We woke up this morning – again at 9am, I think our kids are broken – to views of the magnificent cliffs of the Vercors. Being surrounded by cliffs on all sides means that the sun’s down early and up late. It also means relatively cold nights. We were slow to start up, and after breakfast it was soon past 11am. As usual, no plans for today, but there would probably be something to hike to.
In an attempt to reach that ‘something’, we put Rafa in his stroller, tied Lara in her sling, and just walked along the street. Narrow valleys also mean few level hiking trails other than the paved roads, but at least it was quiet – very little traffic. On the roads it was pretty damn hot, though. We hiked for about half an hour to a faucet that said ‘eau potable’, so our ‘something’ had been reached. It felt like quite a struggle to get there. Am I getting weak, or old? Or both? Next to the faucet we at least had an incredible view over the valley ahead. The sign posts indicated that there was a hydropower station and a dam at 35min, but we just gave up. The views on the small dammed lake were good enough.
The way back was remarkably easy – too easy. It turned out that we weren’t so much struggling with sun or stroller alone, but the hill we walked up was much steeper than we realized. So although I may be getting older and weaker, it is not as bad as it felt. We are just bad at choosing the right battles. Or campsites. (This one closes the bar almost the entire afternoon, and afternoons without coffee make me cranky)
Robin Heinen 