Thursday, 6 February 2014

End of the French Holiday

January 12 - 22

I'm almost a month behind again! This has mostly been due to lack on Internet in France, and to my being still ill with the cold on my return to England.

It was during this time in France that I heard from the Police Family Liaison Officer that the young German who killed my cousin in 2012 had finally been extradited to Germany to stand trial for killing somebody in his own home town. It was a great relief to know that he was no longer in this country - not to mention the thought that British taxpayers would no longer be obliged to pay the enormous cost of keeping him here in a secure hospital, which I believe is about £350,000 a year! I hope to hear some details of what is happening to him in Germany in due course, as the proceedings there progress.

Looking back on this French holiday, I'm afraid I can't say it was much of a success, owing mostly to the pain from my back. It was difficult to move freely - it took me several weeks to be pain free, and I still get twinges when I bend down. This resulted in my being very fearful of falling again, and being reluctant to do anything very difficult, so I didn't go out to ski very often.

There was a fair amount of snow in the resort, as you can see in the photo below, though it was often in poor condition because it was quite warm most of the time we were away.




This is one of the drag lifts on the lower slopes, on a rather grey day. Most of the days were grey, unfortunately.

When the weather was good, I went in the cable car to the top of the mountain, where the views were very good. There was a beginners lift, of the type known as a magic carpet. This is the upper end of it.




You can see there isn't anybody on it, mostly because it kept breaking down. I tried it out, but found the constant breaking down quite stressful, as it stopped and started very suddenly, threatening to throw me onto my back yet again.

There was certainly plenty of snow at the top of the mountain, and the snow condition was slightly better than it was on the lower slopes.




As you can see, the slopes mostly weren't very busy - possibly because most of the time the weather was quite grey and rather warm, which meant that the snow tended to be icy in the morning and a bit slushy in the afternoon.

The views from the mountain were good - you can see the tops are relatively flat, but the mountain sides are steep. There were particularly good views from the gondola on the way up.




You can see how steep the mountain sides are, and that's the village nestled down in the valley. Because the mountain sides are steep, I worried a lot about avalanches. You can see the way the rows of trees have been planted across the slope to break the power of any avalanche, but you can also see some wide and empty slopes without trees in the distance.

The village itself wasn't particularly interesting. I couldn't find anything except bars and restaurants and clubs, food shops and very expensive shops selling over-priced ski gear. Maybe I didn't explore far enough. Parts of the town were quite pretty though, especially at night.




We were extremely fortunate in the fact that the resort's only laundrette was in the next block to our apartment, so we were able to do our laundry without difficulty. I don't think I've ever stayed before in an apartment block with no laundry facilities in the basement.

The bus back to Grenoble was a good deal quieter than the one on the way to the resort. As we set off at lunch time, we were able to appreciate the scenery, which was beautiful.




This was one of the many reservoirs - the whole area must generate a lot of hydro-electricity, we passed so many power stations taking advantage of the many rivers flowing in the gorges. The road was quite frightening in places, with hairpin bends hanging above steep-sided gorges, and there were very few barriers at the side of the road to stop vehicles going over the edge. I took photographs down into the abyss whenever I wasn't too terrified, but unfortunately none was successful. The camera just couldn't cope with the bright sunlight reflecting off the steep rocky hillsides and the intense dark shadows in the deep gorges.

Eventually, we descended from the mountains, though we could still see them.



We were able to see how the mountains had been folded in the convolutions of the strata on some bare rock faces.


These photos aren't great, being taken through the bus windows, but they do give some flavour of the surroundings.

The plane was on time, so we arrived back in Stanstead as expected (we weren't able to get a flight back to Gatwick) and we caught another bus into Victoria from where we caught a train home.

I'm not at all sure I'm going to have any more French ski holidays. The snow just doesn't seem to be as good as that in Colorado.


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