The Tour of Sarrasine and The Dentelles of Montmirail This post wraps up our short vacation in Southern France, mostly Gard and Vaucluse departments. This hike traveled in Gigondas, that is a French wine Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) in Southern Rhône wine region, producing mainly red wine and little rosé. […]
Les Angles (Gard) On the third day we wanted to avoid driving (and more sitting), so we searched for hikes in the neighborhood, and found an extensive network of trails starting just behind the house. After 200 meters we came up to an interesting cave system ‘Carrere du Trou de […]
We spent the extended weekend in the spa town of Aix-les-Bains in Savoie department to escape, not the heat this time, but the wardrobe renovation in our second bedroom, currently serving as an office. We had already donated the old wardrobe to a young couple who took it down and […]
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 […]
It’s about time for a quick post. We have had several weeks — maybe the whole March if not already in February — of warm and sunny weather, with daytime temperatures as high as +20°C. And now it is cold again and it is snowing, and it is going to […]
Those who know wines, especially French wines, likely are familiar with the wine growing regions such as Bourgogne, Côtes-du-Rhône, or Loire valley, but may not know that grapes are grown and wine produced also here in the Alps in Savoie and Isère departments. The nearest vineyards are less than half […]
From Aurillac to Pont-Saint-Esprit After we had already extended our stay in Aurilliac by two days, if was time to move on and start driving home — kind of. We had booked the first two nights in Pont-Saint-Esprit, a small town by the river Rhône in the department of Gard. […]
It has been quite quiet here lately, partly because we have not had much exciting and interesting news or adventures to report, and partly because we were out of town for three weeks on our annual bicycle tour. This time we did Le Tour de Bourgogne. We will post pictures […]
Torrent du Manival is a shallow mountain stream down from the Chartreuse range that can be misleadingly dangerous when dry. During a thunderstorm the water level rises quickly and the stream tears and brings down everything on its way. Major protection works started in the end of 19th century, not […]