As we woke to a damp morning in Abondance, we hopefully grabbed at our phones for a better weather forecast for the coming days. It was mixed, but luckily the rain never came to fruition and we benefited from blue skies and hot temperatures during our time in Morzine.
Morzine is a reasonably high mountain town that is a ski station in the winter and a hotbed for mountain biking in the summer. It has managed to keep its mountain village feel, with all accommodation being low rise and traditional in alpine style- it is a very pretty place to visit.
To get to Morzine, we purposely targeted the beautiful Col du Corbier mountain pass as our route in. A famed Tour de France climb, the Col du Corbier wound its way up the mountain side with repeated switch backs revealing amazing views at every turn. The summit, as often the case with these high mountain passes was rather unassuming apart from the sticker plastered road sign to signify the summit.
Morzine definitely welcomes van dwellers, but has set areas where they like vans to go. We followed the signs and found the most modern campervan aire we have ever stayed at. Aires are not campsites- they are glorified car parks that communities provide to encourage motorhomes to stay in the area. This aire was deserted, but was the first aire that we had visited that provided electric hook ups for vans. A cheeky and unplanned bonus was that parking charges for the aire ended on Aug 30, so our stay would be completely free! The pay off for this stunning facility was that it was right on the edge of the town. Jackie was determined to find a loo, and we then realised how far out of the town we really were, after a 20 minute walk into the town centre.
Whilst wandering through town, we found the tourist information centre which turned out to be a milestone in our European adventures. We thought that they might have free Wi-Fi to upload our latest YouTube video…they didn’t. However they did have mobile Wi-Fi dongles to hire for €7 a day that offered pretty much unlimited data access. It worked like a dream and we soon had a mobile tech station set up in Nelson with our wifi dongle and our EHU from the aire at €2 which allowed us to upload and publish our first YouTube video on the road. Not easy, but really satisfying in the end. You can see the results of our efforts here.
After all this (work like) endeavour, we were ready for a lazy afternoon, as we were both feeling a bit rough. We put this down to drinking the spring water from Abondance the day before…we live and learn! We headed to Lac d’Montriond- for a lazy afternoon of swimming in the lake and dozing in the sun. Needless to say, another unveiling of the budgy smugglers went down particularly well with the locals…well that’s what I thought anyway! After a few hours in the sun, we were well and truly cooked and went to our trusty Wild Guide to see what else we could discover close by.
We headed to the Cascade du d’Ardent, a beautiful waterfall that photos cannot do justice, before heading to one of the highlights of the trip to date- Les Lindarets- more commonly known as the village of the goats. The road to the village is closed most of the day as the goats run wild in the village and are a risk to themselves and drivers. The road opened at 1700, and Jackie made sure we were right on it. After a testing mountain drive up single track roads, we pulled up to the village to be greeted by a few rogue billy goats- little did we know what was ahead. After a few minutes petting the kids- all hell broke loose as the herd were released from the dairy into the village. They stayed around for a bit of manual milking of the matriarches of the herd (very clever marketing by the village), much to the delight of us, the tourists.
The following day we had a bit of a pootle around the town on our bikes, returning the wifi box to tourist information and treating ourselves to a very modest retirement gift of individual raclette burners for the van to officially recognise the 1 September- our very first day of official retirement (and no salary!). The burners would come in useful later in the day when we were in desperate need of cheesy comfort food. We had a little taster of alpine cycling by visiting the neighbouring village of Montriond- it is fair to say that any bike ride in this part of the world is either uphill or downhill- nothing in between!
Being guided by our Wild Guide- we targeted our first major climb of the trip- up the Pointe de Ressachaux, the towering mountain that overlooks Morzine. On paper it was only a 10km walk, but it was 5km straight up from the roadside. The guide book described the fist half as a little sweaty…never have words understated something more. We were absolutely knackered after only 1 km of steep climbing and we still had over 4km of uphill to go. We had a little rest bite at the alpine pass of Le Creux- a deserted collection of mountain huts just below the summit bowl. The feeling of this place was just magical- so isolated (with no road access) and so beautiful. If it wasn’t for the 2 hour up hill slog to get there…it would be just the sort of place we would love to live. Another 1.5 hours above Le Creux and we made the summit. The far side of the summit plummeted vertically downwards into the valley- not the best place to test our head for heights. We sat tentatively on the summit for about 20 minutes chatting to some British seasonaires, had some pictures clinging to the summit cross and then headed downwards for 5km of pure pain- we always find the downhill more painful than the grind of the uphill.
Absolutely broken, we decided that we needed to treat ourselves to a campsite for the night, a hot shower and a hefty dose of clothes washing after a week on the road! Our choices in the valley were limited, with only 2 campsites to choose from- both traditionally French- but with one having horrific reviews of crazy French owners- we chose the other! Le Solerey in Saint jean d’Aulps was a lovely, simple campsite that gave us everything that we needed. That night we celebrated our 500th night in Nelson-quite a milestone- with some raclette and some Saumur fizz. In addition to that, it was also the 1st Sept- our first official day of early retirement and also our first day in over 30+ years when we would not get paid!
Next up…moving to Les Gets- home of the Mountain Biking World Championships. Check out part 7 of our summer adventures here.
Comments