A building thunderstorm woke us early and soon torrential rain was bouncing off the road and Henrietta's roof creating a tremendous noise. The rain continued through breakfast and we were about to leave when the rain finally stopped. We decided to adopt our original plan of visiting the Sunday market in the village and set off wearing coats as the temperature had dropped to 14°C. The tops of the mountains all around us had been coated with icing sugar – the rain had obviously fallen as snow at higher altitudes.
When we arrived at the village we found just two stalls, one selling fruit and vegetables and the other selling meat. I took a closer look at the meat stall and a customer told me that the the joints were very good and so were the “rabbit insides”. The joint seemed like a good idea and that turned out also to be rabbit, in fact everything on the stall was rabbit. I bought a joint of boned and rolled rabbit topped with a sprig of rosemary.
We walked back to the motorhome and set off up the valley. Soon we reached the Winter resorts with their ski lifts and many chalets, the principle ones being Pragelato and the Olympic resort of Sestriere. Between these two resorts we were delayed briefly by work caused by storm damage. A rock the size of a small car had rolled down the hillside, fortunately stopping just beyond the road but leaving a large pine tree laying across the carriageway. At Sestriere the long descent started, crossing the French border at Claviere. Between the two we found a good parking place for a picnic lunch overlooking the steep-sided valley.
The temperature at the top of the pass was only 9°C, the clouds were very low and snow lay only just above the road but when we reached Briancon the sun was shining and the temperature had reached 25°C. We drove on round Briancon, Grenoble and Lyon, stopping only to purchase a kilo of tasty, ripe black cherries from a roadside stall. Just east of Lyon we stopped at Pontcharra sur Turdine where there is an aire in a car park in front of the post office. A small river, the romantically-named Turdine runs at the bottom of the car park but it is not very attractive. The village is unexciting but does provide a very convenient stop-over for one night. This is a big wine producing area and we passed two wine cooperatives just before we arrived at the village. I really wanted to try some of the local wine and take some back with us if it was good but the cooperatives were closed on Sundays and we planned to leave early the next day as we had a long journey.
Photos: Snow was very close as we crossed the Col du Lautaret beyond Briancon; The Turdine river at Pontcharra sur Turdine.
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