A hundred and twenty thousand people and four mountains over four thousand metres
No provinces, two official languages and seventy-four municipalities.
The Aosta Valley is the size of a middling province and has fewer inhabitants than a district of Rome, yet inside its perimeter stand Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn, Monte Rosa and Gran Paradiso. It has had a special statute since 1948, it has no provinces, and Italian and French carry equal official weight; in the Lys valleys the Walser, who came from the Valais in the thirteenth century, still speak their titsch.
How it is put together
The layout is simple: a main valley running down from Courmayeur to Pont-Saint-Martin for about a hundred kilometres, and thirteen side valleys joining it at right angles. The main one is wide, sunny and farmed, with castles on the spurs; the side ones climb narrowly to two thousand metres and beyond, and each ends against a massif.
Where the campsites are
The campsites follow the same pattern: those in the main valley, around Aosta and Sarre, serve as a base for everything; those in the side valleys, at Courmayeur, in Val Veny, at Cogne, in the Valtournenche, in Val d'Ayas and at Gressoney, are already at altitude and have the paths outside the gate. Many stay open in winter as well, because here the season is a double one.
The country is small, but its mountains are big.
A local saying in the Aosta Valley, which the map confirms
How to plan it
From the Aosta basin Courmayeur is forty minutes away, Cogne half an hour, Cervinia an hour, Gressoney an hour. There is no need to change base: pick one valley to sleep in and do the others as day trips. The side valley roads are narrow and full of hairpins, and with a caravan it is better to ask first.
July and August are the months for the high paths and the open cable cars; June and September give the same landscape with fewer people, but in September the high huts begin to close. In winter people come to ski, and several campsites know it.