Advertisement
Published: April 22nd 2006
Edit Blog Post
I've now been in Annecy for another week and a bit, and things are still going well. It was a bank holiday weekend last weekend, so I had the Monday off from language school which meant a nice 3 day weekend to enjoy myself. My host family were all away for the weekend at their grand-parents 50th wedding anniversary so I was in the house myself. Although that meant I didn't get to practice my French as much, it did mean I got to watch BBC Prime in the evenings - although after the 3rd episode of Fawlty Towers I gave it up as a bad thing.
Anyway, on the Sunday I went up the nearest mountain called 'cret de chatillion' on the map but which everyone calls 'Semoz'. I started at 11 (hehe - its great going climbing when Sceats isn't waking you up at 6 in the morning shouting WOOOO-OOOOHHH until you want to beat him to death) ans there was supposed to be another guy (Dan from my class) coming with me, but he decided that the fact it was pouring outside was a reasonable excuse to stay in the valley for the day.
Now, as
most of you know, a good walk in the rain is at the top of the list of things I enjoy doing - and given that Smiffers or Sceats weren't there to put me off this time - I decided to head off anyway. I started at 450m and was going for 1700 (well 1699m to be precise) and it was about 10 or 12 miles (16/19km for those metric types) to get there through a load of 'well sign-posted' forest paths. So, the first half of the ascent was pretty nice - the rain stopped, the sun came out, the views were good, and I didn't get lost. However, after I got above 1200m there was snow everywhere and half the time I was breaking trail through snow that came up to my thighs. Needless to say, I started to slow down and had a couple of km doing no more than 1km an hour. The other difficult thing was that since there was snow everywhere it meant it wasn't always possible to follow the path so I managed to take a different track for a while (wouldn't like to say I was lost...). Was quite amusing really, I
have an altimeter on my watch and was thinking for half an hour how funny it was that it could have got the height so wrong...then I realised it was right and I needed to figure out where I was...
Which, through sheer genius (and large amounts of luck) I did and was soon on my way up the hill again - made it to the top about 4:30 and enjoyed the view. It's the top of a ski resort and the views are amazing - you can see for miles around. Unfortunately it was a little cloudy so my camera hasn't captured the views as well as it could have. Anyway, there's also a road that goes within 100m of th top of the hill so there were loads of Sunday day-trippers stolling about making me look like a bit of a freak in my full hiking gear. And by that stage, making me think I could have just taken a bus instead of wading through thigh deep snow! Still, as with all civilised European mountains there was a coffee shop at the top so was able to recharge and set-off back home again. Only took me 2.5
hours to get back as I took the road for the first half avoiding the snow before rejoining the forest path. Got back exhausted but had a really good day - its really liberating being up in the hills by yourself enjoying the outdoors, with only yourself to rely on - might be tempted to try one of the long French Grand Randonnee routes this summer...
I took it easy on the Monday - did a bit of studying, played some football and frisbee int he park (weather was excellent) and went round to Dan's for dinner and wine, with a Canadian guy from the class (Duncan). Had all sorts of 'local' foods - strong cheeses, seafood pate, seafood melange, scallops etc. All very tasty (apart from the reblochon - bit strong for my cheddar palate) but all really heavy food. Anyway, Dan ate more seafood than us and he hasn't turned up to class since which is a little worrying...
I've got another class in just over an hour, so will have to head off soon. Takes me about 40 minutes to walk down to the college which is really nice - beats getting on the tube or the bus every morning to say the least... And, the weather has been really good for the last 5 days in a row so the farmer's tan is coming along nicely! The classes are getting a bit harder now as we are doing loads of verb conjugations, and studying French grammar - like when to use que or qui, autant or aussi, un, une, des or le, la, les - frankly if I get the verbs and nouns vaguely right I'm usually quite happy, never mind stringing together a grammatically correct sentence! Oh yeah - I actaully know what verbs, adverbs, adjectives and nouns are now, which at 27 is probably a little later than most, but I'm taking it as a major life achievement...
Another major achievement is that when I ask French people questions in French some now respond in French rather than immediately switching to English. Which would be great if I could understand what they were saying...still one step at a time...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.036s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0175s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb