I don’t remember there having been so much rain, and so many days under a thick cloud cover (and inversion!) in December in any of the previous eight years as there has been this year. Earlier this week we had two straight days of heavy rain that caused flooding in […]
On this hike (13.4K in 3h 30mins, D+/D- 360m) we expected a different scenery since it was going to be at the lower altitude by the lake, far from the mountains. Actually this hike almost did not happen at all; as soon as we reached our car and started driving […]
Certainly no one could have missed the havoc the recent heavy rains have caused in Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, and Switzerland. This has probably been the worst Summer we have experienced in the French alps, and we have had our fair share of rain, too, but nothing clearly as bad as […]
Even if we are not really high in the mountains, the weather here in the valley can change dramatically in a very short time. However, it is quite rare to have strong thunderstorms in the morning — they usually start on the afternoon or when the evening falls — but […]
Another weekend getaway took us to the charming town of Le Puy-en-Velay in Haute-Loire department, about 200 kilometers west of Grenoble. When driving there we had quite a variable weather from sunshine to constant rain with occasionally heavy downpour, but at the time we reached Le Puy the rain had […]
This year was the fourth time we spent a week-long (19.-26.12.) winter vacation in Serre Chevalier valley in Haute-Alpes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region. The last two vacations we took at the end of the season in March, but the first one just before Christmas. Even if that season […]
We had a questionable honor of being invited to Helsinki for work-related reasons in late November. It is the time of the year that people living in Finland don’t particularly enjoy, griping all the time about darkness and the drab weather, but even less us expats consider a prime time […]
Old railway lines make perfect bike paths: they go from town center to town center, or from village to village, and even if not completely flat, they have gentle grades. The US has its Rails-To-Trails project, which is a nation-wide system, and France has La Dolce Via in the Ardèche […]
We migrated this blog from Amazon Web Services to GoDaddy just recently. Hopefully nothing got broken in the process. Other than that there has not been much activity here. We’ve been sick on and off, especially Tei, since our Interrail trip to Spain(*) in November; nothing severe, not even fever, […]