Leaving Chamonix

After a very happy few months in Chamonix, the time had come to leave for our new life in the Pyrénée.
So we packed everything up

Baked some food for the journey and the first days in our new home

And left Chamonix behind.

It was a strange and sad moment. We will be back sometime to pick up the rest of the stuff, but we don't know when or if we will spend and extended amount of time here again. We have been coming here for about 9 years and had the most fantastic times both summer and winter, with friends and on our own. It felt much more of a wrench to leave than leaving London.

Bye bye Chamonix - we love you!!

You can now follow us on our new blog 'La vie à la petite ferme'

Trip to Aosta

We took a trip through the Mont Blanc tunnel to Aosta for lunch.
Here is a picture of Martha (yes the car has a name) on the way

It was a bit damp but we had a nice wander round

Aosta has a lot of fab shops. When we have been before I haven't been shopping because Doug doesn't have the patience. Now I can see what they are selling wouldn't be totally practical for our new life... feeding the pigs in this dress?

More wind damage

We went out for a walk up the valley and discovered that the mess caused by the wind in our garden was quite mild compared to some other places.

Trees blown over near Le Bois

In the woods hundreds and hundreds of trees have fallen.

Doug playing with fallen trees

A number of trees landed on houses, but we saw quite a few who had been lucky like us and had near misses.
Various roofs have been blown clean off

Firemen removing the remains of a roof

It seems that Chamonix was particularly hard hit by the wind for some reason.

A bit of wind...

It was windy yesterday, so much so that the ski area was closed all day.
Over night it got much stronger, it felt like the building was going to blow away along with all the surrounding trees. We didn't get much sleep.
The building survived (mostly although there seem to be a few bits of roof around - not sure if they are ours or not) but some of the trees suffered.
This is one directly outside our window. We heard it fall, it could easily have been our balcony it is now resting on.

View from our balcony

This is from a few days ago, it is the closest one which has fallen.

This one is also outside our window, just to the right, also could have been on our balcony if it had fallen differently.

Our window is middle of the top row on the building

We were a bit worried this one was going to have landed on the car when we saw it out the window but actually missed by a good way.

I was wondering yesterday how I could get a photo of the wind so I could blog about it, as it was very impressive even before it got stronger over night. The trees on the side of the hill were blowing around so much that they looked like a wheat field waving in the wind but it wasn't going to come out on a photo...

Did you notice the beard?

Last of the snow?

Sorry to keep banging on about the snow, but we keep thinking there can't possibly be any more and spring is going to set in again... and then there is more.
We went up the Grands Montets ski area today. A lot of the lifts were closed because of wind high up but there weren't many people.
We weren't on literally the first lift, but close on the eighth or ninth.

We arrived at the start of several runs to the lovely view of fresh fresh fresh snow waiting just for us

We shredded it up good!!

 

And we were very happy!

Wildlife near the flat

We went for a little walk near the flat the other day and saw this goat thing (chamois?). It disappeared in to the wood straight after I took this photo. Then a little bit later we heard a rumbling, clattering, rock falling noise above the path and it (or perhaps a different one) fired across at super high speed. The slope was really steep, not sure how it was planning on stopping.