Today we walked back along to Vielleneuve, the village we
visited yesterday, because we saw they had a little train which takes you on a
tour of all the nearby mountain villages (while playing Bohemian Rhapsody and
other such 70s and 80s classics). One of them had a church tower with a sundial
in place of its clock, which did look cool but I’m pretty sure it will only
show the right time for a small part of the year.
On the way round we spotted a lake with loads of people
swimming in it and rafting type activities going on so after we got off the
train we headed in that direction. By the time we got there it was too late in
the day to go kayaking down the river, so we settled for a game of crazy golf
and decided we’d come back to the lake later in the week.
Rule 1 of the book How to be Awesome says you can never leave a
mountain half-climbed, so Thursday morning I got up early and set off back to
the mountain you can see from our window. With hindsight it was probably right we
turned back when we did on Tuesday because the last 300-400m to the top you
needed to actually climb up. Well at least you did on the route I went, after
reaching the top I found out there was a path that went up the less steep side
from the next valley over.
But anyway by 11am I was sat eating my lunch 2566m
up on top of ‘Sommet du Prorel’. It is an amazing view, you can see the entire
Serre Chevalier Vallee where we are staying and also miles and miles into the Alps
with countless other peaks in all directions.
Landscape shots of mountains etc don’t come out great unless
you’ve got an amazing camera, since you can’t really capture the scale but here’s
one from the top anyway.
In the afternoon we went for a walk into Briançon, and
wandered around the shops. To be honest this didn’t take long, even though it’s
the main town around here it can’t be home to more than about 10,000 people
(11,645 according to Wikipedia so not a bad guess!)
By the time we got into town the thermometer was showing the
temperature had risen to 36 degrees! So to cool down we went back to the
Bar/Coffee Shop that Becki liked the music at earlier in the week, but unfortunately
it did not live up to expectations, the
beer and coffee was still cheap but they had switched from Eric Clapton to the
Cheeky Girls. Just goes to show you should never go back!
Its a French sun dial, so it will never show the right time.
ReplyDeleteMate I've been up that mountain, but in a chair lift with my snowboard strapped on. It's a helluva way up, so muchos respecto. There's a sweet little boardercross on the way down to Briancon too, but probably not the same without the snow! Stayed in Villeneuve when we were there and had a day out in Braincon but like you couldn't find much going on there...went to some sort of fortress on a hill and had a nice crepe, then it got cold. Anyway, can't beat them mountains, v. jealous :-)
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