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squiz Member Member#: 6644 Location: Registered: 27-05-2007 Diary Entries: 2889 |
2nd January 2015 Hiking - Walking: La Chevrerie to Lac de Petetoz,France Wind Direction: Wind Stength: Surf / Sea State: Air Temperature: Sea Temperature: Weather: Max Speed: Distance Covered: Friday 2nd January 2015 – Snow shoeing – La Chevrerie to Lac de Petetoz***** sunny then cloudy A good night then after breakfast we set out to Lac de Petetoz on our snow shoes. This really christened them as it was a really tough route! We left the van in our spot at the ski lift car park at about 11 and followed the path up past the farm we walked to on Wednesday. The path narrows at the top of the field and winds up quite steeply. We could see the piste we skied back on yesterday afternoon and realised we were quite high – the lift at the top of that piste is 1800m and we were not far short of that on this walk! After two hours of steadily walking through beautiful wooded paths we came to the Lac which was very pretty, surrounded by mountains and fir trees completely covered in ice and snow. I walked out into the middle which Mag said was snow shoe vandalism as it was totally unblemished before that! We ate our lunch sitting on a fallen tree. When we left we were surprised to be climbing even higher only this time in the true French footpath fashion of scrambling up rocks! Rocks covered in snow in snow shoes seemed a little over the top for us but we managed it:) Eventually we came to a clearing and the chalets Petetoz marked one of the spots we were looking to meet on the way back:) We were amazed that for the whole really hard walk we were following marks left by skis – both up and down! How they managed that we don’t know! We sat on the doorstep of the l’Alpage de Petetoz and ate our biscuits before setting off across the clear field and finally coming to a very steep path down which was again quite hard at times. We knew there had to be some down at some point!! Our knees were really getting past it by the time we returned to the farm and then the van. We had been out 4 ½ hours and other than a rest for our lunch had been snow shoeing all the time. We only saw two people all day! It was terrific fun and the snow shoes do make you more confident walking – we even experimented with the clip in and clip out functions for uphill and down! Back to the van and we are staying here tonight but it will be our last night:( Didn’t get round to collecting our serviced skis. Will get them on the way out tomorrow. Saturday 3rd January 2015 – travel cloudy with rain We had breakfast and watched the little dog trot past twice – we have christened him Dave but he didn’t want to come over when we called him. He is happy in his own little world! We even managed to get the boot open today too so packing up was made easier – it has been frozen shut for days! We filled up the water bottles in the loos at the lift and looking up the piste was a sorry sight:( There was a big notice in the Caisse window saying that the area was only open to very very good skiers, and there weren’t many cars in the car park. We went to the shop and collected our skis from their 50 euro service and headed away from lovely La Chevrerie. There were some touring skiers parked outside the village, headed off to goodness knows where walking up and skiing down! We called at Bellevaux tourist office and got some leaflets (on the way out of the area!) and had a nice chat with the lady in there. Got some bread and drove down to Thonon and had our lunch in the same spot as before next to the lake. No snow here at all and Switzerland snow looks very threadbare across the lake too:( Started our journey home by calling at Lidl and then followed the green road back the way we came through Bellegarde to Nantua – there is a little more snow beside the road along here but we couldn’t see up to Menthiere as it was very low cloud and rain. We stopped for the night next to the lake in Nantua, where we had lunch on the way. It was only 3.30 when we got here but it was pretty miserable and we had had enough of driving. We have another two whole days to get back to Calais. Maggie Coles texted to say it was supposed to snow heavily tonight but as I am writing this it is raining and 5 degrees so don’t think we will get any here. Sunday 4th January - travel We woke to more rain – it didn’t stop all night and it was really mild - +8 degrees! We got ready and had breakfast then left our spot by the lake. Mag didn’t even get out at all at Nantua! We really wanted to walk to the waterfall which was only round the edge of the lake a little way but it was on our way out of town so we stopped to have a look and were amazed to see a Chamois eating grass right near the road! We hadn’t seen any up the mountain and then this one was right there! We drove the same route we had come through really lovely scenery and the rain gradually eased up until it actually turned into quite a sunny day. Driving around Bourg en Bresse we were amazed for the second time today by the sight of over a hundred white storks in a field. They were also standing on the electricity pylons and cables. It was very funny watching them land and balance! We saw a bigger variety of birds today than in the whole holiday! Buzzards drying their wings sitting on fence posts and a peregrine too. Took a slightly different route towards the end of our journey but ended up at our favourite overnight stop at Briare about 3.30. We went for a walk along the aquaduct and saw ‘Madame Dupont’s Alpacas’ (think one or two were llamas) which were very funny. Back along the other side of the aquaduct, then underneath and along the Loire and back round the marina and through town. Nice to get out in the sunshine. Lovely pink sky just before we got back to the van which is in a slightly different place to last time as there were too many (about 3) vans in the other parking place so we are in a different aire on the river bank about 100 yards away. |
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