I’ve lost track how many times we have spent our winter vacation in the Serre Chevalier Valley in Hautes-Alpes department, but one thing is sure: the weather has been mostly good. And so it was this time, too. Actually it was extra good, since the sun shone from the clear […]
We spent the extended holiday weekend in the area where most of town and village names sounded like they were taken from Asterix. The area, called la Dombes, is an undulating plateau in the department of Ain consisting of 1200 ponds or rainwater pools that are man-made, most of them […]
As the weather forecast looked very promising for the last weekend of October — with lots of sun and the daytime temperatures in upper teens or lower twenties — we decided to take Monday off and head for a short bike tour on this All Saints’ holiday. We had just […]
Thanks to the recent gas crises — due to the strikes at oil refineries 30-40% of the gas stations have shortage of at least one type of gasoline — Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes announced last week that all regional trains and buses were free this past weekend. We though about taking our bikes […]
This was the third time Martin Fourcade Nordic Festival was organized in Annecy, and the third time we attended. This year’s lineups for both biathlon and cross-country sprint races were quite impressive. There was supposed to be two Finnish biathlets, but on the race day we heard that one of […]
Yesterday we returned to the same rough area where we hiked three weeks ago. This time we started from a different place, at parking of La Doua. To reach the parking we drove several kilometers on a very rocky unpaved road, constantly fearing of getting a flat. The first part […]
This past July was the second driest month in France since they started to keep record in 1959. The driest was March 1961. The drought has not only affected crops and the nature in general — most vegetation has turned into vivid Fall colors already — but together with the […]
The original plan was a bit more challenging hike (9K with D+/D- ~700m): a loop from Val Pelouse (1689m) to Refuge de la Perrière (1853m) , Col de la Perrière (1984m) and Source du Gargoton (1634m), and back to Val Pelouse. Because of the road closure some five kilometers before […]
I hope this was the last bathroom renovation we ever do. Not that it was very hard for us, but the cleaning afterwards is just too much work. This time we were much wiser with regard to many things, especially protecting the furniture, books, clothes from dust — the fine […]