rural pursuits 2: completing the big prune

My hysteria has subsided and I am grateful to Juan for providing a "solution" to the car park maintenance debacle. The course of action already determined by the neighbour's chain-sawing, it was just a question of truncating the remaining branches as high as possible. So, this morning, Juan risked life and limb at the top of what looks like a telegraph pole but is in fact the diminished tree (see 12 Jan entry).

last moments for maple "Saccharinum Wieri"

Neighbour Matthieu still took the line that all trees benefit from this massive kick up the butt ("Look at the trees in the forest, they're full of dead wood because they haven't been pruned"). I refrained from comment but am relieved that, once again, we all seem to be interacting like normal human beings.

rural pursuits 1: basket making

The alternative to outdoor challenges in dubious weather and mediocre snow is this, gentler, sociable, community-enriching activity. Hosted by the Pommart farm (where I did my shiatsu workshops in the autumn), with expertise from a local artisan and locally collected willow, basket creation took place over two (very long!) evenings.

Heinz (talented craft carpenter, shiatsu pal, bread maker and agriculteur) chose a challenging project: copying the log basket I bought recently (back right of photo below)...

wrestling with the plait was a two-man job

At the end of the two evenings: my first-ever basket – and I'm thrilled...

a much-needed blast of fresh air: Crête du Brouffier

Sanity was restored by this walk, which took us from our ridiculously warm valley to a kind of winter.
Snow, predicted this week, may restore "normality" but, for now, it looks and feels like April or May...

culture clash?

The year has started badly – I have offended several people for reasons that perhaps come down to a difference in the way the French and English look at the world. Well, either that or I am a very, very bad person.

On Monday I arrived home to find the acer in the car park, co-owned by ourselves and two neighbours, "pruned" (more like felled) to within an inch of its life (it's now around half its initial height). Wildly emotional, I totally phased poor Pascal (he of the unscheduled taxi trip to Chambéry) who had simply been trying to do his best, without the expense of professional intervention. Doing us all a favour, in fact.

The tree is within half a metre of our garden, providing a much-valued screen between us and the road, so it is above all Juan and I who will be impacted by the action. The neighbours see it as routine maintenance. "Growing naturally" isn't considered an option. In company with most French people, their style of gardening is characterised by a strong desire to control. At this time of year the air is alive with the buzz of chain saws amputating limbs old and young. Lock up your daughters...

But in the aftermath of my outburst I feel only regret. Nothing is worse than falling out with the neighbours – I will have to think how to make good the damage.

Control reared its ugly head at Berlitz, too. The facts: on 19 December I agreed with a student that I would phone him if I could get to the centre a little early, knowing that an earlier lesson time would suit us both. For reasons too complicated to relate (I had forgotten that Berlitz might schedule a "unit" with another teacher before mine) it ended up with him arriving late, and several people very confused. But no lasting harm was done.

The reaction in the Lyon office was off the scale, however. I had the Director yelling at me down the phone. I tried to right the wrong – cancelling my evening plans, working unpaid extra time, and sending an apology. But I had set in motion an unstoppable juggernaut. Sure enough, Tuesday this week I had a visitation and a very painful rapping of the knuckles in the form of a formal warning. My basic transgression (contacting a student) is incontestable. But the document was a mass of additional half-truths and mis-representations. I couldn't recognise myself in the exaggerated picture drawn.

Is this a cultural issue or am I simply insensitive to privacy issues? Even with all my humble apologising I can't take my "crime" seriously. Big bloody deal if I contacted a student! But it is a big deal here in France. People don't give out personal details willy nilly. And Berltiz, shocked as they were that I could do something no one in Berlitz has ever done (really? - ed), can't see that it's especially difficult for me to take to heart the "no student contact" rule: in another life, after all, I am a shiatsu practitioner, cheerfully opening my shop window and revealing intimate details, like my phone number. So I just thought I was breaking a silly little rule. Mais non. The foundation of the Berlitz empire has been shaken. And woe to those who don't take that seriously.

the quietest New Year ever?

We could have fêted with friends - but wriggled out of a French celebration, choosing our own company and a simple paella washed down ("Viking!" says Juan) with a bottle of bubbly. I was in bed by 9.30, and Juan by 11.00. (Next year will someone rescue us from this slippery slope?!)

The morning of the 1st we had our local ridge walk almost to ourselves. The sub-zero temperatures of Christmas have been replaced by a balmy, deceptively spring-like climate; deep snow by squelchy mud and gaiters.

The mild, sunny weather continued until the day we had planned to return to the mountains. A forecast of rain put paid to that plan and we have been mooching around chez nous. Highlights have included repairing Juan's jeans, re-oiling the kitchen work surfaces, weeding (yes), eating more puddings than are good for someone of my expanding girth - and going to see the remake of "Belle and Sebastian", where we had fun identifying many of the Alpine locations and I ended up weirdly moved. (It was forty-four years ago that the original was screened in the UK.)

white Christmas 2013

We're just back from a Christmas like no other (see http://blur.by/1d13BGL for full version).
Determined to get some use from Juan's rando skis (virgin-new since last year), and "make or break" me, I had booked us onto a 5-day ski-touring holiday in the Queyras. Situated on the Italian border a hour south of Briançon, it's a favourite area for us but we haven't been there since Juan's move to CH has curtailed our weekend trips to within-easy-range-of-Grenoble. The Christmas break was the perfect opportunity to renew contact.

Before leaving Vaulnaveys I had worked myself into a lather of anxiety about where and what skis to hire (I wear the rando thing with considerable psychological baggage – my history with ski touring complicated!). So I would like to note here what a waste of energy that was. Albeit with ample protection, the kit hired from the guide was absolutely fine. The issue became how I was going to survive five days of 900 m ascents with a UCPA group where the max age was supposed to be 39 (!), with ski technique/level of fitness on the edge of what was required.

Day 1 started well...

regrouping at the hamlet of Valpreveyre – Bric Bouchet gleams in the background

so far so good...

... but I found the climb up to the Col d'Urine punishing and I started to trail...

looking down from Col d'Urine to the Po valley

The wind-blasted Col wasn't a place to linger. The descent then separated the sheep from the lambs. Jean-Philippe Cherbonnier is an ace guide: patient, reassuring, funny... But his "Don't worry, follow in my tracks" only lasted as long as his inclination to look after the problem child that was Rebecca. Far behind the rest of the group there was no one to help me when I fell into a stream and my skis were instantly iced up. And the steep slalom through closely spaced larch forest – a game for youth who had skied since the age of three – was a murderous obstacle course for me.

It was clear I wasn't going to make Day 2. And that was fine. After doing the beacon-rescue exercise...

... I nursed my sinusitis in the safety of the valley while Juan walked up high once again:

... able to enjoy himself without worrying about whether the wife was going to break her neck.

In the evening the gîte served a competent (rather than gastronomic) 7-course Christmas meal. Spirits were high but the late and extended timing, and raucous high-volume French were too much for us old codgers. The exquisite relief at retiring to our 2-bunk-bed room further sign of advancing middle age!

Day 3 was Christmas Day – but you wouldn't have noticed its passing in this secular community. Juan was suffering from thigh burn-out and took a day off while the rest of us walked up Maloquestre forest in deep, heavy, falling snow. The snow cushioned my numerous falls but, each time, the high water content caused it to compact, like being entombed in cement. Someone in the group was ready to dig me out each time I needed help. On just about every bend. But, thanks to them, I got down the hill.

To no one's surprise I copped out of Day 4 – where the mounting avalanche risk was now 4+ and the skins had to be kept on even for the descent. For Juan the final biscuit was 5km of cross-country piste to get back to Abriès. What could be worse! Meanwhile, I strolled along the bottom of the valley, enjoying having my two feet firmly on the ground.

waiting for the bus (which never arrived - it had broken down) at Ristolas

between Abriès and Ristolas - photo taken in colour!

Day 5 was a dream. And a carbon copy of a similar outing we did many years ago. So my two most memorably lovely ski rando outings have happened in the same place: the Crête de la Gardiole. Free from worries about boot comfort, physical fitness and technique it was pure pleasure from beginning to end. "Tu es très bien montée, Rebecca", praises Jean-Philippe. What a good girl am I. And what a superlative activity ski touring is, when conditions are right.

And click here for Jean-Philippe's rousing 1-minute video clip of our week. You might catch Juan but anyone skiing full tilt is not me! And here for a fellow group member's films.

How can we keep it going...? Because of Juan's absence, and our difficulty in embedding ourselves with a club, it can't be a regular activity as do the die-hard Grenoblois. But hopefully we'll manage a one-off repeat before the next season. Meanwhile, we are going to bore anyone with whom we have contact with the 15-minute video Jean-Philippe made of our challenging, exhausting, terrifying, rewarding, magical week.

above the pollution

I don't want to put off potential visitors but the winter pollution problem right now seems worse than usual, perhaps exacerbated by the long run of clear weather and accompanying temperature inversion, and (in our neck of the woods) the effect of the many new houses filling the valley with wood smoke.

Sad that we seem hell bent on destroying what we love most, and that we don't find a way of reducing our impact, other than rationing our wood-burning to weekends. The atmosphere, particularly in the evening, is thick – on Friday Juan could feel it hit his lungs approaching the eastern suburbs from Switzerland. Sore throats, coughs, runny noses and itchy eyes are an occupational hazard of living in the Grenoble basin.

But once are up high, it is glorious. Today we went up Beauregard for perhaps the 20th or 30th time since moving to France. It's the hill we see from the house and is my favourite Sunday (or any time) half-day walk. Even Juan, long scornful of its "tameness", now enjoys its charm, and the huge payback in views for modest effort.

We crossed paths with a lone skier, some kids playing with toboggans, walkers and two kite skiers supremely at ease as they switch-backed across the slopes, the kites lifting them high off the ground...

suspended on the slope facing "our" valley

Lower down the snow cover was very patchy...

... and our snow shoes came on and off and on... at regular intervals.

looking towards the Ecrins / Dévoluy over the Laffrey lakes

descending to the village of Les Arnauds

Wonderful, and aptly named, Beauregard.