The finale is the 'Ultime Session' on the pistes - a weekend of fooling around skiing, mountain biking and dressing up in silly disguises. As the theme is Mexico this year, I imagine a vast quantity of beer with slices of limes stuck in the bottle neck will be consumed! Some of the clubs had their last weekend yesterday and going through the village on Saturday afternoon the bars seemed to be filled with those on a Happy Hour, before starting the serious stuff later on...
Relief! In one week, the resort will revert to a small mountain village of about 3,000 residents, the free buses that go round the village (and past my door) from 8.00 a.m. to 8.00 p.m. will cease, no queues in the supermarket and general peace and quiet! It's marvellous and until the middle of June, when the summer season starts, the resort is a lovely place to live. My little black friend and I can now walk in the mountains and often not meet another soul apart from the occasional deer and the marmots with their piercing warning whistle as we approach. Angus is of course fascinated with the marmots - his basic Terrier instinct tells him this is the nearest thing to a badger although fortunately he has never seen one! It is their enormous terriers that attract him but being slightly weedy, he stands at the entrance and sniffs but totally lacks the courage to go in and investigate, thank goodness!
The summer season is however a more sedate affair - firstly, far less people and none of the skiing frenzy. Many mountain walkers and each year more and more mountain bikers. The ski lifts reopen from mid June to mid September and the 'baskets' for holding skis on the outside of the cabins are replaced with hooks for the bikes. I admit to preferring the bikers to the skiiers - when you are walking in the mountains, they go to great lengths to avoid hitting you as they hurtle downwards by calling out or slowing down, whereas the skiiers invariably are not in control of their skis or their speed and tend to hurl insults as they careen by - even though they are on a 'sentier pedestre' and shouldn't be there in the first place...
And of course, at the end of July is the Verbier Festival (if you click on my Verbier link which takes you to the Verbier homepage you will find all the information). The Festival lasts three weeks with concerts every day in the village - some of which are free. The main concerts are every evening at 7 p.m. at the top of the village, and as there is no car access, it is lovely to see people strolling up to the venue in their evening clothes to assist - a far cry from the clumping of ski boots and the potentially lethal skis being carried on skiers' shoulders. There are also concerts in the church and many of the bars have musical afternoons or evenings with a string quartet. The Festival is also an Academy and invests a lot of time and money in young and upcoming talent, who have the chance to play with some of the most important conductors and musicians currently around.
The wild flowers are starting to appear timidly and before too long the cows with their enormous clunking bells will be moved up to the high alpine pastures to feed on the grass, herbs and wild flowers that seem to be three times taller than I knew in France or in England. Angus will no longer speed around in Scotty fashion but will start doing rabbit impersonations trying to get his bearings in the long grass and I shall pick bunches of wild lupins to bring home.
Monday afternoon : I have just added three photos of wild flowers but have no idea of their names as I don't have a book on alpine wild flowers. They are all minute - none of them more than 5cm high.
15 comments:
Enjoy having Verbier all to yourself, Louise. And what a pleasure that must be.
Louise
Very clever. these are old plastic flowers from your house. I can see the cumulated dust on them. They are called plasticus dusticus
Shhh...don't give away my secrets, Richard. And they are non dusticus as I've done the spring cleaning.
It is SO nice to be back in Toronto, even though last night's flight from Newfoundland was delayed and crowded. I've had enough of snow and ice over the past few days to last me for a while. Off to a different kind of desert in California and Arizona next week; hot rather than frigid. But even Toronto, at 15 degrees, seems balmy.
This just dropped into my email in-basket. I don't usually pass these things along but it's too good not to share. Someone at Google has a sense of humour:
1. go to www.google.com
2. click on "maps"
3. click on "get directions"
4. type "New York" in the first box (the "from" box)
5. type "London" in the second box (the "to" box)
(hit get directions)
6. scroll down to step #23
Good to have you back Bill!
I hope everyone has been reading Bill's reports in the Toronto Star of the sealing boats stuck in the ice in Newfoundland.
Like the Google link - who would have thought Google geeks could be amusing?!
Been clubbing a few pups Bill?
It's 28 degrees here in Orléans, with no rain. It looks more like the month of august with everything dried out. I'll soon have locusts and cactii in my garden.
So global warming has hit Orléans, has it? Here too, but I'm not sure how the cactii will take to the winter.
They don't club them, they shoot them. And the million or so we saw out on the ice were all adults. Ironically, the cull quota was cut this year because global warming meant there was less ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence -- where the hunt starts -- so more of the young seals were drowning. Which appears to be more acceptable than shooting to the hunt opponents. I've had some interesting emails. A number of people, several in southern California, would like to see me die a painful death.
And I bet they are all super health conscious and eat loads of fish - well, the odd ones the seals haven't eaten.
Nice to see a new post, Louise...I kept logging on to your page and seeing a lump of raw, bloody flesh...it made me feel a bit faint :-)
I do love the mountains in the spring, with all those flowers and streams and cascades...I hope I can get fit enough to walk up one this year.
The Google geeks are very amusing. Didn't you see all the April Fool's jokes they did? There was one about getting free ADSL through the sewer system, complete with mode d'emploi!
Do admit that a large lump of raw meat is not too easy to cope with if you are a vegetarian, Gigi! But what meat!
Mind you, Bill has been eating moose and seal flipper pie these last few days...seal? Yuk!
I'm only a semi-vegetarian - it's just the texture of red meat that does it for me - puts me right off.
However, I have had some unusual meaty experiences in my past: I've eaten hedgehog, alligator liver, bush rat, porcupine and...probably, although nobody would admit to it - monkey and dog.
And I like fish so a bit of seal flipper pie would probably go down quite well...
Mmmmm...interesting, to say the least! But think I'll be boring and stay with the cow! Although I'm sure a lot of it is mind over matter. Ate crocodile in Florida and it was delicious. Apparently snake is too. Bill said that seal was horrid - probably like crunching cod liver oil capsules!
I'll try most things but I draw the line at seal (there again, I'm allergic to fish and seafood) but snake is very good indeed and supposedly great for warding off colds in winter. When I was in China a few years ago, I also sampled... but no, you don't want to know about that.
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