You're viewing the comments posted on the entries, photos, and maps for this journal. Want to add a comment of your own? Click anywhere you see the icon within a journal entry. Go to the most recent entry in this journal.
Great. More later, but in the meantime I’ll keep a good eye on you. Rachael commented that I apparently also have an eye for black humor, which is true.
2 weeks agoComments or private correspondence are both fine! I've only visited the western edge of the Alps, on our 2017 tour that copied the first half of yours from 2015, and a few places in Switzerland and around Chamonix back in 1981 on my train-and-backpack trip after graduating from university. I really doubt many guidebooks cover the little towns and villages on our route, except maybe as ski areas.
We'd love a meet-up if the timing works!
What an exciting trip for you Jacquie! I’m sure I’ll have many thoughts and comments on this, probably spaced out over time as I have time to think about it. Would you like them all as comments in the blog, or as private correspondence?
Also though, I’m interested in your timeline. Assuming we get to go to Europe this spring there’s a fair chance we could cross paths somewhere south of Annecy, where we’re tentatively planning a meetup in late May with Susan, Suzanne and Janos. We should keep in touch and watch each other’s spaces for possibilities.
Oh, I like your plan a lot. Galibier, Croix de la Fer, Izouard, and it looks like you’re going to ride (down presumably?) the Lacets of Montvernier. They look like a mini-Stelvio, and one we’d have certainly done ten years ago if I’d known they existed. I’d still love to go back and pick them up some day.
2 weeks agoRegarding our own plans, and the chances for a meetup somewhere. We’re planning on an age appropriate old folks tour, one where we train from one base to the next for a series of regional mini tours of maybe two or three weeks each. We plan to fly in and out of Pisa and work our way north to Annecy for the hoped-for meetup with friends, and then work our way south again.
We’ve started sketching out a plan, looking for attractive areas that are on or close to a train line in case weather turns foul or if I have to suddenly fly home for medical reasons or whatever. We’ve already got our prime suspects identified so I can see the most possible spots where we might cross paths.
The first is near your start, in Annecy and Chambery. We’re looking at staying several days in each, or possibly in Aix instead of Chambery. And the other is Briancon. It’s got good connections by train both north and south surprisingly enough, and it’s a place I’d dearly love to see again. It’s the only spot in our month-long tour that we took a layover day. If it works out I’d like to stay several days and take out and backs to Izouard and Galibier while Rachael takes a hike.
Oh, and possibly the same thing in Le Chambre or St Jean de Maurienne, where I could have another crack at Coiz de Fer or Glandon and make my way to the Lacets this time. I think that’s about it for our chances for a meetup though, so let’s keep in touch.