Where were we?
France. Still.
If you have any good ideas about how to make saying that more interesting, do let us know. We may need them….
Where should we have been?
When you left us last week, we were in Karakol, on the shores of Lake Issyk Kul in Kyrgyzstan. We spent a couple of beautiful and fascinating days there before continuing our journey east along the lake then curving north and west back into Kazakhstan. We were constantly stunned by the beauty of both countries. On the way to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s capital, we passed Burana Tower, the sole remnant of the ancient city of Balasagun. We arrived back in Almaty on Thursday and said a fond farewell to our trusty vehicle (and were very glad we hadn’t had to drive our own car up and over those mountains). Yesterday we packed up again and got back on the train for another epic journey. Our first stop is Novosibirsk, back in Russia, which we will reach tomorrow morning. We change trains there and get on to the “proper” Trans-Siberian. We will arrive in Irkutsk late on Monday night.
What did we really do?
Harriet finished the blanket she started in our third week here, having sent out a plea for wool and crochet hooks to friends in the UK. She’s rather pleased with the result but is debating what to do with it now.
Sophie and Aurora re-dyed their hair. One box each this time instead of sharing so the purple is, well, definitely purple.
Unwelcome beasties of the week were an army of ants that we discovered all over the kitchen on Monday. Because Harriet is (by 3 years) too old to be a Millennial, she failed entirely, when faced with a horrific scene, to whip out her phone and take their picture, so you will just have to imagine ants scurrying up and down the wall, on the work surface, in the kettle. One small sense of humour failure and the judicious application of a lot of ant powder and we have seen no further sight of them. Ben was, nonetheless, sent out for chemical reinforcements so should they decide to return we are prepared.
French lessons continued with Debbie, and on Wednesday we were joined by Riis, an American living in the village, who stayed for some stone painting afterwards.
Our new friends with twins have another great attraction – a flute – which, even better, they aren’t using. Sophie is delighted and her teacher has offered to give her some lessons over Zoom. Whether she will remain quite so delighted when she has to practice remains to be seen.
Our newly acquired rugby ball took an inevitable plummet over the edge of the terrace into the “snakey patch”. There are a lot of adders around this year and a bite can be very nasty so it was with some trepidation that Harriet (volunteered because she was wearing trousers) armed herself with a ski pole and attempted a daring, and pleasingly successful, rescue.
Thursday was Ascension Day which is a public holiday in France. We were invited to spend it with a former colleague of Ben’s in Grenoble. He and his family made us hugely welcome in their lovely flat and we enjoyed a delicious meal with them and some great chat.
When we arrived in Grenoble everything was very quiet (perhaps because everyone had headed for the hills: the number of people in the village and cars parked wherever possible en route was astonishing). After lunch we took a stroll around the streets where we felt both very strange – it was the first time we had been in a city since Vienna, ten weeks ago – and completely normal – there were now lots of people around, chatting and enjoying the sun, the parks and the river. Most shops were shut due to the holiday, but the ice cream parlours were clearly doing a roaring trade.
Poor old Magnus, having been utterly brilliant across 3,500 miles of Europe, was sick both ways on the winding mointain road. We’re taking him back to Grenoble on Monday. We might go the long way.
We were social on Friday too when our new British friends with twins (and the puppy) invited us round for a barbecue. Magnus and Sam spent about four hours shooting at each other. The girls were more interested in the puppy. And the rabbits.
Perhaps counter-intuitively (and due mostly to our busy social diary!) we have actually done fewer walks this week, but on Tuesday we took advantage of the deconfinement and the fact that the weather had improved after a week of rain to go on a massive walk. In fact it was a rather more massive walk than we had intended. We climbed up through forest and meadow to a pass, the Col des Ayes, where we had a sandwich lunch. There were lots of other walkers around and it was lovely to nod and exchange bonjours and bonne ballades.
From there we went up and over another pass, the Col de Pravouta. The wildflowers were even more stunning than we had seen before, with gentians, orchids (elder-leaved ones this time) and multicoloured forget-me-nots among the many we spotted (and have dotted around this blogpost)
From the second col our intention was to descend back to the village. However a combination of bad signage (very unusual round here where the directions on the signs are normally very reliable, even if the estimates of how long the walk should take are slightly less so), an over-excitable map app (yes there’s definitely a path there) and some blind optimism (well, it must go somewhere) saw us following a dead-end logging track for rather longer than we should have before turning back and retracing our steps.
The great consolation for this unscheduled six or so kilometre addition to our walk was spotting a chamois. None of us had ever seen one before and they are famously shy so this was a real privilege. He (or she, we didn’t ask) allowed us to stand within about 100m of him for a good five minutes before leaping up a vertiginous slope and disappearing into the trees.
In total, we walked, with honestly minimal complaining and mostly very good humour, for over 20 kilometres and up just under 1000m of vertical ascent. We’re calling it good training for Fuji. Even if it did take Harriet until Friday to stop walking as though heavily pregnant.
We had to dash in and out on our return to the house as we had been invited for drinks in the village with Alain, who is French but speaks English after 20 years in the States, Indira who is Kazakh (ironically where we should have been – so we looked at amazing photos instead) and their gorgeous little boy, who is ten months old. Social distancing clearly doesn’t apply to the under ones and we had lovely baby cuddles and giggles. Indira even put up with Harriet trying some of her execrable Russian on her.
Magnus had been angling for a ride on the pump track down the hill (French for pump track: le pump track). So on Friday we hired a bike for him and he and Ben headed off for a happy couple of hours of round and round and up and down.
Ben is now leading the Trivial Pursuit 14:9. Harriet is getting increasingly unamused.
Great excitement in the garden, where the peonies and poppies are out in full, eye-catching, breath-taking glory. More mundanely, the end of lockdown meant that we could get M. Zoé, the local handyman and proud owner of a strimmer to come and tackle the jungle around the gooseberry bush and apple tree.
On Friday morning, inspired by a list from the National Trust which had been shared as part of the children’s school work, we decided to get up to see the dawn. Everyone woke at 5.30 and, armed with hot chocolate and cookies, we headed out of the village to the nearest pass. There’s rather a time lag here between dawn and actual sunrise, due to all the mountains selfishly getting in the way so we hoped we might see more from there.
In the event we gave up before the sun got down into the valley where we were but the colours, sights and sounds were nonetheless astounding and were a real privilege to witness. Scroll to the bottom and click on our Instagram for a video of the dawn chorus….
How was it?
Good bits:
Aurora: Going to Grenoble and meeting new people. The barbecue was really fun! I really like their family they are all just really nice. 🙂 Going on the walk was quite fun but tiring. Finally getting up so I could go to the boulangerie. Seeing the Sunrise was so pretty.
Harriet: I am constantly aware of, and assaulted by, the beauty of where we are. Although I have been here many times in the 18 years I’ve known Ben, I’ve never seen Spring and early Summer and the change, the life and the sheer glory of the landscape are astounding. I am so grateful to be able to witness it.
Less-gushingly, I really enjoyed our day in Grenoble. Once again it was lovely to be social and to be made to feel so welcome.
The dawn chorus was astonishing. In fact the noisy-ness of nature generally is. I’m writing this mid-afternoon and between the wind and the crickets and the birds there’s a lot going on.
We’ve had some fun this week coming up with flight-of-fancy plans for the future. I can’t imagine that any of them will ever come to reality but it has been really nice to make plans, even of the cloud-castle variety.
Lucy: It has been lovely weather apart from today. I liked getting up for the sunrise, and baking yesterday with Mummy. The barbecue was great.
I also enjoyed the walk because it was lovely weather and I had a nice talk with Mummy. I also really liked building a house on multiplayer minecraft with Sophie, Aurora and Magnus.
Magnus: I liked the pump track and getting new shoes [Editor’s Note – Magnus went through his socks in his old walking shoes on the walk]. I also liked playing with the guns that Millie & Sam had, and playing on scooters with Luca in Grenoble.
Ben: Not a great surprise, but I absolutely loved our long walk, even the taking a wrong turn and walking further and seeing the chamois – it was bigger than I expected. It felt energising and I was very proud of those with shorter legs doing it too. I liked being fit enough to jog back to get the car (which definitely would not have been the case before this adventure). I’m planning the next trips in my head.
The exit from lockdown continues to make all the sociable interactions feel more precious than normal. I haven’t seen Piero and Aurélie for over a decade, and I loved our day with them. Our children bonding despite very little in the way of shared language (TikTok and Star Wars) was lovely. We have had good conversations with friends at home too.
The dawn raid was memorable, particularly for the birdsong, and I’m glad we did it.
Sophie: It was my turn to go to the supermarket on Monday, and that was fun. I also liked having a rest day after our walk, and I really enjoyed the sunrise, although I did get a bit cold. I’m excited that the pool people are coming next week. The view from the top of the walk was very pretty. I’m really happy that I have a flute to play. It was good meeting more English speakers too.
Bad bits:
Magnus: I hated the walk that we went on when my feet got sore, and the dog that Millie and Sam had. I didn’t like the drive to Grenoble.
Sophie: Sunburnt shoulders are sore. I got too hot and tired on our walk.
Ben: The screen on my iPod, bought just before this trip, has buckled, which is a peeve. More significantly, our (mainly Harriet’s to be fair) battles with our Russian Train fixers about the refund they promised us are a pain. Driving to and from Grenoble against the hordes of mountain day trippers was not great fun, but probably worse for the cyclists on the road – there were some crazy drivers out there – and for poor Magnus.
I’ve been trying to work out how to think about our planned trip within this bizarre situation, and I’m not sure how to do it. There is a significant possibility that we won’t be able to go anywhere further than here, but there is also the possibility that we will be able to experience some of the places we were hoping to get to before our planned return home in August. It’s a given that the world is and will not be anything like what we expected; wherever we go will be weird, and when we go home it will be weird there too. Given that, how should I act / think / plan?
Day to day, we can enjoy the “current situation on the trip” (with lovely things, but not the lovely things we planned for) though this is blended with “waiting for future trip” (with the distinct possibility that some or all of the trip we planned will not occur) and a little more wondering about the “beyond-trip future” is creeping in too. I had made a point of not going too near this last one, but given the situation, how much priority should I give to each of them? Perhaps I should be thinking more, and living more, as if this is as far as we are going to get.
In terms of priority, I think the only thing I can do is control what I can control, and make myself aware of the significant things I cannot control. I’m not sure I’m getting this right at the moment, probably because I’m spending/wasting too much time on my phone.
Aurora: Not having Duplo A. Bickering with everyone. Getting Duplo S taken away. Getting TikTok taken off my phone. (Editor: she now has it back)
Lucy: The dog had an annoying obsession with my flip flops. I sometimes find it difficult when Mummy and Daddy have French friends and I don’t know what they’re talking about.
I am missing my violin, and have been since Brussels, but more and more. I didn’t think I would as much.
Harriet: More of the same really: the sadness of “What if“. Of “Would have, should have, could have“. It is generally me who writes the “Where should we have been” section and I am finding that increasingly demoralising and depressing. I am aware that when we got here the aim was to be out by April. Then it was Lucy’s birthday. Then Magnus’. We are now talking about our anniversary and mid-Summer. How long will it be before we are forced to conclude that this is as far as we will get?
How are the tadpoles?
Erm. Not sure. We suspect they are not enjoying the beautiful weather we’ve had this week as much as we are. The water in both the bird bath and the outside sink has gone murky and we are no longer seeing tadpoles on the surface.
On Monday the water was scummy and in one of the bird bath sections a number of them were dead.
But there clearly are survivors as every now and then you see one come to the surface. Our best guess is that they are hiding at the bottom away from the horrid sun.
It’s raining now though so hopefully they’ll enjoy that.
What did we eat?
With crochet-free time on her hands, Harriet found herself doing more baking this week. So we’ve had millionaires shortbread, brownies and speculoos biscuits (keeping that Amsterdam feeling going).
We were also treated to meals out this week. Not out out, clearly, but in other people’s houses and made by them. We didn’t take photos, because that would be weird, but we had a delicious meal in Grenoble and a fabulous barbecue last night with our twinny neighbours. Magnus was in heaven (apart from being terrified by a 12 week old puppy of course).
What’s next?
As was the case last week, and last month, until a) countries reopen their borders to foreign travellers and b) the Foreign Office lifts its advice against all foreign travel, we remain where we are. Not giving up hope. Or trying not to.
