23rd June ’99, Wednesday, 1440hrs. Sunny. Chalet, Saint Andeol.
Okay! Bit of a backlog. On Friday, our thirteen minutes changeover was achieved because the other train was late as well, and the next change was a more-than comfortable half-hour break. We arrived in Grenoble at around 2350, and were thankful for booking a hotel close to the train station (if a little expensive at 190F).
The additional cost was more than made up for by the en-suite shower and TV! Watching a late-night French-dubbed episode of the X-files, we fell asleep.
Next morning we woke to a magnificent view of the Alps from the hotel window, and Grenoble. Despite only being in it for a night, it struck Gemma and I as a really nice town. Electric trams, refreshingly modern, slipped quietly past the water fountains through which ran a man and his young daughter on a tricycle, playing just outside our hotel and the station. Add to that a clear blue sky and the sight of distant snow and you have something approaching our impression.
We caught the 10 o’clock train to Monestier-de Clermont, the nearest town of any size to Sant Andeol, and arrived at around eleven, bracing ourselves for a 12 ½ kilometre uphill struggle with our bags and a couple of day’s worth of food and shopping. After about 1km, we stopped for that most serious of reasons – LUNCH> Which consisted of couscous, crisps and water, but was very nice all the same. After finishing my crisps, I stuck my thumb out at the first car for around twenty minutes, which duly stopped, startling Gemma who was still eating! We bundled in, and got a lift as far as St. Guillaume, at around the 7kilometre mark. Not believing our luck, we thanked the chap and turned our attentions to the remaining 5, rather more vertical kilometres. After about one and a half of them, we stopped for a dink and so Gemma could finish her lunch. I went for a wander. After about two minutes I heard a car, and yelled for Gem to stick her thumb out. The sounds of an engine revving down reached my ever-so relieved ears as I bounded back the way I had come. That lift got us all the way to St. Andeol, and the Vallier’s house – the key holders.
We were shown up (very up) to the house and let in. I was pleasantly surprised to see the size of the place – three floors and a cellar, a large (necessarily terraced) garden, piano, guitars (as yet unused by us) and one reasonably stocked bookcase (thank god!). The electrics were on, but the water wasn’t. We hunted for about two hours for the mains valve without joy. The younger Vallier had no idea where it was either. We found it after a phone call from Philip, the owner, who is currently in Dubai.
When I turned it on, water began to gush with alarming force from three places in the cellar ceiling. I switched it off and assessed the damage. A couple of pipes had ruptured their joints, and another had completely come away. The Winters are harsh up here, it seems.
Our total water consisted of the remnants of the drinking water for the day, and a bottle of Aquarius. After filling up a few pans despite the deluge in the cellar, Monsieur Vallier came up to see, and contributed a couple of 10 litre bottles. The next day being Sunday, no plumber could be had, so we survived on our supplies. Monday (when we’d planned to go to Monestier to get a week’s food) the plumber, a carpenter and M.Vallier senior appeared. The plumber, after much seemingly heated debate with M. Vallier, sorted out our problems. The carpenter did some work on the external stairs, and left. By the time they’d gone, it was too late to go shopping. (We reckoned about three hours to walk down, and four to walk back).
Yesterday we went. It took us about two hours (with a short lift) down, and about ten minutes (with one big lift from a very fit girl with a big dog) back up. I spent the evening doing some Greek from a book I found in the house. I’ve always wanted to learn either Latin or Greek, and I had to choose, so I went for Greek, seeing as it promises to be more useful imminently!
Today, I got up and moved the bench from the cellar into the garden, and started reading a new book- Kingsley Amis’ ‘Take A Girl Like You’ (after having already read Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ and Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s ‘For The Good Of The Cause’, and numerous Garfield books!)
The scenery round here is breathtaking. The house is on a glacial kame terrace, under a continuous series of rounded mountain peaks that form an escarpment over eight miles long on one side of what was once a glacial valley. Even now, in late June, patches of snow cling to the earth, in rock crevices or shaded areas. The slopes are heavily wooded, and the views from each side of the house stretch for miles. In the distance over more hills, permanently snow-capped mountains can be seen. It’s fantastic. It may be June, but out of the sun it’s still quite cold – especially in the house. Basically, I’m stopping writing and going back into the garden.
We were well set up in our resting place for the next two weeks. The marker between two Interrail tickets - a wonderful chalet on dramatically sloping ground in the tiny mountain village of Saint Andeol. The village had no shop, no bar, and consisted of about ten or fifteen steep-rooved houses dotted around the elbow of a hill at the end of a u-shaped valley bordered with alpine trees and flowered meadows, lined with jagged peaks.
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