Europe 2017
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24/09/2017
A beautiful sunny day at 1600 m. Our hotel is at the edge of a lake, surrounded by snow sprinkled peaks. Time to go climbing cracks!!
The hotel was right next to a lake formed by a dam. It is pretty quite here as it's the end of the summer and most places have shut up for the season.
We arrived in Ceresole Reale and relaxed in our hotel restaurant and shared a local bottle of very foamy local beer!
Claire kindly booked us a room in Hotel Del Lago for the week. The hotel seems nice, cosy room but very low ceilings!
I met Claire and we headed through the Mont Blanc tunnel into Italy and over to Valle dell'Orco. On the way up it looked a bit wet and rainy, but we were also surprised to see a herd of cows being herded down the road towards us. They had the biggest bells around their neck I've ever seen.
23/09/2017
We made it back to Geneva airport with 45mins to spare before Neil's plane left! It was quite stressful following the terrible instructions to find the French part of the Geneva airport to drop off the car... but we made it. Neil flew home and I took a bus to Chamonix to meet Claire. Here the glacier near the Aguille du Midi also shows how much snow was around!
22/09/2017
Last day in the Tarn and I saw three otters just near our gite! Not great pics, but so awesome to see them!
We drove back to Boyne over the top of the Causses, and spotted a pheasant right by the side of the road! It had some incredibly vibrant colours.
Trout spotting.
We saw quite a few trout, one was bigger than the one I had for tea in Switzerland a couple weeks ago! (Not these ones, the biggies keeps to the deeper water so they were difficult to photograph.)
22/09/2017
Today we explored the river. It was another quite warm day here in the Tarn!
Yes, this one was as delicious as it looks!
And finally desert. We decided to skip the cheese tasting plate this time and go straight for desert. Neil had apple dome with caramel and I had a raspberry jelly with vanilla ice cream and panacotta.
A close up of my dish.
A samosa was an unusual find in a French restaurant I thought. Obviously a lot of other patrons thought so to as many others ordered the same dish! It was pretty good!
Main courses were lamb ravioli for Neil in a Cajun sauce (closest), while I had quail stuffed with sundried tomatoes and olives, on a bed of cabbage accompanied by a samosa.
A photo of our entre's. Neil's (closest) sausage and potato tart while I had pumpkin soup with goats cheese froth and bacon bits. Mmmm, delicious. Mine was smooth and creamy while Neil's was salty and delicious.
We decided to go out for tea again. We'd been recommended a restaurant in La Rozier by our Gite owners, so we made a booking after our walk and came home to get washed and changed. Good thing we booked! It was delicious food and by the time we left there was not a spare table in the restaurant!
Pre-entre seen here is an eggplant purée with goats cheese froth and walnut crush. Tiny but delicious!
On the return home we noticed that the leaves are starting to change colour to indicate autumn is here. So beautiful to see the whole landscape reflecting a change of season.
This is a bit blurry, but a lot of our walk was like this, in dense beautiful forest following little yellow stripes of paint!
A view of where we went on our walk. We went along the bottom of the cliffs the left side of this picture, then crossed over the top and came back along the bottom of the cliffs on the right. We saw ancient ruins, a natural spring, some vultures and quite a few other people. Seems hiking is very popular around here.
The view from Capluc, complete with giant cross and dodgy looking railings.
21/09/2017
Rest day today and it was predicted to be 24'C, which mean hot! We decided to go for a walk starting at the base of the Tarn and Jonte gorges in a town called La Rozier. We hiked and climbed ladders to get to the lookout on top of Capluc. This was the view!!
I ordered caramel praline something. It was like a very light mouse on a thin biscuit base drizzled in caramel sauce. It was amazing!
Pre-desert we had a cheese tasting plate. We had a choice of five, but looked a little confused with the choices so the waitress gave us a piece of each. The Rochfert was a mouldy and very salty cheese, Neil didn't like that one, or the goats cheese (Heather, you would have lived it!), but the other three were very nice and tasty.
Neil ate his main before I could take a photo. So here's one of his desert: cheesecake apparently. Tasted like eggy ricotta bake. The ginger icecream it came with was delicious!
We headed into Millau to find a tasty plat du jour to celebrate a great day climbing. The place we found was in the centre and we mis-interpreted the menu for the entre. No photos of the lamb intestines with salad but I did get a photo of my two quails for main course! They were delicious!
Au'revoir La Jonte! Thanks for a fun but tiring day!
After lunch we headed over to do a route right up the middle of the wall under the vase. It had a strange name, Les Femmes et les grimpeurs d'abord. It was a 3-pitch 3-star 5c and looked a lot more popular than the first route! It was a classic and while steep, had some big holds and it made you feel like a million dollars climbing in such a spectacular location! Not a bad route to finish the day on.
20/09/2017
Went sport climbing at the Tarn yesterday, but didn't get any photos. Favourite route of the day was Tresor du Zebra (I've interpreted that to mean Zebra Treasure!) a beautiful Pickett and steep 7a.
Today we're back at la Jonte. First route was the left trending diagonal crack with the bush on it called La Demande Aveyronnaise. It was 4 pitches of trad and bolts, and supposedly got three stars in the Rockfax guide. We've done La Demamde in Verdon, so this was the La Demand of this area (Aveyronnaise). It was airy, but the rock was a little average in places, and it actually wasn't that good. We were quite disappointed!
I had three types of icecream.
Neil had a boring entre and streak and chips for main, so no photos of those! But he had a really interesting desert. It was like a flan but had pineapple inside it like a little cake. Accompanied by rum and raisin ice cream.
For main I had local sausage with cheesy creamy mashed potato and green pepper sauce! Yum!!
18/09/2017
Dinner!! I had a fancy salmon entre on a bed of mini potato salad an light, fluffy pancake.
It starters to rain again as we left, but we were treated to a gorgeous view again to La Jonte and Le Tarn gorges as we headed back!
Then we noticed lots!!!
Then we noticed a couple more vultures. There was obviously starting to be enough thermal energy for them to start gliding around looking for food.
We saw a vulture glide by, but also noticed there was a bit more rain coming our way.
The view.
Neil testing out how two carabiners would go on the first of two zip lines. We decided not well, as you're supposed to have a little pulley...
The view was spectacular down the Millau valley when the clouds lifted. The cloud is just hiding the viaduct bridge on the far side of the valley.
Neil looking like he's levitating after doing the wobbly bridge of wire and wood.
Looking back on where we'd come from.
I decided to climb it. It was way more exciting to look at than to climb. It was actually pretty rigid.
Neil decided to by pass it.
Approaching a huge hanging mesh. You could choose to climb it or by pass it.
Neil just hanging out.
This via ferrata had fixed safety lines along the whole thing, along with a huge amount of giant staples for hand and foot rails. We fashioned two slings to act as safety lines attached to our harnesses so we could easily transfer from one safely line to another as we climbed along.
After hanging around for a bit and having lunch we decided the weather probably wasn't going to clear any time soon, so we decided to try the via ferrata. It started with an articulated bridge.
Finally it cleared a bit and we got a better view of the crag. The zip line for the via ferrata can be seen here too.