12/4/16
St Alexandre – Die
Woke up early and processed about 300 pictures for blog…. published another 2 posts – busy busy busy!
Our illustrious leader made sausage sarnies for breakfast – with HP sauce of course… yummy.
We strolled around the village and took some pictures,
then set off for Montelimar, where I hoped to find a vape shop and get some supplies… I really don’t want to start smoking again having been on the vape now for so long! We entered co-ordinates that I had gleaned from the web, and as we entered Montelimar it was obvious we were not welcome! 3.5 ton limit signs on every road leading to the city. We stopped and looked for a different vape shop – and lo and behold we were 100 yds away. Successfully bought 4 bottles of vape and headed out of town!
Montelimar is the home of Nougat, apparently – and I saw a sign for a factory and decided I wanted to go there…. I think someone had illusions of Willy Wonka proportions when they conceived this place….
I found a poor old pot bellied pig in a cage, and a chipmunk, and the piggy loved having her bristly back scratched, and rolled over on the floor squeaking! Must be such a boring existence poor thing….
Capn Bligh was singularly unhappy about the detour to the nougat factory and made it very clear by stropping for the rest of the afternoon…. conversational ability was reduced to monosyllabic grunts.
His map reader/copilot offered several options for the night stopover – all of which were no good for some nefarious reason and were soundly poo poo’d – and eventually she told him to F*** off to Die (in the Vercours National Park) so we did…!
He eventually saw the error of his ways….
Settled in Die adjacent to the Pompieres Station in a large daisy filled field… lovely!
I made him a hot chilli for dinner which cheered him up… the sun came out for a while and I made Bertie a daisy chain!
13/4/16
Die – Aillon de Jeune
Woken up by a policeman this morning – I think I scared the life out of him opening the door in my oh-so-sexy dressing gown! Bert shot out the door and leapt all over him – leaving little white dusty footprints all over his nice serge trousers! He took it all in his stride(!) and wished us a good day, and we settled down to breakfast. We’re heading for Challes Les Eaux as a good halfway point for Chamonix on Thursday. We passed through Gap, Chatillon, Menee, Les Nonieres, and were bemused by the perfectly trimmed privet bushes all the way up the mountains!!!
You’re in the middle of nowhere and there they are!
We jumped out of our skins when our insulated stainless steel mugs banged and popped with the change of air pressure! We went to the Col de Menee 1457m, into d’Isere towards Grenoble… Sound of Music country!
Beautiful alpine primroses everywhere…
Mon Capitan decides to leap out of the van and yodel at the top of his lungs….
the funniest thing is, he got a laugh from somewhere in the hills…. and ran back into the van! HAHAHAHAHA!
The mountains grew higher and higher,
and suddenly we came round a corner and found this…..
We were clearly a huge inconvenience for the guy driving the tractor who was trying to clear a tree for us to pass…he kept trying to shove it out of the way on the mountainside, but after failing at the third attempt, he ended up picking it up and dropping it over the edge; and moving politely to the side so we could overtake!
Monestier de Clermont… and more steamy mountains!
Through La Coynelle, and Vif,
into Grenoble proper, and our first taste of traffic for a while…
Past the Stade des Alps
This tickled me…. had no idea tattooists could be described thus:
Back out to Chambrey – arrived at Challes Les Eaux and found it was shut!
So we headed for Aillon de Jeune instead.
The rain started and didn’t let up – it hammered down most of the night. We parked next to the hotel and it’s crazy golf course. Nick had bought me a pressure cooker today, and we had a lot of laughs with his smartphone’s auto-translate feature, trying to translate some of the recipes!!! Hilarious!
14/4/16
Aillon de Jeune
It’s a clear cold morning (2 degrees) but within an hour the temperature is 7 degrees and getting warmer.
Updated the latest blog and downloaded some pictures of the last 4 days – it’ll give us something to mull over tonight in Chamonix – hopefully! Bert goes for a cycle ride with Nick and plays outside the van while I clear it up…
Detour 2 over a col and back on the D1212 – what a detour! Beautiful!
Thru Flumet and stopped at Chantalonette for some bread – boulangerie shut too! WHAT IS IT ABOUT THIS COUNTRY AND SHOPS??? When you think they should be open they’re shut, and when they REALLY should be shut, they’re OPEN!!! Bah!
We walked Bertie at the stop anyway. Bought bread at Intermarche in the end…
Through St Gervais, Les Plagnes, Le Fayet and into Chamonix Mont Blanc.
Stopped at Mont Blanc at the designated motorhome parking by the cable car, and snow cannons were going off everywhere… poor Bertie was terrified….
We quickly saw we were not going to be able to leave him in the bus and go up on the cable car – the noise was like firework night x 10; plus there was a helicopter working and he wasn’t any too keen on that either! Poor Bertie!
We made a hasty exit and headed back to St Gervais for the night.
Sat in the sun with snow behind us! Mind you, when the sun drops so does that temperature!
I got over my pressure cooker virginity pretty quickly and produced a pretty reasonable Boeuf en Daube in just 50 mins start to finish; made even more delicious by the wild garlic I foraged earlier at Chantalonette!
We fell asleep to the sound of rain on the roof….