Rain, rain, go away!

Monday 11th June

Hmm - rain and low cloud. That sort of kills a few of our options for the day as most of them involve driving to check out the views from the mountain passes. All is not lost though - I found there is patchwork exhibition in town. We found it quite easily - very small but a few interesting pieces took my eye. Sadly I found out there is no patchwork shop in town, but the group responsible for the exhibition meets Friday afternoons. If we have nothing else planned that might fill my afternoon nicely.

I'm more of a dog person than a cat person,
but this one took my fancy.

Gingko leaves.

They may h ave had a theme of circles as there were quite a few circles evident.

I had a close look at this one
- sort of bargello with half rectangle triangles. 

After the exhibition we went for a drive to the old city looking for an old bridge. It was still raining and we couldn't get there by car from the old town so decided to try from the other side of the river. It was no go there either but we found ourselves up in the hills above the town looking at the old forts (fortifications de Vauban) in the surrounding hills. These forts are on the Unesco World Heritage list.

One of the forts above Briancon.

And another.

And another.

The rain seemed to have eased off so we decided to go for a drive to the Col d'Izoard. This was quite a good road and has been used many times over the years by the tour de france. We had lunch at the inn at the top called Napoleon's refuge. Apparently Napoleon stopped there on his way back to France to claim his position as emperor.

As we got higher we came across patches of snow.
Apparently some of the passes in the area
have only been open a matter of days.
An unusual winter.

A big climb for our little car let alone a bike.
The table of men (lets say 70s) next to us at lunch
were English blokes doing it by bike!

Yes, that's me freezing at the top. It was only 9C up there
- yes I can hear you saying 'stop complaining'.

The road back down. This is a wide road!
There seemed to be a few more cars headed up after lunch.

The rain moved in again so after lunch it was just back home via a visit to Aldi France. Apart from the French products everywhere it followed the same recipe as Aldi in Australia.