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Monte Rosa peaks at 4634m
Piedmont
All these mountain ranges are situated in the Italian region of Piedmont – Piemonte in Italian – which aptly means ‘foot of a mountain’. It assumed strategic importance in the Roman era, providing easy access to Gaul and the transalpine provinces. As a border region it has also played host to an intriguing range of ethnic and religious groups over the ages. The vast swathe from the Ligurian to the Cottian Alps is still home to 200,000 people claiming to belong to the curious Occitan cultural group. Originally hailing from central France and the Spanish Pyrenees, they boast a distinctive red/yellow flag and recently revived Franco-Provençal dialect, the language of the troubadours. Their thriving folk music and traditional dances star the ghironda or ‘wheel fiddle’ akin to a laptop hurdy-gurdy (a stringed instrument played by turning a handle).
On the other hand the Waldenses, a local Protestant group, have a terrible history of persecution. They are known in Italian as the Valdesi after their founder Valdo, a wealthy 12th-century merchant from Lyon who gave away all his worldly goods and turned to evangelism. Attracted by the simple values, many Piemontese joined his ranks. However, all followers were excommunicated by the Catholic Church and, despite the Reformation, were massacred in Italy’s Valle Pellice in 1655. Dubbed the ‘Piedmont Easters’ the episode drew indignation and solidarity from Protestant groups throu ghout Europe, prompting Cromwell to dispatch an ambassador to Turin to protest, and inspiring John Milton to compose ‘On the Late Massacher in Piemont’:
Avenge O Lord thy slaughter’d Saints, whose bones
Lie scatter’d on the Alpine mountains cold.
During the so-called ‘Glorioso Rimpatrio’, ‘glorious return home’ from exile in Switzerland in 1689–90 – a fortnight-long march across treacherous alpine passes – a 370-strong group held out all winter long on a ridge above Balsiglia. Trapped in a treacherous circle by 4000 enemy troops equipped with cannons, the Waldenses were saved by thick providential fog. Only days later the Italian king allied his country with Protestant Austria and England and broke with Catholic France, making life somewhat easier for the Waldenses, estimated at 30,000 in Italy today. As of late medieval times, Piedmont was the stronghold of the expanding Savoy dynasty, a prosperous and powerful regime that at a much later date (1861) provided modern Italy with its very first king, Vittorio Emanuele II.
Piedmont played a key role in the latter years of the World War II conflict. After 1943 – when the authoritarian regime in Italy capitulated and the armistice was signed with the Allies – military chaos broke out in Italy as troops were temporarily leaderless. Many took to the hills to form companies of partisans as the resistance movement grew. Due to its northerly location Piedmont was amongst the last places to be liberated (in 1945) by the Allied advance. Its mountains provided perfect hideouts and protected bases for operations designed to disrupt the Nazi occupiers and their local fascist partners. Air drops of essential material by the Allies helped the effort. In one example planes flew from bases in North Africa to the Pesio valley outside Cuneo, as part of the operation led by the UK Special Forces and known as ‘Mission Charterhouse’.
Typical Walser house in Val Vogna (Stage 41)
Little by little the post-war period in Piedmont witnessed population shifts from the uplands to the Po plain, drawn by jobs as industrial development got underway, peaking in the 1950–60s. Turin, for instance, meant the Fiat automobile factory, and Ivrea Olivetti office technology. Hand-in-hand with the growth came a dramatic increase in demand for power. The abundance of water on hand in the Alps made hydroelectricity a natural choice. Dams, gigantic conduits and hydroelectric plants dating back to the 1950–60 period – its heyday in Italy – are encountered across the Graians and the Maritime Alps.
The spread of industry notwithstanding, ancient farming and agricultural practices have survived. South-facing slopes were shaped into terraces for cereal and grape cultivation. There are ingenious examples of exploitation of the sun’s heat, with vines draped over trellising leaning on dark rock faces; this can still be seen in the Susa and Aosta valleys. Moreover, though the Piedmont Alps are dotted with ghost villages and abandoned hamlets, a surprising number of hardy shepherds and herders endure spartan conditions for months on end so their flocks can indulge in summer grazing on high. Milk from the sheep, cows and goats is skilfully transformed into high-quality dairy products. Where feasible, butter is packed into wicker panniers loaded onto mules or horses and accompanied valleywards on a weekly basis. Otherwise – as mains electricity is a rare commodity – there are ingenious age-old systems of refrigeration such as the crutin in the Gran Paradiso area, whereby a cooling stream is channelled through a low hut, ensuring a constantly low temperature. In the Ligurian-Maritime Alps are curious sella or trüna: built on a sloping hillside and partially underground, they boast a vaulted roof of turf, an efficient insulator. Cheeses are brought to slow maturation in ancient low-slung stone huts, often half-dug into the mountainside.
Visitors with an interest in rural architecture will be intrigued by the variety of buildings. Rudimentary shelters make the most of sloping land, natural rock overhangs and huge fallen boulders, natural anti-avalanche barriers. A balma is a simple type, a cave at best with a low protective wall of loose stones; the shepherds’ summertime residence or gias continues to be the most widespread. From the Latin iacere (to rest), it ranges from a lean-to overlaid with branches and corrugated sheeting to a more comfortable stone hut.
Substantial village settlements are generally composed of slender multi-storeyed dwellings sporting narrow jutting balconies, with ground-floor accommodation for chickens and cows. In southwestern Piedmont the roofing more often than not is rusty corrugated sheeting lashed down with branches and wire. The traditional system, sadly all but disappeared, employed straw thatching using locally grown cereals such as rye. Low cost (if rather high maintenance) the dried grass was, however, especially vulnerable when marauding invaders lit blazes. Few here had access to – or could afford – longer-lasting material such as ardesia slate stone, known as lose or piode, widespread in the valleys further north. In the districts with copious quarries, its use dates back to the 1400s. Skilled craftsmen are required to cut and lay the hefty slabs in artistic overlapping scales. Valle Bellino di Varaita, Valle d’Aosta and Valsesia are justifiably proud of their graceful constructions in local stone.
Shepherd at Alpe Chiaromonte (Stage 35)
Walking the Gta
The GTA was created by a group of Italian enthusiasts in the 1970s to mirror a French itinerary, though the first highly informative guidebooks are long out of print. Since the mid-1980s Piedmont devotee Professor Werner Bätzing of the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg has been convincing a steady stream of German-speaking hikers to embark on the route from north to south, essentially Monte Rosa to the Mediterranean. It is probably due to their passage that the route still exists and hostels in out-of-the-way places continue to function. This English-language guide follows the original south–north direction with the aim of adding to the mammoth Sentiero Italia route (see Cicerone’s book on the GEA Trekking in the Appennines).
Not everyone has a full 47 days available to dedicate to the entire GTA (though the chances are that walkers who complete any section will be tempted back to continue with successive stretches). In order to make planning more manageable, in this guide the trek has been divided into four parts of approximately two-week lengths. Each is made up of one-day stages, concluding at a village or refuge where accommodation, meals and often transport are available.
Sticking to these divisions is by no means mandatory;
