Well perhaps not exactly the "Sound of Music" land, which was the South Tyrol, Austria in the movie I think, but the Alps is the Alps in any language! And here they are, in all their summer glory, from the balcony of the chalet we stayed in in Lanslevillard, in south east France, not that far from the Italian border, just over the Col du Val Cenis (more of which later).
Its now about day Day 80 of the trip, 17th August, and were are here for the next two weeks.
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| View from our chalet window over Lanslevillard every morning. The boulangerie is just on the right. |
We drove here from the Whebles' house near Guildford in one day. Up at 4am, on the ferry from Dover at 6.10am then 900km on motorways, arriving in time for the first of a series of humungous chalet dinners, this one cooked by Joanna and Stephen who had arrived ahead of us.
There were 7 of us there for the first week, Jane, Ian, Jane's sister Judy, brother-in-law Nigel and nieces Pippa and Joanna, and Joanna's squeeze, Stephen. A chalet full, but it is big and well appointed and room for all of us and all our stuff.
So for the next few weeks our daily pattern was, weather permitting, (and it permitted for all but 2 days);
- Up and cooked breakfasts at about 9.30am. Make a big sandwich for lunch along the walking track.
- Argue about/ Plan the route for the day!
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| Snacks at the Refuge. |
- Set off usually in the car to a starting point for the days walk. This often involved an ascent to over 2,000m on some col between mountain ridges. Park the car in amongst hundreds of others who are doing the same walks. (This hill rambling is hugely popular with the locals in France and it was the French holiday season. Although it all came very abruptly to an end during the second week when we found ourselves in a nearly empty village with shops and restaurants all closing on the last Thursday!)
- Walk anything up to 25,000 steps each day. I am wearing a pedometer, My target is to walk 10,000 steps a day. I was overachieving!
- Stop for a few hours at a spot with a great view and eat the sandwich,
- Make our way to one of the many "Refuges" dotted along the walk for a mountain beer and snack.
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| Pippa with a range of mountain beers |
- Carry on walking until 4 or 5 pm, then drive back to the chalet.
- Have baths and showers, gin and tonics, wines and beers and nuts and other nibbles. Play silly card games until whoever was on dinner that evening had cooked another humungous meal.
- Eat said humungous meal, washed down with adequate quantities of local red and white wines and eau minerale for Jane.
- Get onto the killer cheese course. Apart from the killer Reblechon there was also a killer local cheese called Beaufort as well a a very tasty Tome and a killer local blue whose name I have forgotten. Filled out now and then with a Brie or Camembert. Anyway, there was never a shortage of cheese on offer.
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| tonight's cheese and wine selection. |
- More card games or watch a video. One day we found a children's version of Trivial Pursuits, which was actually quite embarrassing to play!
- Bed about 11pm.
And the next day you do it all over again. Luckily for me the excesses of the cheeses the night before were subtly offset by the excessive number of steps that was required of us the following day.
However it must be said the scenery was pretty spectacular at times and may of the walks were delightful, either alongside streams as they plunged down the valley from the melting glaciers in the mountains above, or through woodland, with, if we were sufficiently sharp eyed, wild raspberries. alpine strawberries and myrtle berries to eat along the way. There were also acres of wild flowers, including edelweiss, I was informed, on one particularly high ramble one day.
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| A lake at Bellecombe, about 2,400m altitude. |
Highlights of the weeks were the fabulous views, which again are difficult to capture in photographs, the local produce and the beers in the refuges at the end of long walks. We will leave you with a series of pictures that capture a few photographic moments during the two weeks.
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| It was 7C and 30km winds up here! |
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| Wild flowers by the side of the roads - beautiful. |
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| You could actually get a mobile phone signal if you stood in the box! |
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| Lunch stop. I found my hip flask on this walk, so we had an after dinner drink too! |
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| Spot the rock climbers. |
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| Outside a cheese shop in Bessans. |
Then on the 29th July Jane and I again packed our bags and were taken by Judy (thanks again) over the Col du Mont Cenis to Suza, just over the border in Italy, a 45 minute journey. There we caught the local train to Turin and on to the Italian stage of the gap year.
But for the Florence capers you will have to wait for the next post.
