Framedlight

The end of the day was fine so we took the van back into the Vanoise and after a short walk cooked sausages in the car park and ate them with pommes frites and haricots verts!

It is only a short drive down from Montchavin, across the valley and up a narrow road to get to the edge of the Vanoise National Park, the first national park to be founded in France This runs over the border with Italy to become the Gran Paradiso. By the time we set out it was well into the afternoon and while there was not the deep mounds of snow that I would have liked, the road was still icy approaching the mountains and a scatter of snow appeared on the lower slopes. We parked at the end of the road and got out and walked into through the small mountain village of La Gurraz which was largely uninhabited, used probably for summer homes. A path lined with trees leads to a large abandoned dwelling which I think was once a monastery. As we were meandering around the weather came in and snow flurried down. The sky grew dark, and as it was getting late anyway we headed for the car. We got back to Montchavin to see the sunset over th

We drove for over an hour through rather murky conditions until we reached the town of Lanslebourg in the Mont-Cenis ski area, still in the Vanoise. The town had some old, pleasantly rundown housing and posters for a film on the children's book 'Belle et Sébastien', which was also a TV series Alan enjoyed as a child. We continued further south still following the Arc river. The road name had changed from the D902 to the D1006. By late lunchtime we came across the bastion of a fort at the side of the road and stopped for a look. They had a convenient car park where we ate (we normally had a baguette, Camembert and maybe a little Parma ham for lunch) and then set out for an exploration. The river Arc here cuts through a deep gorge.There was a fort on the roadside and another, bigger one across the gorge, the Victor-Emmanuel fort, very impressively sitting on a rocky crag. These are part of a series of 5 forts, the Esseillon barrier, built in the 19th century to protect the

It was suggested to me by Ian that I convert a few of the pictures from Col de l'Iseran to black and white, so here they are! They were processed using Nik Silver Efex pro 2. Sorry if there are different versions of the same thing, I am still trying to assess which I prefer.

Early the next morning we reached the top of the Col de l'Iseran. At 2,770m it is almost the highest paved road in the French Alps. I say almost as the road climbing over the Col de la Bonnette, further south than the Iseran rises to 2715m, but a loop has been created to take in the top of the mountain, supposedly to top the Iseran at 2802m! It is bare, bleak and rocky at the top of the Col de l'Iseran, and when we were there the mountains were full of cloud. There is a stone church which fits into the rugged terrain and the laybys had a number of old sports cars in them, driving the Route des Grandes Alpes. We had now passed over the watershed from the Val de l'Iseran to the Val de l'Arc. Here are the pictures. The first is taken on the way up to the top of the col and the last is a panorama, taken looking down on Val d'Isere, stitched from 15 individual images.