Framedlight

We recommenced our journey, heading for the Gorges de la Bourne through a narrow mountain pass which led up to the Vercors plateau. The roads were narrow and vertiginous and I would not have liked to have been in anything larger that the van. We passed by the village of Choranche where we were to return to camp later that day. The sky was still heavy with cloud and the tops of the mountains were shrouded. I have produced this photo in monochrome, as well as colour, as it suited the overcast conditions. Given the state of the roads there were few places where we could stop, and we passed some fabulous scenes which the camera had to ignore.  Here are some of the views I did manage to capture. The gorge gave way to a broad plateau with scattered farms and after driving a circuit of roads at the top of the gorge we retraced some of our route to a small village called Rencurel. Here we stopped for lunch and a little photography. I took some infrared sh...

Just before the debacle with the duckling I had managed to take an infrared picture of the river, here converted to monochrome. I cannot decide if I like the poplar tree there or not. It certainly gives an accent but rather disturbs the flow of the island. We packed up the van and set out to explore the Vercors. This is a less well known area of the Alps, where the mountains are not high but contain some spectacular scenery. The whole area is limestone and holds some large caves, none of which we visited. When the children were small we had several holidays in France were we did all the caves in the region. Eventually a guide could not say, "Voila le chou-fleur" without us bursting into laughter and the children would enquire "Ou est la Madonne?" So it got rather embarrassing and we have not visited a cave in France since. We had not got far out of Pont-en-Royans on the road to the Gorge de la Bourne when, as the road turned we saw a very pretty, almost Tu...

The day before Alan had at last collected the van. He did not get back to Montchavin until around 5.00pm as he had endured a frustrating wait in the garage while the reception staff chatted between themselves rather than serving him. Even more annoying as his phone had broken and he had no means of contacting me.. I had packed everything up from the apartment so we loaded it all in and set off, not very far, to a campsite we had seen on the river in Landry.  We stayed there overnight and in the morning I took some pictures down on the bank of the Isère. We were on our way to the Vercors, a mountainous region directly west of Montchavin. Inspired by a single picture of a narrow road, piercing the side of a crag and disappearing into mist, which we had seen on the front of a magazine. We had first to drive north west up to Grenoble where we stopped to do a little shopping. We followed the Isère down through a dramatic gorge and lingered by the river at a little place ca...

On the Tuesday Alan went cycling all day with Derek. The weather had warmed up and although the ski slopes were kept open using snow cannons the lower levels were warm, into the mid 20's. I had taken some dawn shots of Mont Blanc but did very little else with the day. Hettie and I went on a walk but nothing photographically satisfying came of it. The next day we went down to Bourg-St-Maurice to stock up and also buy some shorts as I had only brought cold weather clothing. There is a pretty walk from Bourg but it was shut as it was being used by the military for a firing range! So we decided to do a tour of small places we had not been to before, starting with a little village called Vulmix in the hills south west of Bourg. The church is called St Grat and is supposed to be interesting but unfortunately it was shut when we got there. We are very fortunate in the UK that most of the churches are kept open if you want to visit. I took some shots here in infrared as well. ...