The Tour du Mont Blanc is 164 kilometres of Alpine path connecting France, Italy and Switzerland in a grand loop around the highest mountain in western Europe. I walked it anticlockwise in eleven days in early September, starting from Les Houches with a group of three and finishing there again to the sound of cowbells and the smell of warm fondue from the Chamonix valley below. The route crosses eleven passes above two thousand metres, several of them still holding snow in early September. Each day ends at a refuges or gîte d'étape where dinner is a communal affair and beds are narrow wooden bunks separated by curtains you learn not to trust. The most physically demanding section is the climb from Courmayeur to Grand Col Ferret on day six, a sustained ascent of over a thousand metres on loose scree. The most beautiful is the descent from the Fenêtre d'Arpette into Champex-Lac, a high-alpine traverse that most walkers skip in favour of the standard route via Bovine but which reveals the wildest terrain on the entire circuit.
