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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First week

January 8 - 11

I have no idea when or if I can post this, which I am having to write on my phone, as we have moved to a different apartment with no Internet!

My photos are on the iPad - I can get them from the camera to the iPad, but not from the camera to the iPhone. The camera kit only works on the iPad. I have a phone SIM in the iPad, which worked in Italy, but apparently doesn't work here in France. So I am a bit stuck for the moment, and this blog could well be text only for a while.

After my bad fall on Monday, my back was very painful so I didn't go out on Tuesday. By Wednesday, my back felt much worse, so I went off to the medical centre, where they decided to X-Ray my entire back and rib cage. The area round my spinal fusion was very painful, though that wasn't the part I had struck when I fell. It's an area between my shoulder blades that is most painful and makes it hard to bend over or sleep at night. And coughing is a nightmare!

Anyway, the good news was that I hadn't fractured anything. I have heavy doses of pain-killers and anti-inflammatory drugs, both of which seem to help, though the pain-killers make me a bit dizzy. What made me most dizzy was having to pay €350 - mind you, there was no waiting time at all, and I had 3 X-Rays. After that huge bill, I found my drugs were a positive snip at only €8!

I have been up to the top of the mountain and have some nice photos of all the snow up there which I can't post here, for reasons already explained. It's the only place there is any snow - it's been so warm it had melted most of what's on the lower slopes, and what's there is very icy and unpleasant. There are some easy slopes at the top of the mountain, so quite good for beginners and nervous skiers like me! The streets are mostly clear of snow, but there are some very unpleasant areas of thick ice which make walking hazardous. I understand that snow is predicted for Monday and Tuesday, so I look forward to some better skiing then.

On Thursday I went down to the centre of town on the free bus to do some shopping, and stupidly left my ski gloves on the bench in the bus shelter. I wasn't sure where I had left them, but spoke to the driver when I got back on the bus, and he confirmed he had seen them in the bus shelter when he was going past. Unfortunately, when I got back to the shelter, the gloves had gone.

There is a Lost Property Office in the town, but on Friday I was so dizzy from the pain-killers I thought it safer to stay indoors. And all the Administrative Offices are shut at the weekend. Anyway, I think Lost Property is probably a lost cause - I imagine somebody took a liking to my gloves, everything is monstrously expensive in this resort, so it might have been a cheap way of acquiring new gloves.

It being Saturday, we have moved to a new apartment in the centre of town. It is far more convenient - apart from the slight detail of no Internet of any sort in the whole building. Had I realised, I would have posted something before we moved here.

It's otherwise a slightly nicer apartment, with a much larger bathroom and proper beds, instead of bunk beds. The sore back made the high bunks very difficult to use, and both of us have painful bumps on our heads from sitting up too quickly and forgetting there was only a small space above.

The view from this apartment isn't so good, but it's only a short walk to a most superior supermarket - no more catching a bus to go and buy a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk. It's about 200 yards to the nearest bus stop, and there I can catch a bus to the Place Les Deux Alpes from which the ski lifts run up the mountain.

Paul had intended to ski after we moved apartment, but was exhausted after we had lugged our luggage about, from our apartment to the luggage room, then at lunch time up to the bus stop and onto the bus, then off the bus 200 yards along the street and up to the new apartment. This time we also had 3 bags of shopping. We still needed to go out for bread for lunch, and after lunch Paul was so exhausted he slept all afternoon. We aren't as young as we were!

Now I'm going to see if it's possible to post this blog from the iPhone!

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First Days in France

January 4 - 6

We left home on January 4th to fly to France. We'd had a rather short night, in my case because I totally failed to find my thermal underwear for some hours. The packing had been left until the last minute because I was playing with my grandson all day, and believed I knew where everything was - including my thermals, in a box in my wardrobe marked 'thermals'. Unfortunately, when I went to get them out, they weren't there! Some time after midnight, I was searching everywhere I could think of in the house, and trying desperately to remember what I did with them last year. I went through every drawer and cupboard I could think of, without finding them, and about 2am, was resigning myself to buying more, when I had the happy thought of looking in the inaccessible under bed drawer - I had to move my bedside chest first. And there they were! Goodness knows why they were in there, I can't remember putting them there, but at least I didn't have to buy more!

The plane from Gatwick was late in leaving, and I'm afraid I spent the extra time buying myself a new camera. My bridge camera has just proved too heavy and bulky to carry around easily, so I bought a tiny 'point and shoot' camera which I think might suit me better - I can just shove it in a pocket and it's very light. We shall see how I get on.

We were, of course, late arriving in Grenoble, but fortunately the bus from the airport waited for us. There was a party of drunken bums on the bus who sang and shouted all the way to the resort, and had to be rebuked by the driver and stopped from drinking more. However, I was so tired I slept through the mayhem, though we resolved to keep away from them if we heard them on the slopes.

It was true that our apartment, as described, was 150 metres above the point where the bus dropped us - 150 vertical metres! The road was considerably longer than 150 metres, and we struggled through the snow and ice, wheeling 20 kilo cases and, in Paul's case, a 20 kilo ski-box as well. We found it eventually,and it's quite similar to last year's one. We have two bunk beds, and the world's smallest shower room, and the sofa in the living area would turn into a double bed if there were 4 of us. Thank goodness there aren't!

On Sunday, I didn't go out to ski as I was too full of cold - I've had a cold since early December, but Sunday was by far the worst day, with me being unable to breathe through my nose at all. I had failed to sleep properly on Saturday night because of it, and it was worse during the day. So Paul went out to do a bit of gentle skiing and have a look around, and I stayed in and snivelled! Sunday night was an even worse night, and we both slept badly until about 6am, after which we then slept very late.

After a late breakfast, we set out. I am greatly daring in skiing at all, because I'd developed an Achilles Tendon problem in December, had quite a bit of physiotherapy, and now have to wear huge wedges in all my shoes and boots. Apparently the wedges in my ski boots have improved my stance, and I am skiing better, according to Paul. However, I got a nasty shock on the first drag lift, which you might be able to see at the far side of the photo below.

Nobody was using the lift, and when it started, it began with such a jerk that it jerked me right off my feet and right up in the air, and I fell very heavily on my back, which winded me. For several seconds I couldn't breathe, and my back and shoulder blades are very painful.

I declined to have another go at such a savage lift, so we skied across the slope to one which started more gently, and I was able to ski down the slope you can see in my photo.

I practised my parallel turns down the slope for some time, returning by the gentler lift to go back up, but the snow was poor. It was a hot day, so the snow was slushy and sticky and there were some sheets of ice; even Paul caught an edge and fell. After just over an hour, my back and ribs were starting to hurt more and more, so I decided to call it a day. Fortunately, there was a quick way home, which you might be able to spot in the photo below.


Just about the centre of the photo is a clump of trees, with what looks like a road to the left of them. This is a ski path which takes you onto a shallow slope and you can cross on a bridge and come out just opposite our apartment building. It had the added advantage that I didn't have to ski again down the steeper, and icy, slope to my left. Paul continued on his own, and fell several more times on the poor snow, so now we are both taking pain-killers!

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Between Then and Now 3

December 2013 - January 2014

There seem to be very few December photos, although it was a very busy month. We spent a lot of time driving to visit Basingstoke, where our elder son is hoping to buy a house. We must have seen around 10 - 15 properties, though it seems like a lot more.

I managed the odd visit to London, for shopping or Directors' meetings,



and was nearly tempted to try skating at Somerset House. I expect I'd only fall over and hurt myself.

We made a lot of cinema visits as our local cinema shows National Theatre and Royal Opera House productions. The cinema is better than the theatre for Paul these days - he can't hear in the theatre, he's too deaf!

There was some news about the proposed extradition of the young German who killed my cousin last year, though it wasn't very good news. The Police Family Liaison Officer told me that his file had gone to the Ministry of Justice and there it stopped while there was an attempt to iron out various issues surrounding the intention that his sentence in Britain should be served in Germany. The issues being considered are things such as when he is released in Germany, will he be transferred back to the UK or will he be assessed by the British out there, and will UK authorities actually have any say on his release date? Until this has been finalised and everybody is satisfied, he will not be released to the Germany authorities, and will not be able to be tried there for the person he killed in his home town. The end date for the extradition was originally 24th December and the FLO believed things would most probably be sorted out by then. However, by the time of writing this, early January, I have still heard nothing further and conclude that this means nothing has happened.

Christmas was a very busy time. Everybody came to our house, so we were 9 for the meal on Christmas Eve (if you include our new grandson). As is traditional for me, I forgot to cook some of the food I intended for the meal and it is still in my freezer! I gave up trying to cram everything into my small kitchen's tiny fridge freezer, and we bought a second one for the garage, and it was just as well I did, since both were absolutely full. Since our eldest son and family weren't staying, we had the traditional French Christmas, with Père Noel arriving with presents before you go to bed on Christmas Eve.

My younger son and family stayed, in fact they are still there as I write, along with my sister and my daughter-in-law's sister, though I am now in France! Paul and I arrived here at Les Deux Alpes yesterday for skiing, but we arrived in the rain, and today the snow is alternately slushy and icy.

The view from our balcony is pretty good, and shows that there is plenty of snow at present.




This is the view from the side of our building, with distant snowy peaks.


I don't know how long the snow will last though - hot weather is forecast all next week. I didn't go out to ski today, I left Paul to do the wandering about and finding where to go, and I'll probably go out tomorrow - as long as it doesn't get too icy.

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Between Then and Now 2

November 2014

Later in November, I took myself up to Somerset House to take a look at the Stanley Spencer exhibition, which I really enjoyed. It includes all the large scale panels from the Sandham Memorial Chapel, which is currently undergoing conservation. I hadn't realised it, but Stanley Spencer was influenced by Giotto's Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, and wanted to achieve the same effect of being inside a jewel box, with every inch covered with paintings. The exhibition doesn't include all the paintings, as many of them are murals on the walls; it's only the paintings on canvas, which can be moved. As with most exhibitions, no photos are allowed, but this one is from the poster advertising the exhibition.



It shows the soldiers relaxing, while an officer is attempting to make sense of the map. I enjoyed the exhibition so much, I bought the catalogue, which shows the whole chapel, and convinces me that I must pay it a visit once conservation is over. I'll have a job persuading Paul to go though - he really dislikes Stanley Spencer!

Later in the month, we had a very interesting visit to the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden, followed by a visit to the Museum's Depot in Acton. The Museum has been re-designed, so it was somewhat different from my last visit, which I must admit was many years ago. We had a very interesting talk on trams first - many European cities rely on them for inexpensive transport, and some British cities are now reinstating them, with varying success. Then we were released to have a look round the galleries which was very interesting and we really needed a lot longer than we had. We'll have to go back again on our own.

There were many old original vehicles, some of which could be entered, and there were lots of school parties doing just that. I really liked the old horse buses, but my best horse bus photo is taken at the Acton Depot.



You can appreciate how close it is to the stage coach, it even looks like a stage coach, with passengers on the roof and the coachman outside.

From the upper galleries you can look down on a lot of the vehicles, and, as you can see, lots of people were taking the opportunity of going inside them.



The wonderful early bus above is obviously a development from the horse bus. The driver is still sitting outside, exposed to the elements, and a lot of passengers sit on the roof, out in the open. The tram next to it is obviously a bit more sheltered, though it still had open platforms.

There were some lovely early train carriages -


this beautiful one is Edwardian.

After lunch, we caught the tube to the Acton Depot, where the Museum keeps more than 370,000 items it doesn't have room for in Covent Garden. Many of them are very large, as you can see.


There are a lot of examples of Tube carriages, of every age from the very earliest, and you can go inside a great many of them, or at least look inside.



This is a very early carriage, and you can see it was used to carry milk churns full of milk to be delivered in the city.

There are also buses from every era.


This is one from around the time of the First World War, I think. You can see that the passengers are a bit more sheltered, but the driver is still out in the open.

There was so much to see and we didn't have time for everything, though we were totally exhausted by 5 o'clock and glad to be going home. We don't have the stamina we used to have!

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Between Then and Now 1

October - November 2013

For some reason, I have let months go by without posting anything - in spite of lots of photos and various expeditions. I just seem to have been so busy and, although I meant to write lots of things, I somehow never managed to find the time.

A few days after our return from Italy, some cousins came to stay. They did a good deal of London sightseeing, though we largely left them to it, after showing them how to get from London Bridge station to the Tower of London. I nearly always get my visitors to do that wonderful walk along the Thames and across Tower Bridge! I usually also try to put them on a number 15 bus outside the Tower after that, one of the most beautiful bits of the route being from St Paul's Cathedral to Charing Cross. If the day is fine, I push them off first at St Paul's for a walk across the Millennium Bridge to Tate Modern, to appreciate the wonderful views, and perhaps to see The Globe Theatre. And when they get to Charing Cross, I usually walk them across the Hungerford Bridge to the South Bank - the East bridge for views towards the Tate, the West one for views of the London Eye and Westminster. It's at times like this I remember how much I love London, and feel sad that I don't live in the centre any more. For so reason, when force-marching my visitors around these landmarks, I never seem to take any photos myself, and always regret it later!

On this occasion, I left my cousins after their Thames walk and Paul and I visited the National Gallery for the exhibition Portraits in Vienna 1900. I was surprised by the Klimt portraits, as I don't know a lot about Klimt, only the pictures everybody would recognise, like The Kiss, and the portraits were very different. There were also portraits by people like Egon Schiele, Richard Gerstl and Oskar Kokoschka. I do wish I had some photographs to help me remember it, but, as usual, photos were not allowed. However, this is one of the most beautiful Klimt portraits shown at the exhibition, which I found online.




We also managed a visit to Wakehurst Place at the end of October, where there were still a few wonderful autumn displays left.


This was probably the most spectacular.

Most of the bright colours were gone, but fortunately, not all of them.



This was a carved tree stump, which seemed to be very attractive to visiting children - there were special sticks provided for striking it with, to make different hollow sounds on various parts of it.

As November began, we picked up my daughter-in-law and grandson from Eurostar at Ashford - they had been visiting her family in France. The weather wasn't too bad for November, and we were able to make a number of visits, of which the most successful was a visit to Drusilla's Zoo. Not only were there lots of real live animals



like this pretty cute meerkat, who was quite interested in the little boy, there were some animatronic animals as well.


Our grandson was particularly keen on this crocodile, which sang a song while snapping its jaws.

The highlight of the visit, however, was Thomas the Tank Engine! He is a suitable size for little people, and we were able to have a ride in one of the carriages.




You weren't supposed to go inside the engine, but our grandson was determined to see everything, so he did have a quick look. There was no firebox and no steam of course, but I'm not really sure how much he understands of technology anyway - he was only about 30 months old in November - so I'm not sure what he was expecting to see.


We would have stayed longer, but he was completely exhausted from all the running about between the different animals, the jumping and running and climbing and sliding in the playgrounds and the excitement of seeing Thomas and some of his friends, so we took him home again. We'll take him back again on another visit, it was a real success.

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Goodbye to Sorrento

Monday 21st October

We only had a morning left, so we spent it seeing Sorrento by daylight - we've usually got up and gone somewhere in the morning, returned at 5 or 6 to rest, and only wandered the streets of Sorrento in the evening.

The main square of Sorrento is called Piazza Tasso, after the famous poet Torquato Tasso who was born in Sorrento in 1544. Mind you, he didn't live there much, he moved about a lot, between Naples, Urbino, Rome, Padua and Venice, and seems to have spent most of his life in Ferrara. His statue is in a corner of the square.



It's rather difficult to photograph, because it is heavily shaded by several large trees.

The main street of Sorrento, the Corso d'Italia, is largely built on a sort of flat shelf at the top of the cliffs. The hillside rises again on the side of the Corso opposite the sea. The width of the shelf varies on the side of the Corso facing the sea, but eventually the cliff falls steeply away to the marina, port and beach. We explored a few of the streets on the seaward side of the Corso d'Italia near our hotel to see if we could get any sea views, but there were precious few. Most sea views have been taken by expensive hotels. However, we did stop to appreciate the large area of orange and lemon trees, all with large fruit, though it was all still quite green.

The Piazza Tasso, the main square in the middle of the Corso, sits astride a huge chasm in the cliffs.



You may be able to see, in the bottom left of the photo, some of the stairs you have to climb down to get to the port. Perhaps you can appreciate why I wasn't keen to climb all that way up again when we returned from the trip to Capri.

On the edge of the Piazza is the Duomo, the main cathedral. It is in the Baroque style, though much of it is modern reproduction. I'm not sure about the ceiling.



It certainly looks old.

We walked from the Piazza Tasso towards the public gardens that fringe the cliffs, and found this rather attractive little cloister with a small garden at the centre; Paul would have stayed there all morning, it was cool and shady and empty of people.



However, we pressed on into the public gardens, which were full of red and white roses. Yes, roses in October. The gardens end at a lookout platform, where you can admire the beautiful Bay of Naples, with Vesuvius in the background.



There were three cruise ships in - one is outside my picture - as well as the four-masted schooner you may be able to see just to the right of the white cruise ship.

All too soon it was time to return to our hotel and collect our baggage ready for our trip to the airport. As we walked back, we passed a portico we had only seen before in the dark, so we had not noticed the wonderful trompe l'oeil paintings.



It used to a meeting place for the government in the 18th century, and had subsequently been taken over by the commune and dedicated to the use of the ordinary people of the town. You can see one of them reading his newspaper at a table.

We had a quick lunch while we waited for our bus, and then were soon on our way to the airport. Although it's only a two and a half hour flight, it seemed to take us the rest of the day to get home, where we finally arrived at around 9 o'clock at night. As soon as I arrived in Gatwick, I had to swap my sandals for shoes and socks and put on warmer trousers and a fleece. It was a bit of a contrast to the 24 C warmth in Sorrento!

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