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.

Bowel cancer tests

Holly - kind donor of poo bags.

Warning - this post is not for the squeamish!

It's a slightly sobering thought that once you're past 60, the NHS starts to lose confidence in your longevity.

They leave you alone for years and years, but after 60 you start to get letters dropping through your door inviting you to take a test for this and check you for that ...

It's all sensible stuff, of course, and certainly driven by statistics (which is a genuine reason to be worried).

Bowel cancer is the latest nasty illness to get a higher profile and also a screening programme to try to identify people in the early stages, when it's more easily treated (and when the survival rates are better).

It's been in the news a great deal, with a mounting campaign by a cancer pressure group to make people aware of the warning signs and to encourage them to visit their doctor if there are any concerns. We 60+ types don't need to visit our doctor with any concerns; the NHS is concerned enough to send us a home test kit to see if we have any symptoms.

I've been very lucky to have been born just a few years after the foundation of the National Health Service and I've been on the receiving end of much public health campaigning.

We were the first generation to be vaccinated for polio and (I think) diphtheria. I have an early memory of being taken to the old fire station in Northwich, which was being used as a mass immunisation centre. The fire engines had been taken out and people were queuing in a long line, snaking up and down inside the building, until you came to a set of screens and it was your turn. This type of treatment is inconceivable these days, it was like a news report on disease control in some Third World country, but I guess we had no regular system for mass immunisation and this did the job. I knew nothing about polio, but I was worried - my mum had noticed that the Dudleys (a notoriously unwashed family) were a few in front of us and she was working out how often they changed the needle in the syringe. She was keen that we didn't get the same needle as the dirty Dudleys.

In the 1950s, it was not uncommon to see children fitted with leg irons due to polio distorting their limbs and the ultimate horror was to have it affect your chest muscles so you were unable to breathe on your own and had to live in an iron lung - a machine that allowed you to breathe by sucking up your chest and pushing it down.

Subsequent booster jabs were done at the doctor's or at school and my final polio inoculation was dripped onto a sugar cube and taken orally (no worries about the dirty Dudleys then). The vaccination programme was so successful that polio wasn't a disease that threatened my children; it had gone from the UK within a generation.

I did catch the other common childhood diseases - measles, mumps and chickenpox. My sister also added whooping cough to her CV.

But here I am at 60 and the NHS is still looking out for me. That's nice - but when my bowel cancer home test kit dropped through my door that wasn't my first thought. The test involves collecting your own faeces and sending them away for analysis, which didn't greatly appeal. What's more, it had to be done over a period of several days.

I was still working when the kit arrived and it wasn't really practical to take the test as my daily "cycle" generally involved a trip to the loo (for a No 2) at work. So I left the kit buried among a pile of other letters awaiting attention on my desk at home - another job for retirement.

Some time before Christmas, Margaret informed me that she had been given the bowel cancer all-clear and so I resolved that one of my first jobs after leaving work would be to do the test. Now bowel cancer is not a nice disease and it's on the increase probably because of less fibre in modern diets and perhaps because we're all living a bit longer and not dying from other nasty things.

The cure/treatment would probably involve part of your bowel being cut away and would mean you having a temporary or permanent colostomy (depending on the severity).

So I got the kit and read the instructions more carefully. Basically, the test is for blood in your faeces. This can mean you're in the early stages of bowel cancer, or it could mean you have something worse (or something not quite as bad). Anyway, blood traces would mean further tests ... and a probe!

I'm not normally at all squeamish, but the mechanical process of this test concerned me greatly. You have to acquire some fresh poo, which must be free from water and urine; you then have to scrape a tiny sample from different parts of the turd and deposit the sample into special recesses in the kit, seal that section up and wait for another couple of days before you do the next one.

How do you get hold of fresh poo? Normally, that's the last thing you want to do!

I asked Margaret, who is never backward when it comes to complaining and yet she'd done the test without even telling me. Apparently she'd used a bowl, which sounds like a good idea, but has rather put me off Christmas pudding for the foreseeable future (I don't care how often it's been through the dishwasher).

I needed a couple of days to mentally prepare and to think the process through. I decided against a bowl and instead went for kitchen towel and a poo bag (kindly donated by Holly, the English Springer Spaniel). I’ve picked up plenty of warm dog poo in my time, but it is a whole new sensation holding your own warm poo.

The process requires you to sit on the toilet, poo bag covering your right hand which is hovering under your bottom waiting for the turd to drop. You then have to extract your hand, place the poo bag (and poo) on the paper towel on the toilet floor, finish your business, do up your pants and then take your sample. I found it smelly and humiliating. I was also rather generous with the sample and struggled to get that day’s window closed properly.

This has to be repeated over a number of days in order to sample a period of bowel function. Cancer polyps can bleed intermittently and so this catches the occasional bleeder.

Constipation and irregularity isn’t normally an issue, but I was dreading my next sample day and that seemed to throw out my digestive process, or rather bring it to a standstill. Sample No 2 was a day late and took some effort; rather more effort than I would have liked sitting above my outstretched hand in the downstairs loo.

I was so happy when the process was over. This really did freak me out, almost to the point where I’d decided not to bother with it. Having sealed my last window, I put the sample in the post with a sympathetic thought for the person whose job it is to open thousands of these things. The covering letter that comes with the kit warns that the test may be clear (which doesn’t mean you don’t have cancer), or it may be inconclusive and require further tests.

Mine was clear, thank goodness, but I have this to look forward to again in another five years. I don’t know why, but this really did bother me.