Wednesday 17 February 2010

As I walked out one St Valentine's day....

Winter isn't always drab and gray, cold creeping into bones that shiver, lips that turn blue and noses running...


There are places to hike to; raquette to, like here in a side valley off the Vallée d'Abondance in the French Alps. The only sounds are the far off voices of randonneur skiers descending from the chalets at Ardens, it is still too cold for the birds to sing; at least it was on St.Valentine's day, so we came out of our cloud covered refuge and drove up through the lower mists - just to count the diamonds in the snow...

And when we'd counted them all we retraced our raquette tracks and went home, made some lunch, poured some wine, and settled down to watch England play rugby against the Italians in Rome, and in the words of Mr Dury, "What a waste..."