Time: 8.75h. Up: 720m. Down: 760m.
Distance: 32km. Difficulty: easy. Stage 92: Eyguières (100m) to St.-Rémy-de-Provence (60m) Click and drag on map above to see area around trail. Click here for large zoomable map. The last day. Ninety-one stages behind you, one to go. Your hike today takes you through the Alpilles... the "little Alps" that do indeed look surprisingly like a small scale version of the mountains you saw for the first time when looking south along the Celt-named Isar valley in Bavaria at the beginning of summer and of the H2H. It is now autumn, and at the end of the day, after walking through groves of olive trees whose roots might date back a thousand years, you come down out of the hills past the Roman ruins of the town of Glanum. Here you will find an impressive triumphal arch, built around 20AD to commemorate a victory over the Gauls... a Celtic people. Sic transit.... In fact Glanum was ancient when the Romans arrived, having been founded by Celto-Ligurians several hundred years earlier. And, oddly enough, in 260AD Roman Glanum was destroyed by the Alemans... a Germanic tribe whose ancestral lands included parts of Bavaria. Afterwards the survivors built a new town a little further to the north: St.-Rémy-de-Provence, your goal for the day and the end of the H2H. And so it goes. Tonight you will celebrate your own triumph... the completion of the H2H, a modern expedition. You have done something truly remarkable... something that many dream about, but very few ever do. Congratulations! In total you hiked more than 1700km, and climbed and descended over 94,000 meters... the equivalent of 10.6 Everests. An amazing achievement!! And yet the arch is a memento mori, a reminder that you are not the first to have crossed the Alps, or to have come from Bavaria to Provence, and that you will not be the last. Behind you are all the steps you have taken since leaving Munich so many months ago, in front of you are memories... but that doesn't matter now. For today is today, and today you have completed the H2H! So savor the taste of your wine and food tonight -- it will never be better. If your legs permit, dance, and if you can't dance, sing. The Romans perhaps said it best: carpe diem... winter will come soon enough.
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