King of the Mountains.......

Hi everybody nice to see that the views of the blog are good more than we expected.We had a lovely time at Mum & Alan's house and were fed very well indeed but we did treat them one night and cook for them both but Mum just couldn't resist and ended up doing the potatoes and some gravy.
Second to last day the sun was well and truly out so after a few odd jobs for them Julie & i went for a long walk and I must say the area they live in is lovely.

Obviously after a long walk in the sun we had to replace some lost fluids so it was to Mum's local Bar
in her village for a well earned beer in the sun.

On our last night we were invited to some of Mum & Alan's friends who live right in the village, Thierry & Francoise.   As you walk the cobbled streets of the village with small doorways to either side the houses look tiny but as we came across Theirry & Francoise's doo way it looked no different but when the door opened the interior was vast like a tardis, just amazing it was like three houses joined and all sorts of pictures, books and sculptures hidden away in nooks and crannies. Theirry had cooked some locally shot venison which he explained had been cooked five times which is a authentic way of doing it and it was super tender then it was dessert and drinks and time to hit the sack as we were up early to leave on route to Meribel.
The drive across to Meribel was doable in a day but why rush when you have all the time in the world  so Julie got the map out and said let's head for the Millau Viaduct as we had only ever seen it on Top Gear with boys racing across it in fast cars, we had had rain all the way from Mum's but luckily on arrival the cloud and rain cleared enough for a quick photo.

Julie had already looked up or stopover for the night in a little alpine village called Florac so off we headed via the A75 which climbed to an altitude of 891m, some of the scenery was out of this world then slowly we dropped down toward Florac via far too many hair pin bends for my liking and our Aire for the night was at the bottom of the valley.

Today we left Florac and had to now climb all the hair pin bends back up to the top to head of towards Mende we then joined the N88 and N182 straight through the Monts D'Ardeche which is again a huge mountain region with more bends and climbs but picture post card scenery and the icing on the cake was a dusting of snow which was a bit to heavy in places but just got us more excited for Meribel.

One of the tree lined roads into a village.

We arrived in Meribel this afternoon where it has been snowing all day but luckily the roads where clear so we didn't have to christen the snow chains.

Thats it for now we are both looking forward to hitting the slopes and being settled here for a while.

J&J xx