Not quite on top of our game health wise. Graeme had a bad night’s kip waking every night and tossing and turning. Despite having nearly 12 hours sleep both of us have felt better. Nevertheless we managed to drag ourselves out of bed at 7:30am. A quick and typically scary road trip to the supermarket at Les Carroz meant that we had milk for our cereal and toast. Following breakfast we took off down the road to meet Rick and Liz who were chiefly responsible for us moving here. Liz was at the gym but Rick must have immediately recognized us as he greeted us with “good morning” rather than “bon jour” as we strolled past. Putting two and two together we asked if he was Rick and with his affirmation we were able to bombard him with our initial questions. Rick has just turned 50 and has been working locally doing renovations. He is passionate about the village and loves living in France. He gave us a tip on a good walk into Les Carroz and arranged to meet up with us for apertif (before dinner drinks).Taking off on Rick’s suggested walk, we headed up into the old village of Araches and on to the escarpment that overlooks the main valley below. The alps seem to be full of terraced villages the next higher than the first. Taking the route “sentient dangereux” we were treated to a magnificent view right down into the Cluses valley. It was a muddy and slippery track and we both mindful of having very limited footwear – Gra currently has one pair of shoes – I have 2. Back into Les Carroz we investigated a safer walking route between Araches and Les Carroz. The scary walk along the road yesterday convinced us that a sure way to end our trip prematurely will be to do this walk too regularly!
Back to Le Refuge for a lunch of baguette, soft super smelly French cheese and a locally made sausage, with fruit and a cuppa set us up for the afternoon. We decided to take the drive up to Flaine, the highest ski resort in the Grand Massif area. There was snow everywhere. Fingers crossed this early snow bodes well for a strong season. The Flaine resort has been spoiled somewhat by the 70’s concrete bunker architecture that has been allowed there. So far everyone we have spoken to us has apologized for the “Flaine Architectural Disaster”, which apparently been protected by the French government because the architect has since become very famous.
Since everything was closed by the time we got back to Les Carroz, I decided to have a drive! Interesting! Getting into the swing of things, I decided to head down the mountain road all the way to the valley floor. Somehow we ended up in Cluses, where we really intended to head tomorrow and then wound up outside the incredible super market Carrefours. Since we had made it there by accident it would be positively rude not to go in…we obliged.
What a place – the Warehouse on steroids!! Both supermarket and variety store, we had great success picking up an eclectic collection of items including an electrical adaptor, a really good speaker system which we can use to play the music on our computer, slippers, underwear, tea strainer, conditioner and sunscreen.
Only managing one wrong way and “lost incident” this trip, we made it home in time to meet Liz and Rick for drinks. What a delightful couple. Their chalet is just stunning. Liz has a quiet and gentle manner about her but obviously an excellent eye for decoration. They have been running the chalet for 5 years but they are thinking about changing it to a resident language school. She is going to be a really helpful person to know I think and she has already offered to take us to the bank tomorrow to set up our bank account.
Returning home to the chalet we now have some real creature comforts – music and comfy slippers – what more could you ask for?
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