Saturday 23/06/07

Set off today at 5.53am as usual we started off with a very long never ending Ascent up to the highest point on the GR20, the Breche de Capitellu, at 2225m.

It took us 2 hours of walking to reach this point and the views were magnificent,especially of the 2 beautiful lakes.

The path down to the Refuge was very steep and stony, full of alder scrub and wet under foot in places.

It was a difficult walking day again today involving a lot of climbing scrambling and bouldering.

 I found it both mentally and physically very hard.. Geoff raced ahead of me all day today which did not help.

I have now been walking for 7 days the longest I have ever done in one stretch and over the most difficult terrain as well.

Looking back we decided we should not have come down to the refuge but we should have carried on and done stage 8 today as well.

The refuge at Petra- Piana is a small one and sits on a small base held down with cables.It rocks if its windy…. which it did so I am told… people even screamed but I just carried on sleeping…