Day 66: 14 August, Tende to Limonetti

We walked to Italy by first following the GR 52 A to Col de Tende, a spot where the GTA was supposed to connect concerning to the guidebook and to our map. In the morning we climbed up in the heat, the sun was shining but we saw some clouds. It was a nice climb with a lot of butterflies and some herbs. 

Looking down at Tende

After about three hours we came to a ruin from a castle. The weather started to change, it got a lot colder and windier. We continued walking along the mountainside, we walked toward another castle, the weather was really dramatic, heavy dark clouds and some sun. 

Walking along the moutainside and looking at the castle under the clouds

The castle

The castle ruin

The castle ruin was quite big, we walked through it and continued to Col de Tende, the boarder to Italy. Here we had some trouble, we could not find the GTA track, there was no sign at the col. We only had a french map that ended at the boarder to Italy that only showed a very small part of the GTA. And we had the guide book. Probably some changes have been done since the book and the map was published. There was no track going down the valley from Col de Tende. There was an unmarked trail going in the right direction and we decided to follow it. When we came down we found the marks. The trail seemed to go down somewhere closer to the castle. We were happy to find the red and white marks. We continued down the valley, stopped to have some lunch and it started raining. We putted on our rain cloths and by the time we came to Limonetti it was raining pretty much. We walked to a small store and asked the man for the rifuge and found out there was no such thing anymore in the village. But there was an hotel in Edelweiss About 1,5 km away. He called them, we got a small flat in Limonetti and then the lady from the hotel picked us up for dinner at seven o’clock and drove us back when we were done. We wanted to cook our own food, but were not allowed to, we found it very strange since there was a kitchen in the flat. The food was quite good and the flat was ok, with two rooms, but we didn’t need the comfort and it was expensive compare to what we were used to. There was a nice little grocery store in the village where we bought some pasta and olive oil for upcoming days.