France (4)

	Breakfast in Chateauneuf du Pap was accompanied by an awful lot of smoke this morning, coming from somewhere inside the truck. I assumed initially that something of last night’s stew had probably fallen into the grill and would eventually char itself out. As it started to get more difficult to see the other end of the van, I opened the roof hatch and further scenarios started to play out in my mind, one of them was to turn off the grill, but I still felt things would improve with time. I did have similar thoughts shortly before the fire engines arrived at Julie’s parent’s house when I set the bathroom alight. I turned off the gas and made further inspections.

	“It could be a peg”, said a little voice from some unseen smoke-filled corner. “A peg?” “I thought I got all of them out last night”. It replied I bent lower and caught my first glimpse of a hot smouldering peg, jammed in the grill, “that would be it then”. I fished out the offending article and finished the breakfast.

	Jools’ dad Jim has quite a liking for the old CNP, and as we were checking out our route through France we noticed we would be passing by, so ventured to see what the deal was with said beverage. Now I don’t know much about wine, but I am always keen to learn, and thankfully Jacqueline (the wine seller) was all too willing to teach.



					My only advice on the matter being, if you are going to spend fifty quid on a bottle of wine, definitely try and drink a free one, to half the price. That evening was certainly not one for cooking given the fact that when sober that morning we managed to cook a clothes peg, so cheese and salami with bread, oh and another bottle of CNP.


	On a very bad piece of navigation on my behalf we managed to pass through Briancon on the way to Meribel. I did have a rather nice restaurant in mind to go to which definitely was worth the extra 50km, just to hear the life story of the French waiter as we ate.

	Finally arriving in Meribel ski resort, we parked up over the road from the ‘Ski Beat’ chalet where Paul and Lucy were staying with a group of friends for Xmas.

	A few highlights of the holiday: One split chin, two engagements and one broken arm (but not from twisting). The human catherine wheel, exploding yoghurt/orange/cake. Snowboarding Santa’s, marmots on skis, cheese, cheese, cheese, cheese. Toffee vodka and memory loss, 80 litres of wine, expensive beer, Dick’s tea bar conga, ‘I have never’, Christmas dinner, secret Santa, Champagne and five tangerines in one mouth.

	Considering the very poor snow conditions, Jools learned to snowboard almost as quickly as ‘The Wedge’.

After Xmas in Meribel, we carried on north having contacted Steph and Andrew who were staying in Chamonix. I knew of a place underneath the main ski lift where I had seen many campervans last summer so was hoping that this would be free. It was, but like all freebies there is a catch. Due to the massive mountains and low winter sun, this area never saw sunlight and was like the ice planet Hoth, although with more frozen dog poo. It did have however, nearby toilets and water, from a bastardised fire hydrant. A small community in a ramshackle of trucks and buses had set up permanent residence in one corner and even had a communal generator supplying a dozen homes. The more pristine blanched motorhomes gathered somewhat separately from these and I felt we belonged quite happily somewhere between the two.

In the morning we had hot showers and breakfast at Andrew’s flat before heading over to Italy via the Mont Blanc tunnel. Having avoided all tolls so far we were gob-smacked to be faced with a 52 Euro charge, but at least we didn’t get fined for not managing the minimum speed limit through most of the tunnel, 50kmh!

New year in Italy was a quiet affair with a seven course meal in Thiule with Andrew, Steph and friends, followed by fireworks.I realised that I actually prefer fireworks to new year. In fact, I’ve never really enjoyed new year parties and often end up in bed by 12.15am and I’m starting to wonder if I have issues with the passing of time. The feelings could be compounded by the fact that my birthday was two days later.

Our Montblanc tunnel ticket was valid for one week, so in order to make the most of being on the Italian side we headed a little further into Italy to Cogne. Starting to get a little fatigued by the cold evenings and dripping condensation, it was nice to hook up to an electrical supply as the increasing precipitation slowly buried the truck with a nice blanket of snow

I awoke on my birthday to a text from dad saying that my Granda had passed away, Jools is now late and the faint blue line means she could be pregnant. My head is now spinning with the beginning of new life, passing of old and the growing up in-between. We lie-in for a change and discuss the relative faintness of the blue line and ambiguity of dates. Without instructions to accompany the test a little more denial seeps in.

Later in the day we find ourselves in a Cogne hire-shop, clutching cross-country skis, and as no one out on the course seems to be having much trouble, tuition feels highly unnecessary. We passed the afternoon sprawling around in the snow laughing uncontrollably as another poor Italian swerved to avoid the two of us.

Next morning, we open another instruction-less pregnancy test and ponder the merits of a second weak-positive. It’s so hard to let the full gravity of the result sink in, so we decide to go ice climbing instead.

We head back through the tunnel to Chamonix contemplating this theoretical pregnancy and its possible bearing on the trip. ‘We’ll buy another test in Chamonix, one with instructions, in French’ I suggest.


			Now I’ve never bought a pregnancy test before, but in some very weird way it’s like buying condoms, but just soo the opposite. It’s all in the knowing looks from the pharmacist, like they are getting a glimpse into your life that you’ve yet to tell your closest friends and family, I suppose it’s also the same as fungal cream, not that I’ve ever bought fungal cream! The pharmacist explained the instructions, and I felt like a teenager in sex education, but all I really noticed was on the box it said 99%. Why does it have to be a morning test, I’m sure that its some big industry joke, to make you lie awake in bed all night, pondering. OK, definitely pregnant. Wow, OK, erm, wow, er, great.

	We were very lucky that friends of ours, Steph and Andrew have a flat in Chamonix, because what we really needed at this point was breathing space in the mountains and a holiday from the holiday.

OK, so after a little r&r with Steph and Andy, Jools descided to return to the UK for a short break while I got down to some serious winter climbing. In short what happened was this.

The truck travelled from LaGrave-Chamonix-Cogne-Chamonix-Grenoble-LaGrave-Chamonix-Grenoble-LaGrave-Chamonix.

I picked up a friend at the airport, went climbing, had an epic and got frostbite.