We spent 11 days hiking on mountains and exploring villages in the Massif Central, a highland area in the South-Central France in Auvergne region (department of Puy-de-Dôme) that consists of plateaus and extinct volcanoes (altogether about 450 of them of which 115 are in Chaîne des Puys, the youngest and […]
Despite my recent rant, we returned to Chartreuse this Wednesday morning for another hike. We started at Col de la Charmette and climbed to Col de la Grande Vache, then descended to Col de la Sure, again slightly ascended to Goulet d’Hurtières, and then descended back to Col de la […]
This past Pentecost holiday weekend we headed to Southern Vercors in Gresse-en-Vercors for an easy hike, to recover from the previous day’s bicycle season opener. We missed the parking lot at Col de l’Allimas (1352m), and then drove all the way to La Bâtie (~1170m), and started walking from there. […]
After eight weeks (55 days) the French lockdown came to an end today. There may be some areas that are more severely affected and have different rules, but here in Rhône-Alpes we are allowed to move freely within 100 kilometers from home or within our department (Isère) — even beyond […]
One month ago on March 17 at 12pm. France started a full lockdown that allows going out only for necessary shopping, seeing a doctor, or exercising for one hour, once a day, within one kilometer from home. So far we have gone grocery shopping once or twice a week, and […]
We here in France have been in home confinement for three weeks now, since the French government extended the lockdown by two weeks. The regulations are still the same: we are allowed to leave home only for necessary shopping and to do physical individual exercise once a day for one […]
The snow situation near here has been quite poor this winter, so we booked our last week of winter vacation in Les Saisies, Savoie department, which has been much more fortunate with snow. Today our plans received a major blow as following the prime minister’s speech yesterday, the ski resorts […]
After returning from the Biathlon World Cup in Antholz-Anterselva last Spring, we bought tickets to this year’s World Championships, and began a long wait to revisit this lovely area in South Tyrol (Alto Adige) in Northern Italy. This time it was quite different, though: there were far more races and […]
For the second week of our year-end vacation we escaped Grenoble that was plagued by inversion, a meteorological phenomenon in which low hanging clouds block the cold air underneath, while it is sunny and warm just few hundred meters higher. It was not only because of the temperature we got […]