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Hi all,
Bet you were wondering where we'd got to over the last few days weren't you?
oh, ok, well I'll tell you what we've been up to anyway....... hope you're
not sick of reading about our exploits yet! :-)
Le Grand Bournand is a wonderful place, very relaxing but yet full of things
to do and surrounded by amazing mountains and not too far away from a couple
of large towns. We are woken every morning by the church bell at 0800 (thats
if the old boys and girls in the BMW motorbike club thats on the campsite at
the moment - it's a sea of grey hair :-) ) and there is always the clanking
of cow bells whatever time of day or night it is! But you learn to "like" it
in a funny sort of way. The town is really aimed at the winter sports and
most of the sports shops are either closed down until the snow returns or are
selling off stuff to try to keep going through the summer - it's a bit sad
really. The rest of the town is ticking along nicely though, no queues to get
a table in the restaraunts, get served at the bars or buy neccessities from
the local supermarket, butchers or bakers.
We visited Annecy while we were here, it's only 20 miles away and boarders on
the northern edge of a lake called "Lac D'Annecy", it is a small town but has
a bit of everything including a small street market (which we saw them
packing up :-( ) a very old quarter which has cool buildings - there should
be some of thme on the photo albums by the time you read this - it even has a
very small airport. The town has a lovely feel to it and we pent quite a long
time exploring. It really makes you wonder about the difference between
France and the UK because there are lots of very small niche shops that you
would never get in the UK (they wouldn't be able to afford the rates never
mind the rents!), there seems to be a big emphasis on "artisan" crafts and
arts as well..... Claire has a nice new leather hand made handbag to prove
it! When we were in Millau there was a leather shop and the majority of what
he made was for Falconry..... hoods, bafs, lures, etc, etc - really
interesting but you wonder how these people make a living doing that kind of
thing?
We also spent some time in Geneva - enjoying the lakefront and watching the
boats sailing up and down, very nice. Although it was nice it didnt have the
"feel" to it that Annecy did.... there was something missing - although it
made up for it a little bit with the number of flashy hotels and private
banks there were kicking about. Not as impressive as Moncao though :-)
I did another big ride, I climbed the Col de la Columbiere which was only a
few miles from where we were camped. I rode a circuit to get to it from the
far side though and that meant that I had done 23 miles or so before I
started the climb. The first bit was a doddle BUT I ran out of water half way
up the second half and that really did for me. It was a hard climb anyway but
without any water and on the steepest part of the climb I was getting cramps
in my legs and feeling very light headed - anyway I made it but was in a bad
state when I got to the top. I went and bought a bottle of water and a can of
coke and sat and drank them and recovered a bit before tackling the downhill
back into Le Grand Bornand where we were staying - fab downhill, topped 44mph
(still on my MTB - would have been a bit faster on my road bike) and managed
to overtake a few other cyclists and several cars :-) whooooooo hooooooooo -
great ride anyway, need to find another challenge now :-)
They LOVE their cows here in the Alps and all of a sudden the Lilapause
advert with Hieinz Wolf asking why the cow was purple (sorry to all you
readers who don't remember that!) made sense. There is a photo album of cow
things to go with this so you can see what we mean!
Errr..... the weather has been great as well - we have, at last, managed to
get a little tanned!
Catch ya'll later
Ian and Claire
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