After 14 Days in the Alps which had seen me run on seven of them & climb on five, I’d scaled 8 summits & run over 130 miles so Saturday (Day 15) was to be a rest day with some retail therapy & lunch in Chamonix. During this lunch I’d eaten snails & then arriving back at the camp site we walked to Steve’s & Judy’s hotel with me becoming increasingly concerned, my dodgy stomach was back, ‘I’ll run onto the toilet & see you in the bar’.

For the next seven days my stomach played havoc with me, it affected our planned sojourn in Beaune on the way home, sorry Judy & kept me away from my running shoes for far too long. Steve blames the snails, Dorina thinks it could be the minerally rich water I’d had to drink from the mountain streams, whilst I think it was the combination of stresses I put my body through under the sun’s constant gaze. Whatever it was it put a dampener on the trip which thankfully is subsiding now just to a footnote & talking point.

A final thought, Orangina, or however it is spelt has not passed my lips since I got back into the U.K. more than 4 weeks ago, how weird was my craving for that?