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squiz Member Member#: 6644 Location: Registered: 27-05-2007 Diary Entries: 2882 |
12th March 2020 Hiking - Walking: Chartreuse d’Aillon to Chalets de Pre Gelaz Wind Direction: Wind Stength: Surf / Sea State: Air Temperature: Sea Temperature: Weather: sunny and warm Max Speed: Distance Covered: Thursday 12th March – Relax and walk **** Chartreuse d’Aillon to Chalets de Pre Gelaz - Sunny and warm clouding over late with rain at night. A good night in the van with Mag solving my cold feet problem from the night before with a hot water bottle:) We thought it was supposed to be a cloudy day but woke to the sun coming over the mountains in front of the van, blue skies and very mild too. Much too warm for skiing in these low-level resorts so it was lucky that today was supposed to be a rest day before attempting a snow shoe to the top hopefully tomorrow. Mag does her exercises out in the sunshine before walking up to the resort to recycle and to buy our friend Mary some postcards while I make the bed and start my exercise routine which seems to get longer and longer every day! We do have breakfast half way through my exercises then Mag has a bit of a van clear out before checking the news of the world on her phone. The corona virus is really becoming a serious problem, we must stick to our policy of avoiding human connect as much as possible!!! And we are running out of hand sanitiser but have a good supply of toilet roll, no panic buying here:) Our plan for the day was to have a bit of an explore to give the van a run as the batteries are getting a little low. Again, we had trouble with our campervan electric control box and Mag had to take some fuses out to get it working again. Perhaps we will have to contact Bilbos to see if they can sort it but it will probably be expensive! We head down the mountain to visit Margeriaz twin resort a few miles down the road. We even find a post box to post the two postcards I wrote days ago. The resorts official title is Aillons – Margeriaz - this one is 1000 and where we park is 1400. The lower one is very sad looking as it is closed due to lack of snow. The problem here is the resort is lower than Margeriaz so it loses its snow low down also there are less runs. The accommodation is here, whereas there is none up top. There is a real mix of old and not so nice new apartments! It is a dead end up here in the winter but there is a couple of small roads to explore. First, we go right along a lovely valley with the old farming hamlets of Panloup ending up in the very old Penon. This is the end of the road and we top up the van with water from an open trough. Then we go up to the other end of the village to Chartreuse d’Aillon where the road is blocked by a huge pile of snow to stop people driving up there. After a 23-point turn, I park by the snow pile and we go for a walk. We said we would walk up for half an hour then return to the van for lunch to save ourselves for tomorrow! The mountain road is tarmac and an easy slope up but then we reach the snow and the road is well covered, it must be mid-summer before these roads are open! We had passed several snow shoe signs but no walking signs saying where they lead??? But there was a well-trodden two footprint wide trail up the road. We are always intrigued by a snowy, bendy road so continued up into the forest and all the time we had the sound of fast running water from the stream alongside the road. I already had my shorts on but I was down to my t-shirt now on what was a really lovely warm day:) We reached a summer picnic spot with a car park but still no signs so continued up looking for a good spot to make our turning point. There were four walkers coming down but they didn’t seem very friendly so didn’t ask them what lay ahead. At last we came to a small bridge over the stream and a sign with places that didn’t mean a thing to us!!! We had seen an old barn a bit higher up that looked like it had some good views so we headed there. It turned out to be a ram shackle collection of buildings called the Chalets de Pre Gelaz with lovely views of the back of the mountains that are the view in front of the van where we park at Margeriaz 1400. There was a nice seat to take in the view and we wished we had packed a picnic but took a break anyway watching two wagtails on the tin roof. Then all we had to do was return, downhill all the way and we whizzed down being out longer than expected - two hours in all. It was a real pleasant surprise to find a nice walk but then again you don’t have to try too hard in the mountains to find somewhere lovely and quiet:) We then returned to the ski resort and made the lady in the souvenir shops day when we stopped to have a look, she even put the lights on especially. She had been weeding out the front - I don’t think you get many customers when it is closed due to lack of snow!!! It had clouded over now and we got the first drops of rain as we headed back to our spot in car park number two for a cuppa and cake. The rain is falling nicely now and it is supposed to be heavy all night with the temperature a balmy 10 degrees!!! Still I think the forecast is looking OK for our snow shoe adventure before we will probably move on as there is something on at the weekend with music apparently!!! Photo Gallery Here |
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