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squiz
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Member#: 6644 Location: Registered: 27-05-2007 Diary Entries: 3081
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24th September 2015
Windsurfing: Lac de Montynard Wind Direction: Wind Stength: 15/20 Surf / Sea State: lumpy Air Temperature: 20 Sea Temperature: Weather: sunny Max Speed: 26.78 (knots - unless stated otherwise) Distance Covered: 14 (Nautical Miles - unless stated otherwise)
Wednesday 23rd September – sightsee and travel – cloudy with rain
showers :(
Very grey start but still able to do exercises outside on the river bank.
Packed up and drove across the hillside to a excellent cascade at Glandieu.
We didn’t even have to get out of the car as it was in the main street!
We did though and took some photos. Drove on to the memorial museum to the
44 children of Izieu. The Maison Izieu was a place where Jewish children
were hidden in the war but on 6th April 1944 the Gestapo arrived and nearly
all were murdered in Auschwitz ten days later. It was a beautiful place
and very poignant. There were two exhibitions, one was very new and no
translations were available but the actual house had a booklet in English
giving explanations. The stories were both lovely and very sad/appalling.
To see a photo of each child in one of the rooms with their dates of birth
and death was heartbreaking and the only thing to think is that they all
had a happy time in Izieu and are all smiling and looking very cheeky in
their photographs. There were also lots of their drawings and it seemed
ironic that these flimsy pieces of paper survived while the children
didn’t. One of the interactive tables in the new exhibition was
brilliant and by touching the glass table top you could track the history
and timeline of the few survivors with photos of some of them up to the
present day. The lady who set up and ran the home had realised their time
was limited and was away looking for homes to hide the children in when the
Gestapo arrived and therefore survived to give evidence at the trial of
Klaus Barbie in 1987 and died in 1996. Sadly her husband didn’t survive.
We bought an English book in the shop to get more information and more can
be found at
Izieu info here
We drove down to a port on a wide stretch of the Rhone which you could see
from the house and had our lunch there. Drove on to Lac Peladru hoping for
an overnight spot but no access – only private houses and camp sites.
Pretty though. On to places we have been before on our skiing tours,
through stunning Chartreuse mountain scenery, gorges and roads only just
hugging onto the side of cliffs! We returned to St. Pierre de Chartreuse
where we skied last year and knew we could park out of the way. The
weather has been pretty pants today, dull and wet at times :( but the
forecast says that apparently it is looking better for the next couple of
days:)
Thursday 24th September – bike ***** Mountain top at La Scia to Grenoble
– sunny – 31.28kts-24.20 n/mile-17miles
Windsurf **** Lac de
Montynard – 26.78 kts max-25.80 ave-25.6km-18.17kt. Alpha, 18.44n/mile
including 3 gybes! F2 xantos 133, Tushingham Lightning 7.8, 38 cm fin.
Good night in the van at the ski station at St-Pierre-de-Chartreuse (skied
here last year) but the cold I had started last night was in full flow this
morning :( and it was only 5 degrees in the van and got colder before the
sun broke over the mountain! Still it was a beautiful day with hardly a
cloud in the sky:) makes all the difference would be no fun in the
mountains in the rain. We were lying in bed reading when an army truck
rocked up, 11 solders got their back packs on and headed up the mountain!
It was too chilly and wet on the ground to do our exercises so after
breakfast we headed down the mountain but hadn’t got far when we saw a
sign to La Scia – a small yellow hotel at the top of the ski resort so
headed up the long and winding road – steep too –to the top of the
cable car where the road turned from tarmac to forestry track! We were not
sure whether to carry on but some lovely teenagers out on an orienteering
school trip asked us if where we were going and said we could drive on the
track to the top and what an adventure that was! We made it safely to the
top of the world and parked right behind the yellow hotel, it was then a
short scramble up to the wooden flying man where we had a picnic while out
skiing last time. He was looking a bit worse for wear and badly needed a
coat of paint. The path continued for another 15 mins to the Bec La Scia,
it was a climb up a steep rocky path made slippery from a light covering of
snow yesterday! But it was worth it because when we got to the table of
Orientation at the top the views were absolutely stunning :) Making it
safely back to the van I asked Mag if she would mind driving down so I
could bike? She is a star and said yes! So I unloaded the bike. The plan
was to just cycle down the track – a green run we have skied - but I saw
3 VTT (mountain bike tracks) starting near the hotel so went for the blue
as I didn’t fancy the red or black and was glad I did as the blue was
steep and very muddy with lots of sharp turns – I only came off once but
got me and the bike covered in mud! I met the road again and decided to go
down there as I was not sure where Mag, in the back- up vehicle was? I
could go faster when the road turned back to tarmac but I let the post lady
past! When I reached the main road at the bottom there was no sign of Mag
but she soon appeared from the village of St-Pierre - she must have flown
down! I decided to continue biking down to the lovely
St-Pierre-de-Chartreuse where we bought a top loaf. I said to Mag I would
carry on biking as long as it was downhill but a few miles short of the Col
de Porte the road headed up, it was at this point I saw a white bum – a
Ringed Ousel:) I then cadged a lift for a few miles off Mag – up hill
biking is no fun! Got out at the Col and then headed down all the way to
Grenoble reaching nearly 40mph with fantastic views of the city and snowy
peaks covering 17 miles! I stopped just short of the river loaded the bike
in the back of the van and headed for Lac de Monteynard where we have been
heading ever since leaving Calais. We only went down the motorway the wrong
way for one stop before turning and finding our way to Treffort where we
got our first views of the long narrow Lac De Monteynard and what a
fantastic colour blue it was and there were loads of kites and windsurfers
whizzing across. We thought parking was going to be a problem but we drove
to the Base Nautique at Salette and you could park for the first hour free
then it was 10 euros a day including a night for a campervan so we found a
lovely spot at the end of the car park and it was headless chicken time as
I had to get out on the water as fast as possible! It didn’t matter that
I had had nothing to eat since breakfast and the cold was all but
forgotten! Rig choice was a bit of guess work as the wind, which is a
feature of the Lac, funnels down from left to right and is always going to
be gusty. With wind to over 20mph I was going to rig 7m but went for 7.8 in
the end and it was fine, I took my board down to the water’s edge which
was steep with large stones and when I returned with my sail my board had
nearly blown into the water! That’s yet another hole in my poor old
lightweight F2 Zantos! Will have look for another on ebay when I get home,
I got off the bank ok and was out a couple of hours blasting back and forth
across the narrow Lac – definitely good for gybing practice. It was all a
bit surreal windsurfing in a bright blue Lac surrounded by mountains! I
beat up to the next beach towards the dam and tried some fast broad reaches
in the gusts but not that fast as the Lac is a bit lumpy. Great to be out
with loads of kites and boards! I think the Lac is best suited to kiting
especially boards with hydrofoils which can plane all the time, can sail
really fast broad and then beat back about 20 degrees higher than a
windsurfer and it must be a great feeling going full tilt 2 feet off the
water! Knackered and hungry I decided to call it a day and returned to the
van for some of that top bread at 5 o clock! Refreshed I then had to load
boards and bike on the van and as usual the top box was a pain to shut! Mag
and I then had a wander searching for a bike map for tomorrow as there is a
route which includes two Himalayan bridges! I got a bike map just before
the info centre closed and the bike route looks mega – that’s
tomorrow’s activity sorted – fingers crossed for some more sunshine!
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