Sainte Foy Tarentaise
Day 50: Sunday 03 May 2020
Shortly after midday today, the earth moved! Car alarms went off and you could hear trees snapping amongst a thunderous roar of noise. Sainte Foy was smothered in cloud so we had no idea where it was coming from. It was an unnerving wait in the eerie stillness of a whiteout.
It was an avalanche. A very big avalanche. But where?
Although the sonic boom had triggered car alarms, we didn’t get any follow through wind blowing in, so it wasn’t directly above us. And anyway, we are not on any avalanche runoff path here in Sainte Foy station, so we don’t need to worry about that.
Mid afternoon the cloud cleared, and we could see the extent of the avalanche across the valley on one of Mont Pourri‘s huge scree slopes. It looks impressive, and I would love to have seen it happen.
Day 51: Monday 04 May 2020
Whenever the wind blows up the valley, I always get the feeling that it blows in change. Today is no exception, winter is being blown away and the wind is telling us that Spring is officially here.
Of course, here in the Alps it can be spring in the valleys and still winter higher up the mountain. This is certainly the case at the moment. There is still lots of snow above Plan Bois, but here in the centre of Sainte Foy resort at 1,500m there are only a few remaining patches in the more shaded areas, and only the season’s earliest flowers are in bloom.
La Thuile, (the small hamlet where the road out of Sainte Foy resort meets the main Bourg to Val d’Isère road), sits at 1,250m and the cows are out enjoying the spring pasture. Further down the valley in Bourg Saint Maurice, at 820m, spring is even more advanced, and at this time of year you could be forgiven for thinking you had travelled through time, right into summer!
Day 52: Tuesday 05 May 2020
There’s nothing like a state lockdown and deprivation of personal liberty to bring a community together, so tonight I carried out my little gesture of neighbourly goodwill. It’s not much, but as I’m heading to Bourg tomorrow to get some supplies, I messaged around asking people if they wanted anything.
It’s our version of donging the town bell to announce the latest shopping recovery mission, and several people do this locally. The idea is not to collect the entirety of someone’s weekly shopping list, but more to provide a welcome method of getting the item you most need but forgot to get yourself.
Day 53: Wednesday 06 May 2020
Today it rained, rained, and rained some more. I watched Netflix all day. It is a lockdown after all.
Day 54: Thursday 07 May 2020
There was a big announcement today. Savoie has been accredited with green status, meaning that we have sufficiently low enough numbers of new CoVid-19 cases, and sufficiently high enough capacity of hospital beds, should they be needed for these cases.
Green status is supposedly good if you want to travel up to 100km from where you live and want to meet up in groups of up to ten people. Everybody is planning little parties to celebrate the ‘déconfinement’, and mask wearing is now ‘de rigueur’ as the socially accepted norm. I’m left wondering if the country which invented nude sunbathing will ever allow naked faces in public again.
Day 55: Friday 08 May 2020
A company called Acrobati is working its way around the resort, sanding and treating the woodwork on a few buildings. The treatment on woodwork protects the wood and improves the aesthetics. Here is a before and after picture to show what I mean.
Different types of wood are used when building a chalet. The strongest and most resistant to weathering is ‘mélèze’, larch, which is the only conifer which loses its needles in winter. A deciduous conifer! If you see untreated, grey looking wood on a chalet, then it is usually mélèze. Leaving wood to go grey is one form of maintenance, but personally I prefer the rich vibrancy for a well maintained and regularly treated set of woodwork.
Douglas fir is also a strong wood, and this is the wood in the photographs above. Other pine is much softer and requires much more frequent treatment.
Day 56: Saturday 09 May 2020
It was baking day today. I love the satisfaction of kneading bread, taking the sticky dough and pummelling it into a lovely stretchy and much less sticky dough, ready for proving and baking. Sourdough uses the natural yeasts in the air, and is a process that has been used since Jesus was a lad, although I doubt he would have been able to pour a tin of Heinz baked beans all over a couple of rounds of his sourdough toast!
