winter sun

I'm writing this in dripping Bradford on Avon. It's raining steadily and the catkins on the hazel I see from my bedroom window are blowing around in the wind. Iris, crocus, primrose, cyclamen, pulmonaria and snow drops are injecting colour into the awakening garden. As February draws to a close it feels as though we are turning a corner: spring is here.

So I do a reality check - and look at the weather in Grenoble. It's around zero and there is fresh snow in the resorts where the ski season will continue for another 2 months. Good and bad news. This year I was reluctant to embrace winter, returning from the Chilean summer in early January with no appetite for the outdoors. Most weekends have been low-key, a hibernation of eating and sleeping (and soul searching). But with two exceptions: a day walk to Lac Lauvitel, which Juan and I know well from summer walks but had never visited in winter. After a recent, but small, snowfall it was walkable in a way that might not usually have been possible in such a deep, avalanche-prone valley; the views of the lake ethereally beautiful.

A few weeks later I had a sublime day skiing at the Alpe du Grand Serre with Juan...

  

... followed a few days later by a night in an auberge near La Jarjatte, in the Haut Buëch valley with my cousin Cinda:

Again, the terrain was familiar from summer visits, when Juan and I have walked up to the surrounding cols. In winter the access roads are transformed into a cross-country skiing area; the meadows hidden beneath half a metre of snow. We were lucky - at this altitude snow can come and go.

Just for the record, I took this photo a month or so ago up at Laffrey lake, one dank Saturday when walking wasn't an option. In summer this is a favourite swimming spot:

So there have been some magical moments this winter. And maybe a few more before the snow recedes and the alpine summer arrives in all its glory.