We have an allotment

We have an allotment! It's huge and it's covered with massive weeds.

Why have we taken on all this extra work? There's a possibility that Sam and Lucy might stay with us for a while when they return from France and both of them love gardening. I thought that if we had an allotment, it would give them somewhere to grow a few veg (otherwise Sam would be digging up my lawn and Lucy would be sowing beetroot seeds in it).

I wasn't sure if there were any allotments available in the village, but when we enquired, we were sent a map of the site and two were available, with one possible through negotiation (not sure what that meant).

So Margaret and I walked down to look at plots 12 and 18, which were available without negotiation, to decide which one we wanted.

Plot 18 was quite weedy, but had clearly been worked last year. There was some wire netting about, some edging blocks and a shed (which was locked). Inside the shed, there were some tools and a petrol lawnmower. This wasn't being worked, it was vacant, but why was the shed full of stuff?

Plot 12 was at the far end of the allotments, it seemed a huge plot; it was fenced, but was covered with weeds. The only bit that was not feet high with nettles, docks, thistles and a few weeds that I didn't recognise was the bit adjacent to plot 11 (which is pristine). They clearly didn't want the weeds spreading across, so had given the edge of plot 12 a spray to keep them at bay.

My plot above and (below) the pristine plot next door

On the plus side, it did have a number of fruit trees and plenty of potential.

Margaret had to return home in a hurry (call of nature) but I hung on a little to have a poke around. While I was there, a couple of other people showed up to work their allotments, so I took the chance to have a chat and find out what I could.

They didn't know who had worked plot 12, but plot 18 had been worked last year. That chap hadn't done much and there was a rumour that he'd had to go into hospital. That probably explained why the shed was full of tools (and a lawnmower). Perhaps he’d come out of hospital feet first?

The plot is covered in these. I think it's arctium minus,
also known as button-bur and wild rhubarb.

We told the parish council clerk that we'd have plot 12, it's £30 a year. He said he'd send us the agreement, but we could move in and start work straight away.

That afternoon, I had another look at the map and I was surprised to see there was a plot 13 (logically) after plot 12. So ours wasn't the last in the row, but it wasn't clear when you were on site where 12 finished and 13 started.

This week, I bought glyphosate weedkiller and sprayed the whole plot. I also spent some time trying to identify a border. It looks to me as if plots 12 and 13 were worked as one and the chap had just taken up the divider.

We'll probably ask the clerk if 13 is free. If it is (and clearly no-one is working it right now) we might as well take that one too. I'd use it for fruit trees, perhaps?

In the meantime, we'll put up a dividing fence based on the dimensions of other plots and hope we don't start a range war.

We're now waiting for the weedkiller to take effect and we can then start clearing a few sections and begin planting. This year, I'm a little restricted because much seed should already had been sown. Also, pretty much the whole of June will be taken up with trips to the Isle of Man TT and Ecuador, so we have May to clear and plant. I'll try runner beans, peas, beetroot and perhaps some carrots. We can plant broad beans in September to give us an early crop next year.

I need to identify the fruit trees on site. I think there are two apple trees and one unknown, which I'm guessing is a plum (I could be wrong). There are also some self-seeded bushes which really should come out - eventually.

After spraying today, Margaret did some pruning of trees at the back of the plot and I went around the allotment picking up bits of wood, general rubbish and things that might be recycled. There was a quantity of plastic sheet that will make cloches, lots of wood, fence sections made from pallets, a cane chair, black fake Christmas tree, broken parasol and a brown wheelie bin with no wheels. That has become my temporary tool store. On an allotment, virtually everything has a use.

There's a deal of work to do, but already you can see where we have been. Some of the allotments are pretty scruffy, others are pristine and have paths and benches.

I think we'll enjoy our allotment and if Sam and Lucy do stay for a while after France, there will be plenty for them to do.

Also see: Rotavator etiquette.

We walk up to Fort de la Platte

The last 50 metres (Sam and Lucy are on the ridge)

I got an early e-mail from my friend Chris to say that his little boy (Sonny) had not been very well during the night, so we couldn't meet up as planned.

What should we do, go to ski in La Plagne, have a last ski in Les Arcs or do something different? I've always wanted to walk up to the Fort de la Platte above Bourg-Saint-Maurice, so we decided to do that.

Sam and Lucy had walked up in December and had tried again in February with showshoes, but had been turned back by deep snow and avalanches. The sign in Villaret says it is a three-and-a-half-hour walk up to the Fort. Sam said the route was fairly easy once you were above Granville (the abandoned village), so we set off after breakfast.

Margaret didn't come with us, so that meant I had to try to keep up with Sam and Lucy, which is quite hard work. I had a couple of breaks for a good puff on the way up to Granville and, just below the village, we were able to stand and watch a number of marmots in the field where we saw them earlier in the holiday.

This time there were three of them and they seemed quite unperturbed by our presence. A couple of them were moving around on the hillside, flicking their tails up and down. It looked as if they were marking out their territory. They were very busy!

Once through the village, we left the old mule track and joined a modern road. This was steep and narrow but a more gentle incline and it zig-zagged up the mountainside. As we climbed higher, the weather (although still sunny) got quite a bit colder and it was clear that spring had not yet reached these higher pastures. The grass was still brown and there were none of the cowslips and violets on the lower slopes.

Instead, the ground was covered with thousands and thousands of wild crocus. These were the size of the early species varieties you buy for your garden, but mainly pure white, with perhaps 15 per cent of them in blue. It was quite a sight and where the sun was shining, the flowers were wide open.

Higher up, the views opened out, although the mountains in the direction of Beaufort were shrouded in cloud. It was getting colder – I’d gone out in just shirt and trousers and I was feeling chilly, despite some pretty brisk walking. Sam was in shorts and T-shirt and I was surprised he wasn’t complaining.

Thousands and thousands of wild crocus
cover the higher slopes

At one point, there’s a cross planted at the side of the road and you can turn off on the Tour de Haute Tarentaise and walk around above Vulmix. The deep valley that separates Villaret from Vulmix at 1000 metres reached its head at this point. There was a strong stream of water gushing off the higher mountains, but the path/road went over this.

We carried on towards the fort, now walking without the sun (and it was even chillier).

The fort stands on a nose of hillside so that it has a wide view (field of fire). From the approach it looks quite small, but once you get up to it, there’s a defensive ditch with a bridge across into the stone-built enclosure and you can see a small central block with a set of steps up to the ramparts.

There was still a lot of snow in banks on the road as we neared the fort and, inside the building, it was snow and ice. Standing on the ramparts, you can see why it was built here. At 2000 metres, it commands a great view up the valley towards Tignes and Val d’Isere (where there’s a small pass into another valley), you can see the Col de Petit St Bernard coming down the side of the mountain by La Rosiere, you can see the Roselend Pass and you can see the valley below running out towards La Plagne and Moutiers. There's a video panorama here.

A battery of guns up here would be able to shoot-up anything moving along the valley floor and command three passes (one into Italy).

Of course, the fort’s life was short-lived – aircraft and better artillery would have rendered it useless in the 20th century; presumably it was built to prevent an invasion from Italy and, of course, that invasion never came. Nowadays, it serves as a place where cheese is sold by local farmers in the summer and as a destination for the more energetic.

We didn’t spend long up there. Sam said he was freezing (and it was pretty cold). I said he could have my cagoule and I thought I was being generous, but he scolded me for not giving it to him earlier, put it on and ran downhill to get warm.

Lucy and I caught up with him lower down where we had some water and chocolate. The walk down is much easier (of course) and we actually met a couple of cars. There’s a place a couple of hundred metres below the fort where they launch hang-gliders and we thought they were heading up to that point. They wouldn’t have got much further as snow banks were piled up on the hairpin bends just above there.

I wouldn’t fancy driving up. The road is gravel on the straights and tarmac on the hairpins; there are no real passing places and the drop is often quite hairy. It made the road up to the Col du Pre seem quite tame in comparison. There's an iPhone panorama below:

La Plagne and Le Tunnel

Skiing through Le Tunnel

I'd arranged to meet my former work colleague Chris Perera in La Plagne on Tuesday, so on Monday we decided to go across and have a little pootle around just to get to know some of the slopes.

When I was across in March, Sam and I had taken the Vanoise Express cable car across from Les Arcs to La Plagne, but this time we decided to drive. There's a place at the bottom (just off the main road) where you can buy a ski pass, then it's a long drive up the mountain through a series of helpfully numbered hairpin bends.

There are a number of resorts where you can park and get a chairlift up into the main bowl, but the lower ones now have little snow. Some of the runs are closed and those that would be open would offer a long, slushy ski back. We kept on the road to nearer the top where it was much colder, still freezing in fact.

I find La Plagne a little confusing. The individual resorts have quite similar names, they are closely spaced and one looks very much like another. The architecture looks a little more classy than Les Arcs (with the exception of 1950) and the runs are more densely packed, although you can range quite wide if you want to.

We did a small number of blues and my skiing was much improved over the previous day's. It is in your head - conditions were better, but I was also in a better place mentally; I was determined not to be so useless.

Having said that, I almost skied off down one of the hardest reds in the resort, but I even managed the start of that without difficulty. The run we'd come to recce was Le Tunnel, a long blue, steep in places but nice and wide and with plenty of undulation. It's a good run, but its main distinguishing feature is (and the name gives it away) a tunnel in the middle of the run.

The tunnel is around 100 metres perhaps, gentle descent inside and as you ski through, animal shapes are projected onto the floor and sides and there are animal sounds as well. It's quite good fun. I was happy with my skiing and looking forward to meeting Chris the next day. We skied the morning and, in the afternoon, I thought it would be nice for Margaret to see Arc 1600 and maybe have a late lunch up there.

We'd had a nice pizza in the square back in February, but it had been freezing cold and we'd had to sit inside. It was quite different today - the sun was strong and it was pleasant to sit outside, despite quite a gusty wind. The snow had gone from the square and also from around the lower lifts, so skiers were having to use a narrow strip of snow or ski across mats. The learner area was completely devoid of snow and the place where we used to meet for ESF lessons was now grass.

After lunch, we drove back down to town and called in at Super U to fill up with diesel at €1.33 a litre and also get my sister a French Easter egg. We got her a chocolate hen, sitting on the chocolate nest full of chocolate eggs. It's not the sort of thing you see in the UK. I also picked up a bottle of Genepi, which I've developed a taste for. Basically, it's alcohol and sugar flavoured with wormwood.

We also bought four fillet steaks and some oven chips so that we could have steak and chips for our last meal in Villaret the next night. Plans for that were scuppered when Adam (the chap who owns our chalet) came round in the evening and invited us all to eat with his family the next day. He was there with his partner, two children and his in-laws. His mother-in-law, who sounds slightly German, had suffered an unfortunate accident the day before. She'd been hit awkwardly by a chairlift, had failed to get seated properly and had fallen off just after it left the entry point. She'd fallen about 10 feet and had fractured her leg. She's a very slight woman of 73-ish and a good skier. Anyway, we were pleased to go for dinner, but it meant I missed my steak and chips, while Sam and Lucy had double helpings.

My son might be trying to kill me ...

As ever I exaggerate; however, Sammy Ski School turned into the school of hard knocks today.

Sam thought I was skiing really well the other day and that I should now try some reds. I've done a few reds in Les Arcs - Renard (which is a red in any sensible piste marker's book), that steep bit on Golet and almost any blue in La Plagne.

What he meant was I should try some reds that were marked as red on the piste map.

He decided that the red I should try first was the Aiguille Rouge. It's actually a pretty nice run, a bit narrow in places, but I'm sure I could have managed it pretty well. However, this was one of those days where nothing seemed to go quite right.

For a start, I forgot my lucky necker and - like the aviator who loses his lucky charm - I also crashed ... and crashed ... and crashed.

Not only had I forgotten my necker, I'd also decided that it would be cold and gloomy and that I should wear plain glasses, with goggles as back up. When we got up the first lift, we were in cloud and so my glasses proved useless; the snow and cloud was one white, featureless mass. Glasses off and goggles on and immediately my vision was tunnelled and my balance compromised (but it was better than one white, featureless mass).

We skied down Edelweiss into the bowl to Arc 2000 and I even managed to fall on Edelweiss, a nice blue that I’d snowploughed down with ESF a couple of years ago. The temperature was really quite high for early morning and the snow (in most places) hadn’t frozen overnight. There were some frozen stretches, so it was a difficult combination of soft, to hard, to ice.

I’m making excuses because I know I could cope with this (and have before). So much skiing is about your confidence and about being relaxed. In this respect, it’s very much like riding a motorcycle – you do that best when you’re relaxed and when you’re looking well ahead. If you tense up, get fixed on the corner you’re in, rather than looking through it, then it’s hard to flow and get it smooth.

The Aiguille Rouge was quite busy, but I could see that it would be a really nice run. I was traversing quite a lot, but doing all right until I hit a block of ice in the middle of the piste and went flying. There was another comedy moment when I was on my back (turtle like) whizzing down the run past Sam. Luckily, I’d kept my skis on and the slope was steep enough to make it easy to get up.

After the Aiguille Rouge, the piste becomes a blue, called Lys (lilies), which is narrow, steep in places, but quite pretty. It’s lower and around the side of the massif, so you can see across the valley towards Rosiere and St Foy. As we got lower, the snow was softer and ploughed into great ruts. I was glad when Sam suggested we stop for a drink and there was a nice cafe at the side of the piste where we could sit out. The snow was disappearing fast around here and by the state of the piste, if it continues warm and sunny, the snow will be gone in a week. The day was quite grey, so I decided to take off my goggles and put my glasses back on. When I got them out of my breast pocket, they'd been crushed when I'd fallen and both lenses had popped out. It was a bit of a fiddle getting them back in, but I managed it and also managed to bend the frames back into shape. The glasses didn't seem quite right, but it was better than the goggles.

Villaroger - what happened to the snow?

Our plan was to ski down to Villaroger at 1200 metres, but as we continued down Lys, the snow got more and more patchy. On one run, there was a band just three metres wide on the piste. The last section down into Villaroger had been closed and people staying there were having to use the chairlift to get down as well as up. We went up Violettes and Droset chairlifts and then down the Reservois blue to 2000.

These were all new lifts and runs for me and would have been more interesting if I hadn't been so knackered. It was just a matter now of getting back the easiest way I could, so we skied down to Marmottes and then went all the way down Arpette to 1600. The snow here was really soft and rutted, so I was finding it really hard. Arpette is normally pretty easy, but I managed to fall and get a foot through the ski fence on one section. It wasn't quite a Bodie Miller skiing-off-the-fence moment and, to make matters worse, the piste was pretty flat and I was struggling to get to my feet. I was just about to take my skis off when Sam came and hauled me up.

This had been my toughest day's skiing and I was a little frustrated afterwards. I know I can ski better than I did and, even though the conditions and piste were a step-up for me, I could have done much better.

In the afternoon, we drove to Beaufort via Moutiers and Albertville. Sam is convinced there's another route over the mountains, but I was pretty sure that any road would be precipitous, little more than a farm track and covered in snow. The route along the valley bottoms is pretty quick and we were in Beaufort in under an hour.

The town is quite small, but famous as a centre for this large area of high mountain pastures. In summer, there would be four routes in, but for six months of the year, there's just the road to Albertville. We parked up in the town and took half an hour for a stroll around. There's a very old section around the church where many buildings are 400 years old. Some of the buildings are erected on solid rock and the walkways are chiselled out of the bedrock as well.

Lucy's picture of the old bridge in Beaufort

There's an old stone bridge, once the main bridge over the river and the view from the top is very evocative. It leads through into the narrow streets of the old town and the bridge still has the protective kerbstones in the middle and the ends which once stopped cartwheels from damaging the sides.

The snow level is quite high and we decided that we'd drive up the D925 towards the Col de Roselend to see how far we could get. The answer was: not very far - the road was blocked by a barrier only a couple of miles out of Beaufort. We decided we'd go up a different way, through the ski resort of Areches (where Sam and Lucy had skied a couple of months ago) and along the Col du Pre. This road was open for longer, but it was a very narrow road and with steep drops and tight hairpins. It was first or second gear all the way up and as we neared the top, there was a cafe car park where you could pull off and the road was blocked by a massive snow bank. The snow might be disappearing quickly from the lower slopes, but here the road was covered in several feet of snow (and it was not thawing very quickly). These routes won't be open for another six or eight weeks.

It's not looking beret good

Saturday is market day in Bourg-saint-Maurice and we drove down into town to take a look. It's not a big place, but it has a fair-sized market and there seem to be a few different stalls each week.

We were hoping the miniature pigs would be there, but there was no sign of them. My eye was caught by a hat stall and by a large collection of that most distinctive item of French headwear - the beret.

After a poor effort at putting one on, the stallholder came to help and arranged it at a rather jaunty angle. Sam took a picture for me to see (no mirror on a hat stall is a bit of an oversight), but I don't think it worked. It was also far too big. I tried a smaller one, but that was too small and then a Breton beret, but that didn't work either.

Margaret, meanwhile, was persuaded to try the first beret, which (it turns out) is a French army beret used by mountain troops. I couldn't carry off the look, but I think Margaret succeeded. She struggles to find hats to fit her, but this one was spot on.

After the market, we had planned to drive to Beaufort for a look around. However, we'd overlooked the fact that Saturday is change-over day and the road out of Bourg towards Moutiers was already forming one long traffic jam. We turned around and came off the main road at Bellentre, where we'd walked through the other day. The road winds up the side of the valley through Villarivon and Montgirod, where you can turn off for the high village of Les Chapelles.

This is an interesting place, the main village for a group of the higher settlements. There's a collection of very old buildings, with newer homes surrounding them. The church and the churchyard was interesting and there was a really old grand, but crumbling, farm and barn next to the church. We were adopted by a friendly dog, who followed us around town for 15 minutes just to be sociable.

The road down takes us back to Montgirod and then to Vulmix from the top, so we got to see the parts we missed earlier in the week when we walked through. There's a restaurant and another interesting church. The churches in this region are in the baroque style - many of them were remodelled during the 16th century in a show of strength and wealth designed to counter the spread of Protestantism.

After a bread-and-cheese lunch, Sam and I walked up to the Chapel St Michel and down via La Rosiere, before climbing back up to Villaret.

In the evening, we had dinner at Restaurant Arssiban in Bourg. We went for their €27 set menu, which was quite good. It's a nice place, very light and spacious for a French restaurant (or any restaurant come to that) and with large, roomy tables. It seems popular with families. Waitresses were two mature ladies (about my age), who got things done in an unfussed manor. It was very much like dining in someone's house.

My best day's skiing

Me on the Mont Blanc run.

This was my best day's skiing so far. I had a really good day, it felt as if my edges were biting and I was more in control than previously.

We had a fairly short morning's skiing, but it was very good and we covered 11 miles in total at an average speed of 10mph (you'll gather that Sam has a GPS unit).

The day started up Cachette (as usual), then a ski down to L'Arpette, which takes us up to 2400 metres, then down into the bowl of Arc 2000. We skied down Plan to Arc 2000, where we picked up the Varet gondola up to the start of the long blue called Vallee de l'Arc. This is quite narrow at first, but was not too busy, and then it steepens and opens out. It's a nice run and we followed it from top to bottom at Comborciere, where it finishes.

The snow is really disappearing quickly. There are huge patches of earth showing on the Comborciere black run and, as we took the chairlift up, there were piste marshalls down below taking out the markers and closing the piste. It's a little sad that the snow is going, although the marmots, the cattle and sheep, and the countless spring flowers are very glad to see the back of it.

From the top of Comborciere, we dropped down past Mont Blanc and skied the Mont Blanc blue back down to Arc 1600. It's the first time I've done Mont Blanc and the first time I've skied all of Vallee de l'Arc.

The snow was starting to get a bit slushy towards lunchtime, so I was happy enough to finish. I was really pleased with my morning and I even managed the last tricky bit down in the 1600 without too much trouble.

In the afternoon, we drove back up the mountain and parked just below Arc 1950 at a restaurant near the foot of the Comborciere lift. We got the courtesy bus up to 2000 and walked across to the Varet gongola that I'd taken in the morning, then up the cable car to the top of the Aiguille Rouge at 3226m. There's an amazing view from the top - you can see the whole of the south west side of the Mont Blanc massif, across the valley to St Foy, Mont Pourri right next to you and many other high peaks which we couldn't identify (see panorama shot below).

Sam and Lucy at the top of the Aiguille Rouge

The ride up was quite busy with people intending to ski the Aiguille Rouge black or the Arandelleres red down from the top, but on the way down it was very quiet and we were soon back on sunny 2000. There's a free pedestrian gondola down to 1950, so we took that and waited for the bus there to take us back to where we'd parked.

In February, we'd gone to Le Chalet Du Pre St. Esprit (see Last Day in Sammy Ski School) and were freezing. We tried to take a short cut across the car park and Lucy sank almost up to her armpits in a snowdrift. Now, we were basking in sunshine, watching afternoon skiers slosh through the mush. While we were having our drink, there were a couple of people coming down Comborcieres (the black that was being closed in the morning). They got to the bare patches and were wondering how to get around them; they'd obviously decided to ignore the “piste closed” sign at the top - some people are determined to keep the season going as long as possible.

Forced onto our feet

Margaret on the Haute Tarentaise.

This is a little embarrassing - we set off to drive up to Arc 1600, but when we arrived Sam realised we had locked the ski clamp, but had not brought they key. It wasn't practical to drive all the way back to the chalet and then all the way back up the mountain, so we decided we'd do the walk that Sam had mapped out a day or so earlier.

Back to the chalet and on with the walking shoes. The route planned would be on part of the Tour de Haute Tarentaise, a two or three-day walk around the higher villages and paths along both sides of the valley.

We drove down to the main road and parked the car at the side so we didn't have to walk back up to Villaret at the end and then walked up the hill to Vulmix. It was a lovely day, warm and sunny, but also clear so that we had excellent views across the valley. Flowers were springing up everywhere and people in the villages were getting their vegetable gardens sorted out and their geraniums out of winter store.

There's a lot of building work going on, with new chalets being built and quite a lot clearly constructed in the last five years. Some of them are very grand, large places and I wasn't sure if they were homes or holiday homes being let. There's clearly a lot of money being spent in this area.

Coming down from the Haute Tarentaise, we descended via the road and then steep paths down to Bellentre, where we had a picnic lunch in the sunshine. A lot of French villages have a communal parking area and this also had a couple of picnic tables, a boules pit, some play equipment and a table-tennis table made from concrete (even the net was concrete). Villages also have communal rubbish and recycling bins; and most have a running water trough as well. I guess this is where everyone would once have got their water and they're being kept for sentimental reasons (an old focus point of the community).

From Bellentre, we were able to walk under the main road at the bottom of the valley to the Isere river. There's an excellent, wide path running alongside the river, which would take us back to Bourg-saint-Maurice. The path was shared with cyclists and was quite popular. It was better regulated than Rutland Water, so it wasn't too much of a nuisance and we made quick progress back to Bourg. We'd walked about 12 miles and the last mile was a real struggle. Even though we'd parked the car at the bottom of the road up to Villaret, we still had a long climb up from the river to where we'd parked.

Quite a hard day, but nice walking.

Lucy spotted this photo opp' during the walk. Aircraft contrails had
make a giant X in the sky.

A very slippery slope

Sam had kindly taken my skis for a service - the scratches have been filled, bottoms waxed and edges sharpened at PolaireStar near the Funicular and were - in the words of the owner - as good as new.

They felt really fast on the crisp early morning snow, but the sharper edges were helping me grip and, as it got a bit slushy, later in the morning the newly waxed bottoms were faster and easier.

We drove up to Arc 1600, rather than taking the Funicular - it's much more comfortable and convenient and it's free to park in the resort rather than costing you €3 in the Funicular car park. We skied across to Arc 1800 and then up Grizzly and down Foret to 2300 which is open again. I did that run three times. It's a nice wide, open bowl so plenty of opportunity to practise parallel turns. I really enjoyed the day, but the snow was getting really slushy by 1pm, so we called it a day and drove back down, went to the supermarket and had carrot soup for lunch which Margaret had prepared.

The weather has been warm and sunny and the snow line is retreating up the mountains really quickly. Quite a number of runs are already closed and the whole resort will shut down in a couple of weeks.

It was such a nice afternoon that we decided to walk up the mountain to an abandoned village about 400 metres above Villaret. This is called Granville and it sits just above the Church of St Michael, where we've walked a couple of times.

Wild violets (above) and cowslips (below)

It's amazing how the Alps spring into life as the snow retreats. Nature gets a sprint on back home in Cambridgeshire, of course, but up here (where spring comes later and winter earlier) it really does burst forth.

Wild hellebores are almost over (they were growing through the snow in February), but now there are lots of cowslips, wild violets and many more. The grass is growing so quickly that you almost feel you could see it moving and the farmers are getting sheep, cattle and goats out of winter quarters and moving them up the mountains.

Past the turn off for the church (St Michel) up a long, straight path shaded by trees, we were lucky to surprise a marmot (which has probably just come out of hibernation). He ran away alongside the path and then out into the field, where he crouched down very low to watch us go past.

Granville is a sad place. It's at 1470 metres and I'm guessing wasn't ever fully occupied the whole year as it would have been well above the snow line and quite a harsh place in winter. Perhaps some animals were kept up there all year round? The place is now mainly in ruins, although there is one house and a large barn that's still being used. The church is locked and has a severe crack running down its front wall almost unseating the Madonna and child and ending above the door which has been braced to stop the whole thing collapsing.

It would have been nice to have gone inside, but I guess it's not safe. I took the interior picture below with my iPhone pressed against the front window. There are pews, an altar rail and pictures on the wall behind the altar. There are also pictures showing the 12 stations of the cross placed around the church.

Granville is a sad place, but the church is even sadder. I don't have any religion, but I find there's something very depressing about a place of worship that's abandoned. It points to lost faith and a cornerstone being removed that would have once united a community. In the heat of the spring sun, tiny green and brown lizards were running around on the walls and among the stones of the houses where quite a number of people would have lived and worked; trees have already established themselves in the rooms where people once dwelt and summer vegetation is preparing for another year's growth to cover and hide Granville's sadness.

Church at Granville - the two buildings next to it are still being used.

Interior of the church at Granville.

Unexpected trip to the Lake District

Expect the unexpected - it's what makes life interesting. I went to bed on Sunday night expecting to be up at 2am to drive to France.

When I took Margaret a cup of tea, she said Max had phoned at midnight. He's in the Lake District helping to supervise a Duke of Edinburgh expedition for some of his school pupils and had been taken to hospital with breathing difficulties. He was OK but needed to get back to London and wondered if I could pick him up.

Margaret had told him that we were off to France and he'd said he could get the train. I said we'd delay France for a day and texted Max to see where he was. He was actually just coming back from the hospital at 2.30am and was at a campsite in Langdale.

So instead of heading south for Dover; at 3.30am I found myself heading north for the Lakes and got there about 7.30am. Max was feeling pretty rough. We'd been down to see him the Sunday before and he was fine, but woke up the next day with a sore throat and cough. He shouldn't have tried to do the trip and had found himself struggling on the tops of Langdale Pikes so had come down and been taken to casualty.

They diagnosed pleurisy and also severe build up of stomach acid. The last place he needed to be was a cold, damp Lake District even if it did look beautiful in the early morning light. It was a long haul back to London via the M6, A14, M11 and Blackwall Tunnel, the traffic on the M6 was gridlocked for an hour, but we got back to London about 2.30pm; Inna got back from work early and I got on the road before the rush hour traffic got too bad. I was back in Thorney around 7.30pm, called P&O to re-arrange the crossing and went to bed for another 2am start.

We got to Villaret just before 6pm on Tuesday and Max had mailed to say he was feeling better. I'd driven around 1,400 miles in two days, so glad to be out of the car and looking forward to some skiing and walking in France.

Tramp, tramp, tramp

My sister is doing a 20-mile walk for charity next month (I think it's a route in Oxfordshire somewhere near Blenheim Palace).

She's a pretty good walker and has done this distance before (a few years ago) but was worried that she was among the later finishers.

A 20-mile walk ought to take around six hours, so Holly and I have been walking with her as part of her training regime. Holly, of course, is happy to walk anywhere, any time and in any weather; but I've also enjoyed my trips.

My sister - after years in the Ramblers' - certainly knows her way around the local countryside, so she's introduced us to some new routes that I'll definitely do again.

Margaret (wife), Maggie, Holly and I started with a walk around Burleigh Park. There's a new path which has been put in between Burleigh and Pilsgate, which means you don't need to walk on the road any more. It's opened up a nice route from Burleigh, up the hill to Pilsgate and then on along the footpath to Barnack. You walk through Barnack village, past the Hills and Holes nature reserve and then back into Burleigh Park across some farmland. The route takes you past the water jump on the cross-country equestrian course (where Holly enjoyed a quick dip) and along the side of the golf club to come out on the old A1. You then walk down towards `Stamford and then turn off through the gates back into Burleigh Park.

I have an app on my iPhone by Nike, the company that makes sports gear. It's designed for runners to check their speed and distance covered, but it works quite well for walkers also. It means that my sister can check the distances of walks that she's quite familiar with, but was never absolutely sure what the mileage was. This walk was seven-and-a-half miles and we managed it at an average speed of just over 3mph, which is the target for the 20-miler.

The next walk we did was a little longer (just over 10 miles, according to Nike) and started at Fotheringhay going through Woodnewton, Apethorpe and back to Fotheringhay via Woodnewton, but on different paths. It's nice walking, with three pubs (if you fancy a more boozy stroll) and different things to see - the villages, a water mill, Rowan Atkinson's house, woodland flowers, red kites and a pretty trout stream flowing from Woodnewton past Fotheringhay (where I've seen kingfishers in the past). I certainly knew I'd been for a walk at the end of the trip, but we managed to be comfortably ahead of the 3mph target.

It was time to stretch outselves a little more, so we decided to walk around Rutland Water, the reservoir between Stamford and Oakham which provides our water. It's a fairly nice walk, the only gripe being that the path is shared by walkers and cyclists (and the cyclists are a complete nuisance). My sister had done it a little while ago, with a fellow rambler, but they'd stopped for tea & cake, stopped for a picnic lunch and also stopped to finish a flask of tea. I wasn't having any of that - we had a Mars bar and a piece of flapjack each and would eat and drink on the hoof. Once you stop, you not only lose time, but you also stiffen up, so it takes you half an hour to get moving again.

Nike said the round was 15.3 miles and we were under five hours, so up to the required speed, even if the last three miles were quite painful. We'd parked at Sykes Lane and there was a sign to Normanton Church saying two-and-a-half miles. If my sister walked there and back, that would be her 20 miles.

Last week, we repeated the tour, but this time I dropped my sister at Sykes Lane and I drove the car around to Normanton so that she'd walk the 15.5 miles, plus an extra 2.5 (so 18 miles in total). I had Holly with me and once, we'd got round to Normanton, we walked around anti-clockwise to meet my sister about a mile down the track. We stopped to have a look at Normanton church. This stands in the edge of the water and is flooded up to about 20 feet, so the top stands out of the lake. A stone causeway has been contructed to it and around it and the interior floor has been raised so that it can be used for weddings.

It's a little melancholy; and also sad that villages and communities were flooded and drowned so that the reservoir could be built. On the other side of the lake, Egleton stands at the edge of the water and would have been on the main A606 at one time. As you walk around, you can see where the new 606 cuts across an avenue of trees coming down from Burley Hall on the ridge and the old road comes out of the lake at Whitwell.

Holly thought Rutland Water was a wonderland of ducks and other waterfowl, plus a few really stupid pheasants (including one that wanted to run away rather than fly). We did have some difficulty with a large (fat) chocolate labrador that we encountered in Manton churchyard. He took a fancy to Holly and started to follow us. I chased it, swiped it with my hat, threw stones at it, chased it with a stick, but still the bloody thing followed us. By the time we'd got to Egleton, three miles down the path, it was still on our tail. My sister finally sorted it out by finding a park warden and reporting it to him. he said he knew some people in Manton and would make some enquiries - someone would know the dog. It was very well fed, but had no collar. The dog happily followed the ranger - I think it was fed up with walking and glad to have a sit down.

I know how it felt, but the rest of our walk was completed without incident. My sister completed her 18 miles in less than six hours, so that was also well within her 3mph target.