After another good night’s kip, roused only by somebody making with a petrol strimmer at 7am, we headed away from Champex-Lac and onwards to Verbier.

Last night was enjoyable tho, a swift stroll by the lake after a positively riotous evening meal sharing a table with 2 British couples. A doctor was singing Nellie the Elephant to illustrate proper CPR technique, that song is forever tainted now..

Our modes varied slightly because I’m on holiday, rather than a mission, so I took the bus, train and cable car along the valley instead.

I got chatting to a couple of guys from North Carolina, they were roughly following Kev’s C-Z route, but with a couple of approximations made by the company they contracted with to handle all the arrangements. I thought 31 C was 10 degrees too hot to do anything, they thought it was pleasantly cool. Different idea of normal I guess.

It was more than a bit novel to be the expert French speaker in the group! Their idea of the cable car up from La Chable was a pleasant finish, only a couple of Francs more than the bus. Then i promptly got us lost leaving the telecabane station.

My mission for the day was finding us somewhere reasonable to stay, it’s still quiet – medium season in Verbier so I had the pick of 2 or 3 places within budget. So I’m typing this from my private balcony over looking le place centrale over the third ice tea of the day. Holiday much?

much of the town is under construction, lots of big lorries and cement mixers feeding the many hungry big cranes.
Found a family pharmacy for a throat spray and joy of joys, they stocked Fisherman’s Friends and the kindly man spoke great English, tho I amused what I’m guessing was their daughter with my broken french and glee at finding yeehar strength mint tablets.

I perplexed half the town’s sports and shoe shops looking for size 50 insoles, mostly not available until ski season, tho I did fine a pair of size 50 boots on sale. “Le Cinqante?!” *surprise and bafflement*

I also finished devouring the novel I brought along for the ride, so that’ll get posted home in a bit, dead weight ftl.

tomorrow is the start of the real mountain leg of the holiday, the point of the exercise as it were. Up to 2600m at Col Terman and sleeping at 2200m at Lac de Louvie. Up close and personal with the mountains. Could be interesting or it could be seriously annoying if the promised thunderstorm hits.

I can’t promise much phone signal until Grimentz in a week’s time, but I’ve ceased being surprised where Swisscom put cells..

‘Meep’ went the 4 legged alarm clock. 5am.. Wait, what? So began what I’m hoping will be a 3 week epic holiday in the Swiss Alps.

LBA’s baggage belts were broken, so there was more than no pandemonium as Jet2 tried to get three 7am flights sent off at once.

Still, we got to Geneva 10mins early and wandered off to stock up on noms from the Migros. The nice people running ChamExpress(.com) managed to fit us in a minibus an hour early, I can thoroughly recommend their service.

Paused in Chamonix for an hour to take the obligatory photos and an ice cream before letting the train take the strain up to our home for the next two nights, Belle Vue Alpine Lodge.

The sun was scorchio down in the valley, but there’s a gorgeous cooling breeze here, probably about 20ish degrees, which perfectly matched a cool bottle of wheat beer from Brasserie Du Mont Blanc ‘La Blanche’.

oh, and Mountains!

I’ve finally persuaded my much maligned N97 to free up enough “C:” space to install the Nokia Wordpress> app, well alright, the ginormous Qt library. It’s far from ideal, but should hugely cut down on the ol’ mobile gprs bills, especially for quick postcards. In fact, it’s crashed and lost this post 3 times so far. Ho hum

Another of the small recipes I picked up from this year’s NEC show is from Alys Fowler. Apparently if you pack some apples in elderflowers for a month, they come out tasting like pineapples. Knowing my luck they’ll turn out tasting of pollen beetle, but I’ll let you know how I get on

Alys Fowler

I picked up a couple of cheap pineapples from the supermarket, which was a good excuse to restock my jam supplies. It’s also nice to spread the bounty around a bit, it can make a fun, if horribly sweet, gift. It’s pictured here with some olive oil and herb foccacia bread I made.

The garden is showing some positive signs too, although more water would be nice. My pineapple guava plants are putting on lots of new growth, albeit from the bottom rather than the top, so it’s more hedging than a goblet shape at the moment. I’m hoping it will eventually flower like the professionally grown ones, here’s one I spotted at the NEC:

Pineapple Guava

I suspect that hoping for Yorkshire guavas is a touch optimistic though

The sweet peas are making steady progress up their supports and the garden peas are starting to swell nicely. Some of the tomato plants are looking very green and healthy, though the uneven watering has encouraged my spinach and cabbages to bolt like the oil seed rape in the field next door. Maybe next year I’ll find some seeds for this fun looking spinach variety:

Mexican tree spinach