Short lunch break

Well, leaving the massive rock extraction program I have underway in the capable hands of my 4 year old daughter (she struggles a bit with getting the breaker upright but hey, life’s a bitch, get used to it) we decided to go for a stroll. Unfortunately despite this being the alps and despite it being mid winter there’s a decidedly worrying lack of the white stuff.

Of course the lack of snow didn’t affect the road which meant we had to leave the car on the road way, way down, as it was too icy with compacted snow to get a car up, sod’s law innit, and so we had to  walk up the road before we cut off up through the woods on our way up to the ridge we wanted to reach. Sure there were a few metres of snow near the top but nothing to go wild about. Bloody awful three hour slog it was too.

Plenty of tracks - a huge boar, some chamois probably with what, judging by the size, were baby chamois, foxes various and, right at the top traces of one totally mad fox and it’s dinner of a red grouse. I mean it’s not normal to hike 500 m all the way up there just on the off chance you’re going to get a morsel of grouse to eat. Still nice place to have lunch if your did.

Of course my lunch was cut a bit short as usual as Balders doesn’t do lunch and as we were up with friend Silvia too it was one view-loving foreigner against two stove-loving locals. I thought me having lunch was sufficient excuse to stop for an hour or so but evidently not, so I’m going to have to come up with something else to distract Baldrick for 60 minutes or so. These locals just don’t know how to enjoy a good view. Perhaps I could take a bagpipe reed up there and casually drop it in the snow. I’m sure he’d dedicate an hour to look for it while I look at the view. Might give this a go next time.