Woken by the Church clock tolling 7. I heard them ring 3, 4 and 5 and then was aware of the builders doing a roof in the village, banging and crashing like the the Slag Brothers off the Wacky Races.
On the way up to Pila we are nearly hit by a dozy Citroen coming towards us in the middle of the road. We could see our normal route through the village blocked by a cement mixer, and sure enough at the roundabout immediately prior to it there is a totally disinterested workman waving traffic onto the next exit. Around the bend came Mr Citroen, seemingly looking across the valley to our left. He hit his brakes hard and there was a real action movie squeal of his tyres, I was confident I had seen him and moved well over to the right, dodging him comfortably. We have seen quite a bit of lazy lane positioning and I am still totally baffled by Italian speed limits. My Tomtom app on the phone shows me the speed limit but they vary almost at random. If you have a gigantic lorry hurtling towards you in your rear view mirror or are being overtaken by somebody towing a caravan then the chances are that you are still technically breaking the speed limit.
We use my gorilla tripod and iPhone mount to make a video of the last couple of miles up to Pila, complete with hairpins. As a warning it is about 7 minutes long and not a lot happens, except for some giggling about a little old lady, but it brings back happy memories for us.
Hairpins to Pila from Howard Jameson on Vimeo.
I settle back into my office (table 12 in the Bar Seggovia) with a Cafe Americano. The owner spots me and gets my order going without any prompting from me. I like my new office. I aim to walk up to the edge of the tree line to try to get some action photos of the boys coming down one of the banked curve sections on the descent.
I sat here and read Colossian 4 yesterday as F said she had been to Andover Baptist Church on Sunday and that had been the text of the Pastor's final sermon as he too was leaving. I read Ephesians 4 this morning - unity and maturity. Heading up to the bottom of the trails I could look back and see Pila along with the preparations being made for the forthcoming European Cup event.
I made it up to the trees (only slipping on the loose soil once) and get a couple of shots of the boys, one of which we all really like.
We stroll down to the carpark below the Hotel De Neige for our lunch and we hear some of our favourites, the Esbjorn Svensson Trio on the Swiss Jazz Radio being played from the loudspeakers at my desk in the office. We enjoy our baguettes until a Brit campervan drives in and empties his chemical toilet in the drain point, which slightly detracts from the ambience.
Up at this altitude we see more Landy's than normal, and we are thrilled to see that there is an Aosta Valley Land Rover Club. I wonder if they accept temporary members?
It has been good to be able to get away and spend so much time doing quite mundane things (driving and cooking, walking and taking photographs) and having this precious time to let the brain freewheel.I feel I have put some space between now and the last 24 months or so, although I am concerned about going back into the environment that created some of the conflict issues, albeit only for a few weeks. The risk of trying to make a cutting remark as 'the final word' will not being any healing so is useless to try, but it is the sort of thing human nature does so easily. I am also really excited by the next steps and with two months to do some thinking, reading and writing, as well as some visits to Patchway to start to get to know them a little more.
The boys finish their runs and we return to the site. I fall alseep on the beach towel whilst the boys listen to music. T is re-reading the Jeeves and Wooster books again, and we enjoy his throwing in the occasional quote into our in-car conversations. We have Pasta Carbonara for supper (recipe provided from home by F over text as I can't find any Carbonara sauces in the Crai or other supermarkets) and we try a couple of Peroni Gran Riservas (never seen them before but we find them in Sainsbury's when we get home).
Henrik points out that the site doesn't accept credit cards so I head off into Arvier to get some cash from the ATM and take a minute to photograph some of the buildings.
After supper we started organising for packing in the morning and a thunderstorm approaches from the south. T reckons it is still a long way away, but the thuner echoes around the mountians in a really dramatic way. We try to make a video of the flashes of lightning, but only seem to attract the amused attention of our neighbours. Crazy Inglese!
Thunder storm at Arvier from Howard Jameson on Vimeo.
(Just to explain some of the comments at the start of the video clip the hilltop is actually only perhaps 50 feet or so, which makes the pylon out to be about 15 feet tall, but we have been joking all week about how tall it must be to have such a prominient position on that nearby mountain.)
We now have full scale rain forming on the porch roof. I make a video of T trying to sort the puddles out (we always seem to end up videoing T in a tent whilst it is raining!) but it is still coming down really hard - surely this can't last very long! We get a bit of a sunset with storm clouds still around.
Thunder and lightning continue after dark with ever more dramatic flashes and bangs. Eventually is seems to move north and I can count 18 between the flash and the rumble but it is still raining.
T uses his old skill gained as a year 5 member of the Sandford Middle School Moth Club, and identifies a moth that has taken sanctuary in the tent (and flying into our faces when we put our headtorches on). We try to swat the blighter, but he disappears somewhere in the tent's contents. Another flash and this time we only get to 5 before a really big bang. That is loud. The next one is only 3 before the noise hits us. We decide to turn in at about 10:30. Is it calming down?
Miles today - 40.
Comments