Tag: France

Night Above Jura

I’ve wanted to make some photos of the night sky for long time. First I did’t have lenses bright enough, then I did’t have any opportunity to be in a remote place at night. I hoped to do the photos when I arrive at CERN. I live in a very small town close to the mountain so in a few minutes I can reach a place with no light pollution. But for the first one and a half month of my stay here the weather was awful. Fortunately last week the weather changed and there were two cloudless nights.
So at 19:00 I drove to a place that I spotted earlier and waited until the sun set. While waiting I made a short TimeLaps:

After 10 pm I started shooting and I think that this photos were worth all this waiting. Enjoy:

Sunny Jura

One again I hit the track of Le Reculet. This time the whether was better, snow was less slippery and I had trekking bats. But once again I didn’t reach the top. During the trip I had a few nice encounters, though:

Also there was a lot of spectacular views, without the mist 😉

Unfortunately not so far away from Le Reculet top I was forced to turn back because there was too much snow. When I fell into snow up to my chest and I needed to dig myself out I decided that this was time to go back home. Nevertheless, because of beautiful weather and spectacular view, this day was totally successful.

Foggy Jura

Today I did my first mountain hike. The weather was not perfect, but in the end mountains get a very majestic look when in clouds, so it’s worth hiking even without the sun. I tried hiking the most well-known summit – le Reculet (1717 m).

Higher parts where covered in the soft snow and it was difficult to walk ahead without snow shoes. On top of that, I didn’t see any trail sign (everything was covered in snow) and the fog made the view limited, so in the end, I didn’t reach the cross which stands on the top of the mountain. But that’s fine, I will have plenty of opportunities yet to climb le Reculet. Most probably I’ll have a next trial the next week.

Foggy Ségny

Today we went for a longer walk around Ségny. As you can see from the photo above, it wasn’t sunny. I bet that Jura mountains would look spectacular, if only we could have seen them through the mist.
Anyway, I liked the walk, so different from the usual city-walks in Szczecin. I really appreciate that it takes only 5 minutes on foot from our place to find ourselves in the middle of nature – with horses, cows, wild birds and who knows what else.

Sunny Ségny

Our first day in France. After settling in we went for a walk round the village we are staying. Ségny is really a dot on a map – it has around 1600 inhabitants and there is not much to see or do except for walking or riding a bike. Of course, there is a fromagerie (cheese shop) and a boulangerie (bakery) which are „the musts” in every French city.

 

Did I mention it  was sunny? Seriously, it was. I just love the weather in this region.
Anyway… The village is super calm and super pretty. The view on Jura mountains is spectacular and unbroken by civilization. It’s a pity we will have to move out from the place. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that other villages in the neighbourhood are equally charming. And even if we find ourselves in a bigger city – it will be still 5 minutes ride from the countryside. The nature is omnipresent here and I love it!

Since the weather was so lovely (did I mention that?), when we reached the end of the village, we decided not to finish our exploring walk and to move to a different place from the neighbourhood. I remembered nice spots from 3 years ago, when I was at CERN so we went to Versoix – a beautiful place on the shore of Geneva lake. But on our way there we saw a sign saying „Chateau Coppet” meaning „Look out for some fancy castle in the village named Coppet”, so we passed by.

As I already said, the villages around are rather petit, even Geneva itself is not a very big city (around 200 000 citizens) so after a moment spent in Coppet we moved to Versoix which is known for chocolate factory „Favarger”. You’ll see many more photos from Versoix soon because in March there will be a chocolate festival that Radek definitely won’t miss. For now just a teaser.