Day 113: The quick brown fox...

Thankfully, today dawned bright and clear, with no new snow – I know because we were up before dawn cleaning the house and packing. With the sun up, I went out and cleared the stone front steps of a thin but potentially lethal layer of completely transparent ice, cleared the driveway of a very thick layer of snow and then began trudging back and forth between car and house laden down with stuff that I needed to find a home for in the car.

When the house was almost clean and the car almost packed, Kate and the girls dove to the supermarket to try to get some fresh bread for our generous hosts, while I walked Bella down the hill to the house of the generous couple who had helped us get up the hill on the previous very snowy day on which we first arrived at Le Mont Pèlerin to give them a bottle of wine and say thank you – something we really should have done ages ago. Unfortunately, the supermarket was shut (it's a Sunday), and the couple was out.

Finally, around 2pm, we were ready to go, so we put Bella in her cage, gave the cats one last goodbye pat and hit the road, heading down the hill towards Lausanne. After a while, the road started heading upwards, and before too long, we reached the border with France. Before crossing over, we stopped at a petrol station to blow the last of our Swiss francs on crisps and Coke, and then, without any border-related formalities whatsoever, we were in France.

The snow that had fallen on us over the past day or so had also fallen here, and we had a very pretty drive through snowy fields and forests, thankfully along a completely clear road. Eventually, however, we dropped down out of the mountains and the snow disappeared. We needed some cash to pay for tonight's accommodation, so we stopped in the little town of Poligny. Although we had only intended to visit a cash machine, once we were out of the car (into the freezing cold), we noticed that there was a little bar/restaurant open, so, cash duly pocketed, we went in for a coffee and a hot chocolate – and entered a microcosm of all that I love about France. The waiter was very friendly, the coffee was good and cheap, and the restaurant, which was surprisingly busy for a cold Sunday afternoon, exuded a wonderful communal atmosphere, customers and staff greeting each other as they entered. 

Suitably re-energised, we then hopped back into the car and headed for our house. Before too long, it was dark, and we had now left the highways, but there was a lot of Roman activity around this region back in the day, so the roads were reassuringly straight. At one point, a beautiful big fluffy fox ran across the road in front of us – close enough to see clearly but far enough away not to require a panicked slamming on of the brakes.

Then, finally, we reached our destination – the tiny village of Boudreville, right up in the north of Burgundy - and drove up a narrow lane by the church to our house for the next few days. We parked the car, crunched our way across the frost-covered grass and let ourselves into the little stone cottage, which, thankfully already had the heaters on.

Day 112: Drifting home

It snowed pretty much all night last night and all through the day – there must be at least a foot of snow on the ground now. In the afternoon, we went out with Bella for one last walk in the forest. We did all the requisite snow things – had snowball fights, made snow angels – and then Kate and Zoe headed back after doing the small forest loop, while Sarah and I continued on to the snowshoe trail with Bella. The snow was pretty deep in places – up to my knees at times - and poor old Bella gathered quite a collection of ice balls in her fur. It stopped snowing briefly at one point, but by the time we reached the road back down the mountain, it had started again. It was getting on towards dusk by then, so we stopped stopping to admire the scenery and just concentrated on getting home before dark - a feat we eventually achieved, albeit significantly colder and wetter than we were when we left. 

Day 111: Here comes the snow again

We're due to leave Switzerland in a few days, so naturally, after several weeks of sunshine and warmth, this evening it started to snow... and snow... and snow - big, fat flakes and lots and lots of them. After everyone else had gone to bed, I donned coat, hat and gloves and headed out into the continuing blizzard to see what I could see...

Day 110: Hot-footing it to the chateau

Envigorated by our trip to Gruyères, today we drove down the mountain to Chateau de Chillon, near Montreux. The castle, which is located on the shore of Lake Geneva, is apparently a conglomeration of numerous independent buildings and dates back to at least the 12^th century. We're too cheap to pay to go inside, but we had a good look at the outside and then headed along the path that rings the lake towards Montreux.

Kate and I have passed by the chateau numerous times on the train on the way to Dorrie's, so it was slightly surreal to be walking along seeing everything from the other side of the tracks. Unsurprisingly, the path beside the lake is bordered on the other side by some very large, very impressive and undoubtedly very expensive houses, many with their own sweet little adjacent piers and moorings. The lake itself was populated by quite a large number of exotic-looking ducks and grebes. 

 

We eventually made it to Montreaux itself, where we bought some savoury pastries from a supermarket and then walked back down to the lake to eat them. As it was so cold when we left the house, Kate had let the girls wear their Ugg boots, but Zoe had spent the latter half of the walk complaining of hot feet. There was a little beach close to the chateau, so when we made it back there, Kate made Zoe take off her Uggs and have a paddle. Suffice to say she no longer complained of hot feet (which is not to say that she stopped complaining...).

 

Day 108: Going loopy

It was a bright, sunny day today, which, you may have noticed by now, was the cue for us to go for a big walk. The snowshoe trail is actually two loops, one n top of the other like a flattened figure of eight, and today we headed off on a different branch to see where it took us. After walking through some lovely forest, we dropped downhill and came out into fields dotted with farmhouses. I don't think we really intended to walk the whole loop, but as we didn't really feel like turning around and retracing our steps up the hill, we just kept on walking. 

With the sun out, we all started to get quite warm and began shedding layers as the trail started to take us uphill again. However, we've had a little bit of snow over the past few days and it has been cold enough for some of it to stick around in the shady areas, and before long we were putting the layers back on again as we crunched over some of that snow.

Eventually we came to a bit of the trail that we recognised and before too much longer we were back home – about three hours after we set out. We had clearly worn Bella out as she spent most of the rest of the day crashed out on the couch.