When in Rhône - Part 2
Modane to l'Orgère
The first day of walking!
Modane to l'Orgère
Sunday, 3rd of August
After a great sleep in the hotel, I am feeling much more human! We have a quick breakfast downstairs: baguette with jam, some yoghurt with apricot, coffee and tea from one of those rectangular machines.
After checking out, we step onto the street. Modane is sunny already and gently bustling with tourists - it reminds us of Aviemore. We marvel at the cheese vending machine and the blue river.
I feel like only today I can begin to appreciate that I am on holiday. I am surprised how many French words I can understand. It's almost as if a switch in my brain has been flipped and my subconscious is now desperately trying to unearth anything I learned at school that might be relevant[1]. I'm happy to have a go at most of the French speaking but to Sarah's credit, she has been trying hard as well.
With more snacks from the bakery, we set out on our first walk of this holiday: climbing about 6km and 880m from the town up to the first refuge.
The views get better every five minutes and it's hard to believe we're already at the elevation of the highest Scottish mountain (Ben Nevis at 1,345m) halfway through our morning.
The walk is quite relentlessly steep and we're only just getting used to carrying the weight of our bags - about 10kgs each[2]`.
I finally fill Sarah in on everything that happened at my work party on Friday night, and then we play the Alphabet Game. This game is our most recent obsession for passing time on a walk and having something to focus on that isn't too much work for the brain. In the version we play, we try to get through the alphabet as quickly as possible, and we take turns on the letters. For example, if the category is "Animals at the Zoo", I say "Armadillo", Sarah says "Bear", I say "Chameleon" and so on. Half the fun is coming up with inventive categories.
This keeps us distracted while climbing through a forest trail littered with roots and rocks, and then, quite abruptly, we arrive at a road with the refuge just ahead! It is only 2pm so we have lots of time to sit in the sun, walk around, and take in the mountain views.
I've already decided that I won't spent too much time trying to draw the mountains - that's what photos are for - but I could easily sit and look for hours. It's unlike anywhere I've been, and we keep saying "unreal!", even though it very much is real. We take a moment to feel proud of ourselves.
There is a little stall selling ice cream (made with goat's milk) - of course we want some! The flavours are highly unusual and thankfully, we have enough of a spotty internet connection to find out on google that myrtille is blueberry and Châtaigne d'Ardèche is a type of chestnut.[3]
Then we sit outside the refuge - we watch a shepherd drive his goats past us and I write all of this down while Sarah reads her book (The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, should you be wondering). When it chills down, we go inside to put on warm clothes and then sit outside on the patio to play a game of Nochmal [4] before dinner. There are a few musicians playing and trying to get people to dance, fortunately I look very busy while drawing the scene so I am immune!
Dinner is served at 7pm; when we enter the dining area, we find that our names are on a little chalkboard on one of the tables - assigned seating! We find ourselves next to a friendly Frenchman, Maxim, who is doing a big 10 day Alps trek, and Rosie and Daisy, who are English and camping (but eating at the refuges).
Dinner is served table by table by the hostel staff. There are 3 courses:
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Pea soup served with bread and goat's cheese (most people add the slices of cheese into their soup, a novelty for us)
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Couscous with a pea and tofu stew (give peas a chance!)
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A custard flan for dessert. Maxim proclaims that this is his very favourite French dessert, and Sarah says that it is great and that it reminds her of Bird's custard, unfortunately she is then forced to explain what that is to this very proud Frenchman ("You might find this comparison offensive, but by the time you can google what Bird's custard is, we'll be long gone").
Afterwards, everyone also gets a shot of blueberry rum and the musicians from earlier appear again - some people join in the dancing. We are a bit too tired and scared, so we just head to bed at around 21:30.
And that's part 2 done - see you next week for more (hopefully)!
L x
Throughout the sketchbook, I've tried to record our attempts at French in French, and apologise for any crude mispellings. I learned French at school for 8 years and have to admit it wasn't a total waste of time! ↩︎
We actually hadn't weighed our bags at home, so we found out the exact weight at the airport. Mine came in at 8.2 kg, and we are now also carrying 1.5 liters of water each as well as lunch and snacks! ↩︎
Unrelated goat milk ice cream anecdote: Last summer, we visited the Cape Clear Storytelling Festival in Ireland. It's basically a few dozen people travelling to a very small island to play music and, well, tell stories. We were fortunate enough to be accompanying our friend Jo, whose family is originally from the island and who, thus, Knows Things, for example, that you can get ice cream in the intervals of the performances. One of my fondest memories of all time is this: Us, at approximately 11pm, desperately scraping away at the rock-solid tubs of ice cream. The interval was short, and the ice cream was very frozen. We were extremely concerned about finishing the ice cream before going back inside for the performance (we're the kind of rule followers that take a "no food and drink inside" sign seriously). We made no conversation whatsoever while we were anxiously attacking our tubs, which eventually sent us into laughing fits. It almost goes without saying that in the French Alpine sun, ice cream goes soft within seconds. ↩︎
Nochmal is a fun (and, crucially, portable) game that works for two players - it involves rolling dice and marking off tetris-like squares on a block of paper. We've found that card games can be risky business in a mountainous environments, as a gust of wind can really ruin the fun. Nochmal is the German edition's name (it means "again!"), but it looks like it's available elsewhere now, too. ↩︎
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