Felicity's birthday week

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10 December days in England

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Swiss air brought us to England (Apologies for the formatting issues). My six oldest friends live in England, within around 20 miles of each other, along with their six partners and 14 children.  We haven't been to England in the winter in nearly a decade. It was unsurpsingly grey and somewhat surprisingly very dark, very early.  Ottawa is on the same latitude as Rome.  Our "true North" is suprisingly far south.  All of this English gloom was no equal to the congenial cheer that was in full flow in the run up to Christmas - the sunshine of friendship radiating through the pale fog.  We had a very smooth taxi-bus-plane-taxi trip from Chamonix back to Woking and were settled just in time to wave our generous hosts, Nick and Agnes, off to London for their Van Gogh and Shard dinner engagements to celebrate the anniversary of their first date.  We were comfortably house bound for the first couple of days awaiting what else but a covid test result.  When it...
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An Alpine cycling adventure - Part II

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Day 6 - Barcelonnette to St Dalmas, 123 km (76 mi) Cols passed: Col de Cayolle (2326 m), Col de la Couillole (1678 m) Despite the brooding skies we left Barcelonnette cheered by dry shorts, confidence that we were within touching distance of our goal and enjoying the atmospheric effect of the wispy mist, high clouds and soft sunlight. Our hopes for the newly adapted route were met and surpassed as we wound our way up a stunning gorge towards Col de Cayolle. Despite a brief hailstorm as we approached the col we stayed dry and enjoyed a pit-stop and blankets amongst the snow pack on the col before negotiating over 1500 m of patchy wet descent to Guillames at 793 m. The high Alps now behind us we climbed back up through the ski resort of Valberg and on to the Col de la Couillole up at 1678 m and rolled back down to 500 m where we expected to spend the night. Our ever-supportive support team had other ideas however and let us know by way of text message that they had found a fantastic ca...
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The final week, Chamonix

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No sooner back from Paris than attentions turned to taking advantage of the snow and making the most of our final few days in Chamonix.  Sadly, none of the ski areas in the valley are to open before we leave so we went to Verbier in Switzerland instead.  This required hiring a car, renting some skis (we live on top of the shop and they gave us a ridiculous rate 🙂), buying some snow pants (we will always make good use of snow pants in Canada! ☃), and driving 1.5 hours through some deep snow and an ongoing blizzard.  But the kids have now skied in the big mountains!    Owing to my chairlift phobia I reluctantly stayed on the ground, went for a hike, and met these charming folks. Check out Crystal's FB for rad shots of the slopes... The Swiss village of Serryer Hot chocolate with Toby in Verbier Driving to Verbier was snowy We kept the car for Sunday, and Crystal and Toby headed down to St Gervais for his final hockey tournament.  He really loves this sport....
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