The Hills are Alive

Days 17-18 Lorgues/Aix les Bains

Goodbye beautiful abode and stunning Provence. House gleaming, we left Villa des Roses and headed for Aix les Bains.

Our journey was on the long side for us – 4.5 hours not including stops – but the time seemed to fly by. That’s what happens when you know you’re nearly at the end of your trip, the sun is shining and the weather is awful at home. Still, three weeks is long enough and I’m looking forward to seeing family and little ‘uns.

Just a quick aside about the French service stations here in the South of France. They’re amazing. Coffee machines everywhere. Boulangeries that have loads of choice and are reasonably priced, clean loos. Everything is easy to use and no queues.

S was quite concerned about the accommodation we had booked in Aix les Bains. It had no reviews on booking.com, wasn’t new and didn’t show up on any other websites. Normally we wouldn’t bother with it thinking it might be a scam but choice was very limited in ALB so we went ahead and booked.

As it was, there was nothing to worry about. The apartment exists. Squeezing the car into the tiny garage was challenging but otherwise all was well and it’s a very pleasant apartment backing on to a rushing stream.

We dumped our stuff and went straight out to explore the lake. We are 10 minutes walk from the lake and it’s very impressive. Surrounded by mountains, it’s called Lac du Bourget. It’s 18km long, 3km wide and at its deepest point is 145m. I had no idea how long it is and got a very puzzled look when I suggested walking round it.

It’s a spectacular lake where the mountains plunge down to meet the water. However, as far as Aix Les Bains goes, I prefer the prettiness of Annecy and the atmosphere of the old town.

Tired from our car journey and then our walk along the esplanade, we had a quick look at the restaurants around the lake front and decided we were uninspired. We then went to the Spar to get some dinner and were equally uninspired. We ended up with a strange mixture of food . The gyozas were the best thing, I’ll be having those again.

Today we walked to the Croix du Crosuet. It was a nice leg stretcher with a decent amount of ascent but the views were ok rather than amazing.

We decided to walk to the lake beach in Brison St Innocent instead of heading home. Unfortunately we hadn’t brought our swimming gear, so no swimming but we had lunch on the lake shore and it was very pleasant.

Brison is far superior to Aix Les Bains in my book. The houses are older and more of them, whereas ALB is full of apartments. Some of the houses in Brison are very posh – I was particularly attracted to a chateau with a vineyard that tumbled down the hill.

When we got back to our accommodation it was necessary for S to have a snooze while I did some research (read that as flicking through instagram and Facebook) sitting in the sun on the balcony. I shall miss this.

Next, time for a swim in the lake. It took us about 30 minutes to walk there but was well worth it to have a dip in the surprisingly cold lake. It’s been really warm here and full sun all day but hasn’t warmed the water much. I don’t know if the weather is always this warm in September but it’s been very welcome.

Dinner was at The Olive, a pizza restaurant 15 minutes walk away. It was nice but I have had my fill of pizza – normally I don’t even eat cheese and now I feel like a giant mouse. Annoyingly there is a restaurant 2 minutes walk from us which looked as dead as a door nail so we didn’t bother with it but tonight we walked past the back of it and it has a huge garden , full of tables and fairy lights and people having a good time. Grrr!

Tomorrow it’s our penultimate stop on our way home. It’s a place called Chatillon-sur-Seine. No, I’d never heard of it either. I’m hoping that road warriors Jan and Nik haven’t heard of it either and at least we’ll have been somewhere they haven’t!