunately being back near relative civilisation meant that there was other people.

In our river.

We didn't like this.

We stopped for a bit, but it wasn't the same, so headed off into town.

Vizzavona consists of 4 houses, a campsite, a MASSIVE abandoned stately home which is currently derelict due to a family feud (!), and 2 bars.

It was outside one of these that we found Tim and Paddy!!

They'd taken a detour off the route when we lost them, and walked through the night, ending up 24 hours ahead of us on the trail!

That night, as the sun went down. One of the refuge staff got out a guitar to serenade anyone in earshot. This being the halfway point, the vast majority of hikers on the trial actually finish here having only walked half the route - either from the north or south.

So every night they have a party, get out bottles upon bottles of home-brewed fruity alcoholic.... 'stuff', and give it out free to anyone within arms reach!

6 hours later we'd made friends with a group of German hikers, the guitar playing was still going, the singing had started, and the free drink was still flowing....

Apologies to everyone else in the hostel that wasn't having a day off the following day, but we deserved it, so nyer!