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hi everyone,we are in the south of france now, after a fairly tiring week getting here. we have seen some fantastic scenery, experienced some great heights and had some interesting camping exeriences. Our first night in france camping was a good experience, apart from waking up to rain - our little follower everywhere we go! After three nights in Paris, we set off again, in the direction of Dijion, although we never actually got there, we ended up in a place called Rochefort - famous for its very powerful cheese. However the only thing powerful we experienced in our camping gd there, was teaming rain and a neighbouring nightclub wannabe who played music from dawn to dusk! (two nights in a row!!) we couldn't believe it! so we left there, not as rested a s we thought we might be. We did manage to score a caravan there, with an closed in awning, so fortunately nobody ended up soaking. the kids had started out sleeping in a tent. We then headed for Switzerland and ended up skirting around the lake, on which Lausane is situated on and going onto Montreiux, before heading to Martingy (it was a long drive in the car - and i must admit we all got a bit cranky!) we had to ask directions to find a way back over the mountains to france again, as we didn't want to pay the big bucks in Switzerland.At around 7pm at night we finally found a camping ground in Chamonix, right under Mont Blanc. it had been raining, and the moutain tops were in cloud. we couldn't rent a caravan, so out came our tents again! -it was freezing! around 6 degrees! once darkness came on,. Isabel slept in the car, and everyone was wearing polypros! It was after 11 before everyone got to sleep i think and by this stage i had stu's cold (which he had caught off Alan in London, ) and was feeling hot and cold and stuffed up! Surprisingly, we didn't sleep too badly on the hard ground, i think the fact that we all mummfied ourselves in our bags, made it fairly cosy. Unfortunately, isabel got a bit uncovered and didn't have any warm bodies to snuggle up to, however she's hot wee soul and managed to sleep for most of the night anyway.The view the next morning made up for any discomfort - it was fantastic. A range of white above us, and on the other side, craggy, spear shaped mountains, enclosed us in a perfect valley. After walking into town (we decided to spend the big bucks and take the highest cable car in the world up to a 3400m peak to view Mont Blanc, some 4400m nearby. We hadn't really discussed it with the kids, and i think when we got to the top of this huge precipice, nicola was totally blown away. Stu and I were too. Isabel and Tim just took it as another adventure, although later Isabel suffered from altitude sickness i think, she complained of being really tired and all she wanted to do was ly down everywhere! We had warm gear with us, which was just as well, because it wasn;t warm up there! We ate our bagettes up there, probably stayed near 2 hrs, and then dropped to the first level, which was at least 1000m below, to spend the rest of the afternoon watching the paraponters dive off this cliff and glide to the town below. It was amazing, and even more amazing it wasn';t raining! It was certainly well worth the money. We actually had to use sunblock.The next day we broke camp and drove into Italy, through the infamous Mont Blanc tunnel,where several people died (i think from memory a truck caught fire in there) anyway, its all very safety orientated now; trucks have a special stop - i think they may even have to be scanned, and there are get out points every 500m. still we were very cautious!!What really strikes you about the landscape , although it might look like otago's cromwell gorge, you have all these quaint little villages, with their big slate roofs and wooden balconies - plaster walls.-and every 10ks or less there was a village on this northern road down towards Torino Nearly every house has more than one storey,and they are often tall and narrow, squash together in bundles on the hillsides.We detoured off for a bit and drove up to see the Matterhorn on the swiss border. Still a bit of snow on it, it was a spectacular sight - we dried the tents in the carpark and ate baggettes, tuna and cheese. There were ski hotels and ski fields everywhere around here. Farmers house their cows inside in these bunker type arrangments dug into the side of the hill - a long narrow facade of stone with windows was the only part you could see from a distance.After taking our full of photos we left, the kids were sort of interested, but for a large part of their time, they were playing card games in the back seat! We bypassed Torino, and headed up a valley for Sestriere - which is just before the french border to get to Briancon. Finding camping in Italy wasn't easy and we weren't keen on spending another night out on the ground - luck was with us again! We stumbled on a deserted ski cabin accommodation: and with a bit of sign language and some french and a wee bit of Italian, we managed to get a five bunk cabin for just 10 euros more than it was going to cost us to camp further down the valley!! It had hot water and gas - although we did have to rather up "the boy" to get the hot water - that working to start with. All this area was full of ski lifts and there were runs everywhere! It must be packed in the winter. We were all tired, especially Stu and needed the rest. And Tim got his wish - pizza at a real Italian restaurant!The scenery was no less spectacular to get to our student's place in Abries the next day. Infact coming over the Col'lzord, from Briacon - we got up to 2300m (all this is done in the tour de france) and you were up in the mountains again. lots of spikey brownish rocks poking up from fine gravel - making it look like mars or the moon. The weather just held - clouds were moving in from the distance, and today as a i write from here, it is raining. we seem to bring rain to all these areas. Our student, Fanny hecq welcomed us into her town and has kindly let us stay in her parents old flat in Abries. fanny herself lives with her young son Jamie in a nearby village - and she houses her flock of goats a little further up the valley - everyday she leads them out of the barn and onto grass - which is part of the national park.- it is a unique arrangement, the french government has with animal farmers in the area. As we drove around yesterday, up these narrow little roads to villages perched on hills - you can see why people like this arrangment. A quiet peaceful existence, although in winter time, it can be quite busy and people ski from village to village, using the narrowest roads as tracks. The kids really enjoyed bouncing around the old fort yesterday - fort de Queras. parts built in the 13th century. Fanny also showed us her shop where she sells she cashmere and angora products (she weaves her own wool).Today, we hope to do a bit of walking, the sky is clearing after raining in the night. After suffering from colds , none of us are very fit, but we hope to tramp a bit around here, using this flat as a base. Only 14 more days and we will be out of Europe and into Chile. I hope we are can muster up some energy! Isabel , especially would quite happily go home right now - she wants to go home and see her friends (rose in particular! - you know who you are!) and sit in her bedroom and playwith all her toys she hasn't seen for ages. Nicola is keen to get back to school - although is doing well and keeping up with her diary - Tim, i think seems very content - he is our fix it man - and has taken a keen interest in the logistics of things - like how they rigged that cable car up to the top of that huge mountain! right time to sign - off, hope you are all well - i will put this on blog too - but some of it will get wiped off, so i prefer to send it to everyone this time. our blogsite is www.statravelblogs.com/duskybakers. we are all looking forward to getting home, but we were just thinking yesterday how fast it is all going. here we are, at our last contact, before heading off into the unknown! I will probably next write from Spain. we will stay in the north i think, not much time to do anything else and then say goodbye to our car, which has been great. (except for the electronics - we still can't figure out exactly how many ks we have done!!)take care, lots of love and hugs, sue, stu, nicola tim and isabel.ps - Warrick can you send us an e-mail regarding contacts for Chile - we will fly in on the 26th of September. Our friend Lyall also has a contact in Santiago where we will leave some gear etc, so between the two of you, we should be able to make a good start in Chile. Hope we can leave the rain behind in Europe!! hi everyone,we are in the south of france now, after a fairly tiring week getting here. we have seen some fantastic scenery, experienced some great heights and had some interesting camping exeriences. Our first night in france camping was a good experience, apart from waking up to rain - our little follower everywhere we go! After three nights in Paris, we set off again, in the direction of Dijion, although we never actually got there, we ended up in a place called Rochefort - famous for its very powerful cheese. However the only thing powerful we experienced in our camping gd there, was teaming rain and a neighbouring nightclub wannabe who played music from dawn to dusk! (two nights in a row!!) we couldn't believe it! so we left there, not as rested a s we thought we might be. We did manage to score a caravan there, with an closed in awning, so fortunately nobody ended up soaking. the kids had started out sleeping in a tent. We then headed for Switzerland and ended up skirting around the lake, on which Lausane is situated on and going onto Montreiux, before heading to Martingy (it was a long drive in the car - and i must admit we all got a bit cranky!) we had to ask directions to find a way back over the mountains to france again, as we didn't want to pay the big bucks in Switzerland.At around 7pm at night we finally found a camping ground in Chamonix, right under Mont Blanc. it had been raining, and the moutain tops were in cloud. we couldn't rent a caravan, so out came our tents again! -it was freezing! around 6 degrees! once darkness came on,. Isabel slept in the car, and everyone was wearing polypros! It was after 11 before everyone got to sleep i think and by this stage i had stu's cold (which he had caught off Alan in London, ) and was feeling hot and cold and stuffed up! Surprisingly, we didn't sleep too badly on the hard ground, i think the fact that we all mummfied ourselves in our bags, made it fairly cosy. Unfortunately, isabel got a bit uncovered and didn't have any warm bodies to snuggle up to, however she's hot wee soul and managed to sleep for most of the night anyway.The view the next morning made up for any discomfort - it was fantastic. A range of white above us, and on the other side, craggy, spear shaped mountains, enclosed us in a perfect valley. After walking into town (we decided to spend the big bucks and take the highest cable car in the world up to a 3400m peak to view Mont Blanc, some 4400m nearby. We hadn't really discussed it with the kids, and i think when we got to the top of this huge precipice, nicola was totally blown away. Stu and I were too. Isabel and Tim just took it as another adventure, although later Isabel suffered from altitude sickness i think, she complained of being really tired and all she wanted to do was ly down everywhere! We had warm gear with us, which was just as well, because it wasn;t warm up there! We ate our bagettes up there, probably stayed near 2 hrs, and then dropped to the first level, which was at least 1000m below, to spend the rest of the afternoon watching the paraponters dive off this cliff and glide to the town below. It was amazing, and even more amazing it wasn';t raining! It was certainly well worth the money. We actually had to use sunblock.The next day we broke camp and drove into Italy, through the infamous Mont Blanc tunnel,where several people died (i think from memory a truck caught fire in there) anyway, its all very safety orientated now; trucks have a special stop - i think they may even have to be scanned, and there are get out points every 500m. still we were very cautious!!What really strikes you about the landscape , although it might look like otago's cromwell gorge, you have all these quaint little villages, with their big slate roofs and wooden balconies - plaster walls.-and every 10ks or less there was a village on this northern road down towards Torino Nearly every house has more than one storey,and they are often tall and narrow, squash together in bundles on the hillsides.We detoured off for a bit and drove up to see the Matterhorn on the swiss border. Still a bit of snow on it, it was a spectacular sight - we dried the tents in the carpark and ate baggettes, tuna and cheese. There were ski hotels and ski fields everywhere around here. Farmers house their cows inside in these bunker type arrangments dug into the side of the hill - a long narrow facade of stone with windows was the only part you could see from a distance.After taking our full of photos we left, the kids were sort of interested, but for a large part of their time, they were playing card games in the back seat! We bypassed Torino, and headed up a valley for Sestriere - which is just before the french border to get to Briancon. Finding camping in Italy wasn't easy and we weren't keen on spending another night out on the ground - luck was with us again! We stumbled on a deserted ski cabin accommodation: and with a bit of sign language and some french and a wee bit of Italian, we managed to get a five bunk cabin for just 10 euros more than it was going to cost us to camp further down the valley!! It had hot water and gas - although we did have to rather up "the boy" to get the hot water - that working to start with. All this area was full of ski lifts and there were runs everywhere! It must be packed in the winter. We were all tired, especially Stu and needed the rest. And Tim got his wish - pizza at a real Italian restaurant!The scenery was no less spectacular to get to our student's place in Abries the next day. Infact coming over the Col'lzord, from Briacon - we got up to 2300m (all this is done in the tour de france) and you were up in the mountains again. lots of spikey brownish rocks poking up from fine gravel - making it look like mars or the moon. The weather just held - clouds were moving in from the distance, and today as a i write from here, it is raining. we seem to bring rain to all these areas. Our student, Fanny hecq welcomed us into her town and has kindly let us stay in her parents old flat in Abries. fanny herself lives with her young son Jamie in a nearby village - and she houses her flock of goats a little further up the valley - everyday she leads them out of the barn and onto grass - which is part of the national park.- it is a unique arrangement, the french government has with animal farmers in the area. As we drove around yesterday, up these narrow little roads to villages perched on hills - you can see why people like this arrangment. A quiet peaceful existence, although in winter time, it can be quite busy and people ski from village to village, using the narrowest roads as tracks. The kids really enjoyed bouncing around the old fort yesterday - fort de Queras. parts built in the 13th century. Fanny also showed us her shop where she sells she cashmere and angora products (she weaves her own wool).Today, we hope to do a bit of walking, the sky is clearing after raining in the night. After suffering from colds , none of us are very fit, but we hope to tramp a bit around here, using this flat as a base. Only 14 more days and we will be out of Europe and into Chile. I hope we are can muster up some energy! Isabel , especially would quite happily go home right now - she wants to go home and see her friends (rose in particular! - you know who you are!) and sit in her bedroom and playwith all her toys she hasn't seen for ages. Nicola is keen to get back to school - although is doing well and keeping up with her diary - Tim, i think seems very content - he is our fix it man - and has taken a keen interest in the logistics of things - like how they rigged that cable car up to the top of that huge mountain! right time to sign - off, hope you are all well - i will put this on blog too - but some of it will get wiped off, so i prefer to send it to everyone this time. our blogsite is www.statravelblogs.com/duskybakers. we are all looking forward to getting home, but we were just thinking yesterday how fast it is all going. here we are, at our last contact, before heading off into the unknown! I will probably next write from Spain. we will stay in the north i think, not much time to do anything else and then say goodbye to our car, which has been great. (except for the electronics - we still can't figure out exactly how many ks we have done!!)take care, lots of love and hugs, sue, stu, nicola tim and isabel.ps - Warrick can you send us an e-mail regarding contacts for Chile - we will fly in on the 26th of September. Our friend Lyall also has a contact in Santiago where we will leave some gear etc, so between the two of you, we should be able to make a good start in Chile. Hope we can leave the rain behind in Europe!! hi everyone,we are in the south of france now, after a fairly tiring week getting here. we have seen some fantastic scenery, experienced some great heights and had some interesting camping exeriences. Our first night in france camping was a good experience, apart from waking up to rain - our little follower everywhere we go! After three nights in Paris, we set off again, in the direction of Dijion, although we never actually got there, we ended up in a place called Rochefort - famous for its very powerful cheese. However the only thing powerful we experienced in our camping gd there, was teaming rain and a neighbouring nightclub wannabe who played music from dawn to dusk! (two nights in a row!!) we couldn't believe it! so we left there, not as rested a s we thought we might be. We did manage to score a caravan there, with an closed in awning, so fortunately nobody ended up soaking. the kids had started out sleeping in a tent. We then headed for Switzerland and ended up skirting around the lake, on which Lausane is situated on and going onto Montreiux, before heading to Martingy (it was a long drive in the car - and i must admit we all got a bit cranky!) we had to ask directions to find a way back over the mountains to france again, as we didn't want to pay the big bucks in Switzerland.At around 7pm at night we finally found a camping ground in Chamonix, right under Mont Blanc. it had been raining, and the moutain tops were in cloud. we couldn't rent a caravan, so out came our tents again! -it was freezing! around 6 degrees! once darkness came on,. Isabel slept in the car, and everyone was wearing polypros! It was after 11 before everyone got to sleep i think and by this stage i had stu's cold (which he had caught off Alan in London, ) and was feeling hot and cold and stuffed up! Surprisingly, we didn't sleep too badly on the hard ground, i think the fact that we all mummfied ourselves in our bags, made it fairly cosy. Unfortunately, isabel got a bit uncovered and didn't have any warm bodies to snuggle up to, however she's hot wee soul and managed to sleep for most of the night anyway.The view the next morning made up for any discomfort - it was fantastic. A range of white above us, and on the other side, craggy, spear shaped mountains, enclosed us in a perfect valley. After walking into town (we decided to spend the big bucks and take the highest cable car in the world up to a 3400m peak to view Mont Blanc, some 4400m nearby. We hadn't really discussed it with the kids, and i think when we got to the top of this huge precipice, nicola was totally blown away. Stu and I were too. Isabel and Tim just took it as another adventure, although later Isabel suffered from altitude sickness i think, she complained of being really tired and all she wanted to do was ly down everywhere! We had warm gear with us, which was just as well, because it wasn;t warm up there! We ate our bagettes up there, probably stayed near 2 hrs, and then dropped to the first level, which was at least 1000m below, to spend the rest of the afternoon watching the paraponters dive off this cliff and glide to the town below. It was amazing, and even more amazing it wasn';t raining! It was certainly well worth the money. We actually had to use sunblock.The next day we broke camp and drove into Italy, through the infamous Mont Blanc tunnel,where several people died (i think from memory a truck caught fire in there) anyway, its all very safety orientated now; trucks have a special stop - i think they may even have to be scanned, and there are get out points every 500m. still we were very cautious!!What really strikes you about the landscape , although it might look like otago's cromwell gorge, you have all these quaint little villages, with their big slate roofs and wooden balconies - plaster walls.-and every 10ks or less there was a village on this northern road down towards Torino Nearly every house has more than one storey,and they are often tall and narrow, squash together in bundles on the hillsides.We detoured off for a bit and drove up to see the Matterhorn on the swiss border. Still a bit of snow on it, it was a spectacular sight - we dried the tents in the carpark and ate baggettes, tuna and cheese. There were ski hotels and ski fields everywhere around here. Farmers house their cows inside in these bunker type arrangments dug into the side of the hill - a long narrow facade of stone with windows was the only part you could see from a distance.After taking our full of photos we left, the kids were sort of interested, but for a large part of their time, they were playing card games in the back seat! We bypassed Torino, and headed up a valley for Sestriere - which is just before the french border to get to Briancon. Finding camping in Italy wasn't easy and we weren't keen on spending another night out on the ground - luck was with us again! We stumbled on a deserted ski cabin accommodation: and with a bit of sign language and some french and a wee bit of Italian, we managed to get a five bunk cabin for just 10 euros more than it was going to cost us to camp further down the valley!! It had hot water and gas - although we did have to rather up "the boy" to get the hot water - that working to start with. All this area was full of ski lifts and there were runs everywhere! It must be packed in the winter. We were all tired, especially Stu and needed the rest. And Tim got his wish - pizza at a real Italian restaurant!The scenery was no less spectacular to get to our student's place in Abries the next day. Infact coming over the Col'lzord, from Briacon - we got up to 2300m (all this is done in the tour de france) and you were up in the mountains again. lots of spikey brownish rocks poking up from fine gravel - making it look like mars or the moon. The weather just held - clouds were moving in from the distance, and today as a i write from here, it is raining. we seem to bring rain to all these areas. Our student, Fanny hecq welcomed us into her town and has kindly let us stay in her parents old flat in Abries. fanny herself lives with her young son Jamie in a nearby village - and she houses her flock of goats a little further up the valley - everyday she leads them out of the barn and onto grass - which is part of the national park.- it is a unique arrangement, the french government has with animal farmers in the area. As we drove around yesterday, up these narrow little roads to villages perched on hills - you can see why people like this arrangment. A quiet peaceful existence, although in winter time, it can be quite busy and people ski from village to village, using the narrowest roads as tracks. The kids really enjoyed bouncing around the old fort yesterday - fort de Queras. parts built in the 13th century. Fanny also showed us her shop where she sells she cashmere and angora products (she weaves her own wool).
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