Monday, 1 August 2016

WA3 - Saint Jeans de Sixt - Rhône-Alpes

08:27:00 No comments

What an amazing 16 days!!!

Le Tour de France - camping before stage 20
Cycling in the French Alps
Overnight hike/camp
Climbing over 2500m to see Mont Blanc
BBQ's, basketball, table tennis, pavlova.
Visiting Annecy
Via ferrata (rock climbing) - to be complete on Tuesday 2nd Aug.
An American, a Czech, a few Brits, a Danish, a Mexican, a New Zealander and an Irish lass.

All in between about 60hrs of work painting, sanding, staining, masking.... we have had an absolute blast!!

So for the last couple of weeks we've been 'stuck' in a small town called Saint-Jeans-de-Sixt in the heart of some of the French Alps ski resorts. This is our third Workaway helping with some DIY at an 18 room hotel.

Since we've been here we've done an overnight hike up to Lake Lessy, I've borrowed a bike from our hosts and done about 150km, we saw part of Stage 20 of Le Tour - and we've met some great workawayers and have been trying our best to live the dream.

The view of the town outside our workaway hotel

Work to date has included staining windows and a lot of sanding.

Saturday 16th July

We traveled from Carpentras to our third workaway at Saint Jeans de Sixt over a couple of days via train, stopping in Chambery one night, exploring Aix-Les-Bains with our Airbnb host and seeing some of Chambery. France just keeps getting better as we continue to thoroughly enjoy this country. The kindness of the French is pretty overwhelming and all our experiences so far have been well and truly positive.

Harvest is well underway in France

Chambery Chateau

Really charming French apartments

Ok, so this place was sweet - you get a card and load it up with money. Along one wall of this sort of pub is a selection of beer and cider. You tap this card next to the beer tap of your desired froth and pour your own. 10euro got us a taste of nearly each beer they had to offer. Pretty unique experience for a little craft brewery!!

Early morning running to try and keep fit!

Lake Aix-les-Bains - biggest natural lake in France
How about the colours, no sand though which was a shame. The entry to the water was rocky and awkward. The stones uncomfortable under foot. I take our beaches for granted. The water was surprisingly warm!

Cycling - in the alps. Our workaway host's offer this cycling thing during summer Bike Weekender - within this they also offer bikes to hire. Pretty decent bikes at that - Scott CR1 team edition. They've been kind enough to let me borrow one along with a helmet, pedals and shoes so I could explore some of the climbs here.

At the Col (summit) of the first category climb of Stage 20 of this year's Tour de France.

Not the bike I've been riding, but one of a french bloke who I've ridden with - it is an ex IAM Cycling training bike which he bought for 2000Euros complete. Scott is the most popular bike brand in this area. 4 out of 5 bikes here whether it is a road or mountain bike is a Scott brand.

Wednesday 20th July - Lake Lessy hike (3hrs one way) and camp out.

The beginning of our overnight trek.

Anthon, our American workaway legend and photographer - http://anthonjackson.com/

The goat track across the ridge before dropping into Lake Lessy

We really felt on top of the world - the climb hit about 2050m above sea level.

Myself with Martin (from Czech Republic) - I was shagged because I'd ridden that morning and I'm well out of bike condition.

Reaching Lake Lessy

Lake Lessy - our campsite for the night

Descending the climb the other side of the mount the next day

Hard to tell but this track was brutally steep! carrying tents, some tucker etc. had the knees in all sorts.

Friday 22nd July - Camp-out at Col de la Columbiere for Stage 20 of Le Tour.

Our camp for the night before

Shrimp on the barby

The green tents was our campsite - this is the view from where we watched the stage. We could see the riders for about 3km up the climb. I rode this climb earlier in the week and it took me 46min, on the day the Pro's took 28min - and I wasn't bludging.

Cheeky froth before the stage

July 29th - A trip to Annecy

Annecy is 30km downhill from Saint Jean, but we thought we'd try our hand at hitchhiking and we were pretty successful, within about a minute we had a ride to Thones - part of the way. We then caught a bus the rest of the way. Everyone we've spoken to about Annecy said how beautiful it is. We'd only seen the bus station at this stage when we were picked up for our workaway - and it didn't seem overly exciting so we weren't sure what we were in for.

But it didn't disappoint. Lake Annecy was so clear and blue, and the old building surrounding canal and the opening of the lake to the town was amazing!

Via Ferrata - we agreed to go on an afternoon 'via ferrata' with one of the workaway host's mates and initially we didn't really know what we were in for. We knew we needed a harness and we'd be clipped onto a rope during a hike. We all imagined that we'd be walking along a reasonably difficult walk/hike which may be steep or require the aid of the cable incase we misplaced a foot. What we experienced was so, so much better!! Via Ferrata is pretty much rock climbing, just with the aid of an already established route, cable and steps made out of rio or steel. The experience was awesome, we had such a ball, saw some more awesome views and otherwise had a ripper afternoon!

The Via Ferrata we undertook was the Colombiere, the same mount we camped next to when we watched stage 20 of Le Tour. We climbed 490m vertical to 2000m in roughly 4 hours.

A leisurely stroll turned into something pretty special including crossing suspension bridges, wooden plank bridges and scaling vertical walls.

Amy capturing - Anthon (an American photographer), followed by Martin (from the Czech Republic), followed by myself and Ricardo (a Mexican studying in France).