Framedlight

We drove for over an hour through rather murky conditions until we reached the town of Lanslebourg in the Mont-Cenis ski area, still in the Vanoise. The town had some old, pleasantly rundown housing and posters for a film on the children's book 'Belle et Sébastien', which was also a TV series Alan enjoyed as a child. We continued further south still following the Arc river. The road name had changed from the D902 to the D1006. By late lunchtime we came across the bastion of a fort at the side of the road and stopped for a look. They had a convenient car park where we ate (we normally had a baguette, Camembert and maybe a little Parma ham for lunch) and then set out for an exploration. The river Arc here cuts through a deep gorge.There was a fort on the roadside and another, bigger one across the gorge, the Victor-Emmanuel fort, very impressively sitting on a rocky crag. These are part of a series of 5 forts, the Esseillon barrier, built in the 19th century to protect the...