Autor: Ania

Trou de la Mouche (2467 m)

Already before coming to France I made a list of places I want to hike. Trou de la Mouche (2467 m) was marked red in it so that I don’t miss it by chance! And finally, we made it! We started from a valley, already having beautiful views on a very hot day.

We soon went out of a tourist and animals’ bell ringing zone and started some more serious hiking through pebbles and rocks.

That’s a first look on our destination place:

Trou de la Mouche (Hole of a Fly) is basically an arch in a rock. We could see it for the most time of our ascent which made it pleasent to hike (it’s always motivating to be able to see the aim). But before reaching it we needed to get past the valley still covered in snow at some parts, then climb the ridge and made a last-ditch effort of almost a vertical climb to La Trou. But we were rewarded…

Although the clouds were lurking for us we were just in time to see a beautiful view on the valley, Mont Blanc and la Trou. Really splendid!

A short break to enjoy the views and grab a bite and off we go down at the other side of the arch, getting away from the clouds. That side of the rock was as nice as the other one!

Rochers de Naye (2042 m)

Our today hike – Rochers de Naye – was supposed to be one of the most picturesque ones along the lake Geneva. We didn’t really have much (any) possibility to learn that. Despite the forecasts, we hiked with our colleagues Elina and Matthias in the clouds and the only moment we could see kind of a view was from the car park (see photo below) in the beginning and towards the end of the hike. However, this was not a wasted time due to two events…
Event one: cave exploring. The entrance looked really innocently but it turned out to be pretty long, humid, cold and complex. Radek was the first one to enter and we all followed using our flashlights to lighten the path in front of us. It felt adventourous.

Event two: sheep rescuing. Was it because of the fog or because of the bad fence – no matter the reason, we encountered sheep tangled in nets. Twice. I really don’t know the procedures in such cases, I may just hope we did what was the best – freed them.

Other than that our hike continued without perturbance. I really regret not seeing the views that should be really spectacular. However, nothing lost. Now that we know the route we can come back here some sunny day.

We could easily tell it was a fun summit. Situated at its foot Montreux is known as Lac Leman riviera and Rochers de Naye are reachable from there by train. Thanks to that a lot of tourists visit this mountain and it shows… Alpine garden, yurts, fancy restaurant, signposts and picnic places make it a very popular destination not only for hikers.

 A little obstacle on our way back:

The river wild

For once bad weather turned out to be a blessing… I booked our white water rafting session 2 months ago as a birthday present for Radek and were looking forward to it ever since, so when the rain didn’t stop to fall we were a bit annoyed. But thanks to that the Dranse river was pretty raging, thus giving us a lot of fun! The rafting took a bit less than two hours (normally it would be longer but the river was very fast that day). What can I say more… It was a blast. I couldn’t stop grinning. See yourself in this 'best of moments’ video we did:

Salève hiking (1379 m)

We’ve seen Salève a couple of times already but we never actually hiked it. Today was a good day to change it so we set off on the route with our friends Kim and Derek.
Salève is not really high but there is a galore of routes around. We chose the one through a Cave of Orjobet on the way up and Grande Gorge on the way down with a little detour to see the paorama on the Alps.

We did a pause at the Haute-Savoie sign painted on the rock and then continued to soon reach the top where we could see Lake Geneva and the Alps.

Mont Blanc hid from us this time but no worries, we’ll get to see it a lot of times in the future.

Teppes de Verbois

We felt a bit lazy today so we decided to have a walk close to the Verbois dam. We already knew the terrain because we were there in winter (see this post) but summer views differ a lot. It’s a nice walk, through a forest, down the emerald river and past the ponds, through a village of Russin and the neighbouring fields. I bet it will be beautiful in autumn – we might check that this year!

Creux de l’Envers

We have been very unlucky when it comes to our weather choices in here. One thing I learnt: never trust the forecasts around. But it is frustrating really – not to be able to say if the day will be good enough to get out or not. Saturday was supposed to be all gloomy and rainy so we stayed home. To our annoyence, it was a beautiful day. So on Sunday, as soon as it stopped raining, having looked at the forecasts which said: „don’t you worry, it won’t rain any more” we decided to have a walk at the footstep of Jura. When we set off it was sunny but the clouds were kind of forming as you can see in these photos.

At some point it became a bit more dramatic so we started rushing back to our car hoping that the rain wouldn’t catch us (I mean, we can stand a storm, but we were afraid about our baby boy health). And then, suddenly, the storm began! I mean it all happened in a split second, it became really cold and really windy, heavy rain dropped and turned into hail almost immediately. Oh boy, oh boy, where can we hide? We even didn’t have time to react because almost immediately a car pulled over and a nice lady offered us a lift to our car. Thank you, nice lady, you saved us! Our son even didn’t get wet.

That last photo was taken seconds before the storm. Well, you never know about the weather in mountains!

Les Gorges du Fier

Can you spot an outline of faces in the photo above? Such marvels of nature can be found in Gorges du Fier – a beautiful site by the river Fier which has carved those narrow passes in the solid rock.
The footbridge is installed at a stupendous height of 25 m.

The trail started with a view over the Fier river, then through a rock portal into a narrow canyon where light reflexes extracted all different colours of the rock and water. After a while we reached „La Mer de Rochers” – the sea of boulders. We watched in terror a guy jumping to the gorge from the rocks. No, he’s not a suicider (although it surely looked like he was!). At the end of the trail there was a wild beach with plenty of people bathing in sun and water. Man, why didn’t we take our bathing suits? That’s a reason to come back again some day!

Family visit: Broc, Gruyères, Montreux

We are having guests this week – my sister and cousin have come to us from Szczecin. They will be here only for a couple of action-packed days. The very first one -a must on a map of the nearby attractions – Broc, Gruyères, Montreux tour. Radek did the exact same tour with our friends (see this post), now it’s my turn with family.
We started with a Cailler chocolate factory in Broc followed by Gruyeres cheese house and the village of the same name. Our last destination was Montreux- always beautiful, but truly spectacular by the sunset.

Discovering France and Switzerland in spring

My love turned into spring windstorm –
Into spring windstorm – my madness into storm –
Into storm – my ecstasy into dreamy thrill –
Into dreamy thrill – spring of May into roses. –
From windstorm my new love flows –
New love – from storm frenzy will explode –
Frenzy will explode – dream will bring up ecstasy,
Spring will rise from a rosy bath.

/Untitled, Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska/

translated by Julia Waszczuk

Spring is here! After a not so fierce winter we got to experience flowers and bird songs pretty early this year. I am happy at this time of year because it means that we are able to make more walks and trips, thus getting to know different places. So here are some of the photos we took this spring.

Saint Genis Pouilly

Pregnin:

Yvoire:

Chalex:

Ajon:

Saleve:

View on Geneva:

Lovettaz:

Lausanne: